I’m ready to retire some employer branding clichés. I’ve given presentations and written articles on best practices for employer branding. But it’s also helpful to look at this important recruiting strategy from the other direction, to see what “worst practices” to avoid. If you’re using or considering any of these techniques to improve your recruiting, heed my warnings.
“People are our most important asset”
There are several reasons to avoid this familiar cliché. For one thing, it’s too familiar, used at one time or another by Marriot, ENGlobal, Bain & Company, the Virginia National Guard, and even Microsoft. The phrase has been so overused that now the first page of Google search results for it are outright criticisms.
Secondly, what does it mean ? The term “assets” dehumanizes your employees, putting them in the same category as your computers, products, trucks, and other objects. Assets don’t take vacations, stay home to care for sick children, or get rewarded for good work. Assets don’t have careers goals.
Perhaps most importantly, “assets” don’t have ideas or adapt to new situations. You need people if you want to innovate and experiment, and to see opportunities, threats, patterns, or trends. If you value your workforce, you won’t call them an “asset.”
Finally, I don’t like that it separate the speaker from the listener. “People” refers to the employees who are not the company, while “our” refers to the company which is not the employees. This division shouldn’t exist; the employees are the company, and the company is its employees.
Notable second-place contenders:
Come grow with us, make your mark, make your next move, join our team, join us and make a difference.
“We listen to our employees”
That is, if you don’t really listen to them.
Don’t get me wrong; I love when organizations respond to employee ideas, needs, or complaints. But lots of companies say they’ve listened and responded, when they’ve actually done neither. A robust survey of the entire workforce, to improve company culture or to create an employer brand, can’t be taken lightly. And if it’s done wrong or half-heartedly, you risk eroding employee support.
Your organization can initiate such a survey internally, and even make participation mandatory, it’s often more productive to have a third party conduct such an audit. Employees feel more comfortable and speak more honestly when management and HR aren’t in the room. Employer brand agencies (like mine) also specially trained in discovering how employees feel about their workplace and culture without directly asking them or appearing antagonistic.
No matter who manages the audit, the key is to actually take action. I’ve worked with several companies that didn’t like the responses from their staff and simply ignored most of it. They felt it was easier and cheaper to avoid major changes, such as reorganizing departments or adding a flex-time policy. But when employees saw that management wasn’t serious about improving their experience, some of them headed for the exits.
“Visit our MySpace page”
For employer branding to work, job-seekers have to see it. That means putting your recruiting messages wherever they are, on whatever platforms they use. And not just your current employees or latest candidate pool; you must think ahead to where your ideal workers are now — and where they will be.
As I wrote recently, Millennials and the upcoming Generation Z tend to favor Twitter, Instagram, and now Snapchat. Meanwhile, the fastest-growing demographic for both Facebook and Google Plus is people aged 45-54. Men are more prevalent on LinkedIn, while women prefer Pinterest. While Facebook is more popular than Twitter, 40% of Twitter users have a degree, compared to 30% of Facebook users — even though Twitter users tend to be younger.
The online location is only the first step. The type of content is also important. While YouTube itself isn’t a major traffic source for hiring, putting a recruiting video on the site virtually guarantees views. Photos are the most shared and liked content on Facebook. Polls, quizzes, and survey also lead to greater interaction from both job-seekers and employees. I love this post from Marriott to its employees on Facebook, for example:
Even if your online recruiting is limited to a careers website, that destination can have employee testimonials, interactive features, infographics, and other information that’s more compelling than plain text. If you find that job-seekers ask for certain materials in their interviews or at job fairs, you should start posting that information in an online location that’s easy to find.
To sum up, your employer branding should not be boring, inauthentic, lackluster, or poorly targeted. It shouldn’t make job-seekers think they won’t have a rewarding career at your company, or make employees doubt the company cares about them. It should not be an afterthought, with few stakeholders, little leadership, and a meager budget. Good employer branding attracts the best talent to your organization; bad employer branding drives them away and keeps them away.
Brandemix specializes in employer branding, employee communications, and social recruiting. If you’d like to ensure you’re implementing best practices in any of these categories, drop me a line.
Jody Ordioni is President of Brandemix.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
