Questions that Clarify Your Company Brand

Questions that Clarify Your Company Brand Questions that Clarify Your Company Brand Questions that Clarify Your Company Brand Adapted from the book Finding Keepers: The Guide to Hiring and Holding the Worlds Best Employees by Steve Pogorzelski, Jesse Harriott, Ph.D., and Doug Hardy. Published January 2008 by McGraw-Hill. People recognize culture, and it can be a powerful attraction to highly talented candidates. Good employer branding incorporates culture because its one of the intangible benefits that make an impression on the poised candidate. Furthermore, branding only matters if it reaches your target audience so describe your employer brand for the poised worker. Since your job is to articulate the employer brand that already exists, in reality and in aspiration, start with your employees. Solicit candid input from your current workforce because, as weve seen, a large section of them are poised workers. Your current employees are the experts; if you start anywhere other than their experience, you are writing fiction. Ask your employees these questions: Values Questions What do we as an organization believe? How do we choose which projects get done? On what criteria is your performance judged? Are we fair? How do we treat customers? Which customers deserve the most attention? Culture Questions Why are you here? What is unique about us? What is your relationship to the customer? Why would your customer do business with you? What outcomes do you want from your work? How do we achieve our goals? Describe the kind of person who succeeds here. What do we want people who work here to feel for this place? What, other than money, would tempt you to leave? Would you recommend this organization to a close friend? You should also develop a more detailed list of features and benefits of working at your organization. These are the details that HR professionals and recruiters love to discuss, because theyre more concrete than mission and culture: Job description Compensation details (salary, bonuses, hourly rate, profit sharing) Benefits of all kindsmedical, 401(k) and pension plans, savings Business lineyour products and services Business opportunitythe upside of working for you, the chance to advance a career Lifestylework-life balance or intense atmosphere; a jobs travel requirements, etc. Location Positioning in the industry (best products, employer of choice status) Community service and other outward expressions of culture Recognition from the outside You dont advertise with this list because, frankly, these features and benefits play backup in the employer brand. A list is just not as compelling as a statement (or better, a narrative). The features and benefits of a job might help you close a deal with a talented individual, or tip the balance against a competitor, but they arent effective in getting attention. Details help, and its important to accentuate all the positive things that go on in a company. Lori Erickson remembers that when I took this job at there were benefits we offer that I didnt even know about.We have an adoption assistance program and nursing rooms for new mothers in every single facility across the United States. We have a work-life person whose sole job is to put programs in place that make it easier for employees to balance the challenges of having a life and a job.We had to learn to push that message into the recruiting story. Your first attempt to define an employer brand doesnt have to be perfect, but it does have to satisfy a few rules: Is it authentic? Does your statement reflect reality? Do employees recognize the values and the culture you describe? Is it unique? Would an employee know that this describes your organization and not a similar one? Is it compelling? Does it demand action? Does it describe the meaning of working at your organization? Is it relevant? Is your statement meaningful to the people youre trying to attract? Does it describe an experience? As far as candidates, potential candidates, and employees are concerned, your employer brand is an experience. Its not a slogan, and its not a logo, and its not a press release. Its the good or bad deal of investing another day of their one-and-only lives in your organization. The answers to each of these questions must be yes, because otherwise youll miss your audience. Rigorous questioning of the statement worked for Laura Stanley, who leads the Talent Acquisition and Employment Branding team at EarthLink in Atlanta. She started her work with a reality check: When I joined, the first thing I did was to ask my team, Okay, why do people join, and that you articulate pretty clearly what theyre going to get when they come, and also what theyve got to give, too, and to make sure that were attracting the right people in the right jobs at the right time.