It sounds counterintuitive, but employer branding is just as much about repelling talent as it is attracting talent. A global leader in employer branding shares keys insights about what it takes to build and nurture successful brand.
In an interview about all things employer branding, The Muse spoke with Charlotte Marshall, Global Employer Brand Lead at Danaher Corporation, a global science and technology innovator based in Washington D.C.
Marshall is an employer branding strategist with 15 years of experience and winner of the 2019 Global Employer Brand Leader award. Her goal is to change the ways employers attract, engage and retain top talent, and she does this by working with Fortune 500 companies to help them elevate awareness of their brand and career opportunities. She believes the most valuable use of an employer brand is to repel talent from your organisation.
“Think of your employer brand and employer value proposition as a smart filter that sits between your recruitment marketing and your recruitment,” said Marshall, “helping to weed out people that are non-suitable. For the good of your organisation and for the good of those people, too.”
“The true value of your employer brand proposition lies in articulating the expectations, harsh realities, vulnerabilities, and challenges people must be willing to overcome to thrive at your organisation.”
“Pair those with the benefits they stand to receive in return,” she elaborates, “and you’ll be amazed at what starts to happen to your recruiting funnel.”
Be specific about the challenges
Many organisations tend to promote all their strengths, benefits and opportunities. But the problem with this, as Marshall explains, you can find yourself quickly drowning in unqualified applications. The problem with too many unqualified applications means wasting valuable time and resources trying to identify your top talent from the pool.
“You can’t have positive without negative. Don’t be afraid to embrace both sides of your culture.”
Your organisation’s ability to grow is directly driven by your ability to attract, develop and retain outstanding people. This means being honest about the real challenges your people face on day-to-day basis, so that you find the best people who are the right fit, and can be inspired by these challenges.
Use the invaluable power of storytelling
In building a compelling employer brand for Life Technologies (later acquired by Thermo Fisher), Marshall attributes the success of the campaign with the use of storytelling, which raised engagement levels significantly.
“Real stories that featured people who benefited from our products. Their photos, their voices, their real-world impacts.”
Marshall shared a story of their company-wide meeting when they invited a guest speaker, a man named Herman, to address their people. Herman was a man wrongfully convicted of a crime in Los Angeles, CA in 1988, and was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence and released twelve years later—thanks to the DNA testing made possible by the team at Life Technologies.
“Little did anyone know, I found the data scientist who created the product used to analyse the DNA in Herman’s case and flew him into Carlsbad, CA to be at the meeting in person. After Herman told his story, we asked the scientist to join us on stage and we watched them exchange a warm embrace.
“I’ll never forget that moment because it was the moment that started a fascination with authentic, purpose-led stories—stories that have defined much of my career ever since I felt what sharing Herman’s story did to an organisation.”
As Marshall explains, stories are the most impactful way to activate your employer brand, as it helps people meaningfully connect with your purpose.
Gain buy-in from peers and executives
While many recruiters and HR professionals understand the extraordinary impact a strong employer brand has and are learning more about storytelling as an impactful strategy to promote their brand, we still need to gain buy-in from our peers and at the executive level.
Marshall suggests gaining buy-in by making other people the star of your work.
“Your stakeholders have to be brought along on the journey with you, so strive to create an aligned partnership from the beginning. Bring in members of internal communications, corporate marketing, HR, your recruiting leadership team.”
“Then, as you’re moving along on a project, write your project updates in a way that’s easy for your stakeholders to share with their teams, that generates advocacy and excitement. Employer brand campaigns are highly visible in our organisations, so when you can make your extended team a beneficiary of the praise, they’re much more inclined to help share it.”
Don’t use application volume as a measure of success
It’s tempting to see an influx of applications as a sign of success. However, if the quality is not there, the time and cost associated with wading through these applications can impact your ability to deliver meaningful results.
So what metric do can we use to identify and verify qualified or unqualified applicants?
“That answer is different at every organisation and my advice to an employer brand practitioner is to talk to your talent acquisition leadership and put a stake in the ground for how you’re going to measure quality—because quality can be measured in a ton of ways.”
An example of this could be using a rating and ranking system in your Candidate Management System, and reporting to understand results. You could then measure quality of hire (from the hires you make) based on a set of criteria and a range of assessments from different sources.
Another example of an easy way to do this could be identifying and reporting on the number of candidates per role that progress to the shortlisted stage.
The key is choosing the right metrics for your organisation and being consistent in measurement.
Building a strong brand doesn’t depend on your budget
Throughout her career, in speaking with other organisations, Marshall was frequently met with reservations about not receiving results due to resource and time constraints.
Branding and storytelling is based on the ability to listen, understand and share content that resonates and supports your underlying message.
“If we put out a message that really resonates with you, then we’ve listened. And we understand. So we’re creating a message structure that resonates and lands with impact every time. If you think about it, that’s the best we can possibly hope for from an employer value proposition. That’s it’s job.”
Use your employer brand to repel talent, as much as it attracts talent. Not everyone is suited to your organisation, and that’s a good thing! Be clear about the challenges your people need to be willing to face, use storytelling to communicate and connect with people, gain buy-in and resist using application volume as a measure of success.
Source
Why Repelling Talent Is the Best Employer Brand Strategy
Kayla Ellman
The Muse