Last year, I looked at the connection between the companies most loved by consumers, best reviewed by workers, and most desired by young job-seekers. This “Triangle Theory” holds true today and illustrates the importance of employer branding.
First, let’s look at the most valued and powerful brands in the world. Tenet Partners recently analyzed their proprietary CoreBrand Index to determine the world’s top brands, based on awareness and positive perception. Here are their top 10:
1. Coca-Cola
2. Hershey
3. Bayer
4. Disney
5. Apple
6. Johnson & Johnson
7. Microsoft
8. Pepsi
9. American Express
10 Harley-Davidson
These are hardly surprising, though I didn’t expect Pepsi to be so close to Coke; in the past it’s been ranked as far back as #22.
Now let’s look at brands from the other direction. Universum surveyed 81,00 undergraduate business students to find their most desired employers. Here is where these leaders of tomorrow want to work:
1. Google
2. Disney
3. Apple
4. Nike
5. JP Morgan
6. Ernst & Young
7. Goldman Sachs
8. Deloitte
9. PriceWaterhouseCoopers
10. FBI
Only Disney and Apple make both lists. If you think the list leans too heavily towards financial companies, here are the top 10 desired employers for liberal arts students:
1. Disney
2. United Nations
3. Google
4. FBI
5. National Geographic
6. Peace Corps
7. US State Department
8. Teach for America
9. CIA
10. Apple
Again, only Disney and Apple are top-10 companies where college students want to work that are also the most powerful brands in the world.
Why? Millennials have lived with Coke and Pepsi all their lives; Hershey makes candy and Harley-Davidson is known for cool motorcycles the world over. Yet business students placed Coca-Cola at #13, Pepsi at #53, and Hershey at #54. Liberal arts students put Coke at #38 and Hershey at #50. Harley-Davidson didn’t even make the top 100 of either list.
Could the answer lie in employer branding? Let’s look at Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work 2015, which ranks companies based on employees’ anonymous votes. Only two of the top 10 on the Tenet list of power brands make the top 50 of Glassdoor. Can you guess which ones? That’s right — Disney (#50) and Apple (#22)
Two more companies are on the list of employers most desired by both business students and liberal arts students: Google and the FBI. The latter doesn’t make Glassdoor’s list, but Google is right there at #1.
What this means is that young job-seekers are drawn to companies more by their employer branding than their consumer branding. Nike, which business students ranked #4? It’s #25 on Glassdoor’s list — but 38th on Tenet’s. Liberal arts students rated NBCUniversal at #11. It’s #31 on Glassdoor’s list — but not on Tenet’s list at all.
This is great news for smaller organizations, new start-ups, and non-profits: You don’t have to be a known or admired brand to attract top talent. You just have to be known as a great place to work. And that’s something you have much more control over, since smart leaders can shape their company’s mission, vision, values, and culture. Don’t worry about competing with the Cokes and American Expresses of the world; worry about beating Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which comes in at #12 on Glassdoor’s Best Workplaces list and has no category scored lower than 3.4 out of 5.
Brandemix has extensive experience with creating strong employer brands that speak to your employees – from the newest hire to the CEO – and to your potential employees, the job-seekers whose first encounter with your company may very well be through your employer brand. We conduct the research and analysis, and produce an employer value proposition that emphasizes your strengths and differentiates you in the marketplace. As I’ve shown here, a compelling employer brand can make an organization more desirable than soda or candy!
For more information about how Brandemix can help you create, refresh, or refine your employer brand, contact us.
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.
