A Tip of the Cap to the In-house Employer Brand Champions
You’re working for leadership that has NFC what you do. They just heard that they need to be doing this “employer branding thing”.
30-second read
Many of you are working with both hands tied behind your back; unable to execute, blocked by ignorance, and struggling to utilize your skills.
You’re dealing with unreasonable, hyper-conservative corporate guidelines.
You’re required to color inside the PR-defined lines at all times.
You’re having budget pulled out from under you at the last minute.
You have no technology of any value available to you.
You’re being asked by corporate idiots who have no clue about hiring to apply to “best places to work” lists.
You’re probably a team of one. If you’re not, you’re losing team members by the day and will be soon.
The marketing team doesn’t care about your work. Even if they say they do, they view it as nice to have—at best. Translation: Take a number and we’ll call your name when we have time. Aka never.
You’re constantly being asked what the ROI of your work is while the corporate branding team sits in their creative meetings with their feet on the table talking about how many views they got on the latest ad campaign. (And the powers that be think those numbers actually matter and use them to justify those positions.)
You’re working for leadership that has NFC what you do. They just heard that they need to be doing this “employer branding thing”.
And you’re dealing with all of this while trying to find a new job. Because the company you’re at totally misrepresented themselves during your hiring process and you’re now realizing that there’s no shot of you ever succeeding there.
If this is you, my advice is straightforward (but not easy): Run for the hills. Your intuition is spot on.
I wish that I had more profound wisdom to share with you, but I don’t. I’ve talked to dozens of people in this position and know that it doesn’t turn around.
What I can do is lend a hand. DM me if I can help make intros.
Godspeed.
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1 out of 10 of you will read this post and say to yourselves, “that’s not me”. If this is you, congrats. You’ve found one of the extremely rare combinations of company + leadership + culture + product/service that unlocks this work at a meaningful and scalable level. Hang onto it. It’s special.