What Is Your Employer Brand Built On?

You've been told that your employer brand will save you money. That it will attract better talent. That it will shorten the time to fill a role. That it will increase employee retention and improve morale.

But you've been lied to. In order to yield all those results, you can't just slap together some pillars and a tag line and call it a day. Having an employer brand isn't a solution in itself. If you are going to invest in your employer brand strategy, you need to do it right.

That means rejecting shortcuts and quick wins and instead building your employer brand on a foundation that is meaningfully attractive, authentic and differentiating.

Pretty is as pretty does.

Your brand can look creative and cool, but employer branding strategy can't just be cool creative. 

Your #employerbrand is the distillation of what it’s like to work at your company. You’re not selling them extreme corn chips or a new box for their soap. 

All the sexy words and interesting creative work might feel exciting, but it isn’t real. And candidates will know it the second they start work... right before they leave.

An EVP built on a foundation of sexy creative is a promise that’s never delivered and becomes a nightmare of expectation management. 

At best, it's fashion. Something you change as fashion changes. But that equates something as meaningful as the DNA of your company to rising and lowering hemlines. 

Conversely, an EVP based on external research and data allows you to build gorgeous creative that means more, because it really is saying something meaningful to candidates.

Is your employer branding strategic or just an extension of your tech stack? 

AI, blockchain, bots, and all the cool technology are tools, not strategies. They can deliver a message at the right place and time or ensure adherence to a process, but if they don’t have a compelling message to deliver or engage a candidate, what was the point? 

That’s not to say HR tech isn’t important. It is. But while it can optimize processes and speed up workflows, it is no substitute for a strategy for communicating something meaningful to the target audience. 

Shakespeare didn’t get any less interesting when you read it on your phone or tablet, proving that the message and meaning, which can last years and decades, must come first.

Your EVP deserves better than to be dictated by your technology.

Do we really need MORE ads?

So many of us have been convinced that the solution to any talent attraction problem is to shout louder and buy more ads. Put them on social media. Put them on news sites. Predict where your targets will go online and put them there. Have the ads follow people around until they give in and apply!  

And if you don’t get the applicants you wanted, the answer is to buy more ads. 

Ads are a powerful megaphone, but if you aren’t saying anything useful (or worse, unwittingly delivering a message candidates dislike), it won’t solve your employer brand problem.  

Before you start thinking about how to push your message out to a wider audience, understand how people perceive you, what your targets are ultimately motivated by, and where they are already looking to learn about you. 

Groupthink kills EVP projects dead.

A strong employer brand is clear, authentic, and meaningful, a distillation of your real work experience spanning a wide range of roles, teams and levels.

But when everyone wants to see their specific story included, how do you decide what matters?

How do you decide what makes the cut? What's true and what's "true-ish?"

Employer branding based on a game of politics and compromise isn't going to provide value. In lieu of any objective information, HiPPOs will run roughshod over your EVP, forcing you to describe their company, not the company.

Without objective data, the ROI of a strong EVP evaporates because the EVP doesn’t reflect the real experience of people who work there or the motivations of the people you wanted to attract.

So is your employer brand based on reality or something less real?

Do you have an employer brand or just a nice consumer brand halo?

If you’ve got a consumer brand that people love, because of a killer product, a service everyone loves to use, or just a beloved and faithful companion, you’re in luck. Chances are, the halo effect of your consumer brand is buoying your employer branding and giving your KPIs a bit of a boost. 

But you must be careful relying on a consumer brand. They are fickle and can turn from rising to star into has been quickly.  

And a great consumer product doesn’t translate into a compelling employer brand once the candidate starts to do their due diligence. They might love the product but end up disliking the culture that produced it. Being in love with the “what” doesn’t mean they will love the “how” or “why” of making that product. 

Building your employer brand on shoulders of a glowing consumer brand is a short-term fix, enough to grab the attention of talent, but not enough to get them to fall in love with working there. 

So what's left? If creative, tech, ads, politics and consumer marketing aren't enough to make an impact, how do you build a strong employer brand?

Are you guessing with something as important as your employer brand?

An #employerbrand is structure. It is architecture. You build branding, recruitment marketing and even employee engagement on top of the EVP foundation. In order to support all those demands, you need a strong EVP that isn’t built on politics and cool creative, but on something real. 

You need to build on data. 

Beyond engagement surveys, you need to know how people outside the company see your company, where your offering overlaps with their preferences, to know what motivators and attributes resonate and which just take up space (or worse). You need to understand who you're really competing with for talent and what makes you a compelling option. You need to understand where your candidates look for information and what moves them to make a choice.

If you don’t have that kind of data, what you’re building on is guesswork. Real data provides certainty and clarity, helping you to avoid wasting energy on messaging that doesn’t matter and focusing on ones where you are different, authentic and attractive.

So why are you guessing?  

Is your employer brand a one-sided conversation?

The obvious assumption is that your EVP should be about you, that it should tell your story, and describe what it is like to work there. But that’s not the whole truth.  

Strong employer brands, ones which lower hiring costs and increase retention, are built on a two-sided conversation. Yes, you can start by listing all the ways you are a wonderful employer, and why some people love the culture and experience. But which of those messages matter to your talent targets? Not talent in the aggregate, but the talented person whose LinkedIn profile the recruiter is staring at, hoping to engage them? 

The only way you can have this kind of two-sided conversation is to know what that person is motivated by, what gets them out of bed to do great work. Without having a clear picture of what that person wants, you are stuck being yet another carnival barker, shouting about how you have a great team with a great culture where everyone wants to make an impact (e.g. what every company says). 

Start with the end in mind. 

Before you engage an agency, or launch that #employerbrand project, what do you want it to do for you? What’s the value of spending the time, energy and resources on this? 

Because an employer branding project isn’t there to raise your review ratings or attract more applicants. You don’t make this kind of intellectual or emotional investment to just stand out or win awards. 

Far from it.  

Done right, those things can happen, but they are secondary and knock-on effects of understanding who you are and what working there is really like and connecting those ideas to the people who want to hear them.  

A strong EVP doesn’t encourage people to say or think nice things about you. It reinforces a story they see told through every element of your company. It reminds people why they fell in love with you in the first place. It connects to who they are as people.

So raise your sights and consider the impact your employer brand can have when you take it seriously.

Are you treating all talent the same?

Standing in front of you is a legitimate unicorn. Whether it’s a female developer, an African-American sales leader, or a recent graduate in machine learning, they are a great talent who ticks all your boxes. Just one problem: what do they want? 

You see, your salary is roughly the same as everyone else’s. Your benefits package is just about the same as all the other people they talk to. Every other company claims the best culture, the best leadership and the best mission. 

So why would this unicorn choose you? 

What if you had an advantage: data. What if you knew that female developers tend to care more about leadership’s commitment to staff development over secure employment or good references? What if you knew that the African American sales leader was actually more interested in secure employment rather than inspiring leadership or team-oriented work? What if you knew what the recent grad really wanted instead of what you read in some magazine?

With that information, you could tailor your message to suit the needs of the talent. You could understand why they are interested in your company and the other likely companies they are considering. 

With external data, you aren't just guessing. You have a clear advantage in attracting and engaging talent. 

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James Ellis is on a mission to help companies strategically hire better, which means employer branding. He is the Director of Employer Brand at Universum, home of the world's largest talent survey. On the side, he hosts the long-running podcast The Talent Cast, and publishes the Employer Brand Headlines newsletter every Monday. If you're interested in talking about your employer brand challenges, book 15 minutes of office hours and ask him anything.

Are you ready to see how data can transform your employer brand?