An Overview of My Current Opinion on How Companies Should Be Marketing Themselves to Talent
Traditional employer branding is no longer relevant. (If it ever was is up for debate). Regardless, things have evolved.
1-minute read
This is an overview of my current opinion on how companies should be marketing themselves to the talent that they want to hire:
This isn't employer branding anymore. This is employees—which includes recruiters and also hiring managers—creating personally owned content for the public to consume.
Posting on social—as themselves.
Doing podcasts—as themselves.
Hosting micro-events—as themselves.
Writing articles—as themselves.
Contributing in communities and forums—as themselves.
Whatever. No formality. With full autonomy.
Just companies offering employees the opportunity to take part in a culture that values creative expression—and sharing it with the outside world.
And the person who leads, manages, and enables this organizational mindset and activity is what an “employer brand” role used to be. It's now something akin to a Head of Internal Content.
Traditional employer branding is no longer relevant. (If it ever was is up for debate). Regardless, things have evolved.
There are some People, Talent, and Employer Branding folks reading this and thinking to themselves that this feels totally right.
There are some who just unsubscribed.
But I’d guess that almost all recruiters and candidates want more of what I’m advocating for. And they, my friends, are the customers and beneficiaries of this work. That’s worth paying attention to.
Some important notes:
1. I want to underscore the phrase “my current opinion”. I’m very open about the fact that my opinion on this stuff evolves. I don’t have an angle. Within this context, I only care about human behavior as it applies to discovering, learning about, and buying things. In this case, jobs. And that’s what I’m reporting on.
2. Some would argue that the approach I’m suggesting only applies to early-stage companies and SMBs. I firmly argue that this applies to every type of company, regardless of industry or size. Will some companies struggle to pull this off? Absolutely. But that struggle will be due to organizational mindset, bureaucracy, and fear; not the approach itself.
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