If you ignore the mountain of garbage science and science fiction within Jurassic Park, you can still take away a simple idea: that the tiniest DNA contains the instructions to build massive creatures. Maybe not dinosaurs per se (DNA breaks down pretty hard after a few thousand years), but certainly whales, emus, and you and me.

It doesn’t matter how many itty bitty little pieces you break us into, we are still ourselves, and the DNA ensures that when you cut your finger, a toe doesn’t grow in its stead.

The same can be said for your organisation’s DNA. If you are all about innovation, if your people live to think outside the box and try new things, if they are happiest when they are surrounded by the most cutting-edge tech or ideas, if they stay late not to make a bonus but because they sense that they are on the cusp of a breakthrough, that drive to innovate is something that saturates everyone in the company.

This is why branding professionals always caution others that the logo and tagline aren’t the brand. Is the Nike brand the same when you can only see half a swoosh? Nope, it becomes something different. You can’t look at just a little piece of the logo or tagline and see the whole brand. In fact, it’s likely that you won’t be able to learn anything from it at all.

Here, we have Starbucks (like pretty much every other place humans exist), but we also have tiny little independent coffee shops. At Starbucks, they may be offering me a quick pick-me-up, but the culture dictates precision, efficiency and consistency. I know that if I get a flat white in London, it will be effectively the same as the one in Sydney and the same as the one in Brisbane. You may not think they have the best coffee, the best service, or the best food, you know exactly what you are getting when you walk in. Do you expect a giggle? A surprising flavour? A little something extra? No. This is Starbucks.

But that independent shop also offers coffee. It also offers pumps of flavours to make my latte taste more like a candy cane than coffee. It also offers me a selection of muffins and sandwiches.  Same place? Hardly. The independent place has all their specials listed as jokes from the TV show Arrested Development. They sell little candies that make political jokes. They have a chalkboard out front that makes a cheeky joke about how much I probably need coffee.

They aren’t the same, but that’s obvious. But let’s flip the script. What if instead, I started with the menu boards. At one place, you have professionally designed listings of coffee drinks (and here in the States, it comes with calorie counts and other nutritional data points). The font is professional. The colours muted but aligned with the rest of the space. There might even be a screen on which animated gifs of precise shots being poured and foam designs being drawn may show up. From just this single data point, I can infer that this place is part of some bigger chain, that they make a lot of shots exactly the same way every time.

At the independent coffee shop, the menu made of references to a semi-cult TV series shows personality and tells me I should expect more “fun” than “professionalism.” It might tell me that this place is owned by the person who wrote this (because most “employees” are too scared to go out that far on a limb), which suggests that I might even meet the owner as she pulls that shot. It suggests passion for coffee and life. Is this coffee better than the other place? Maybe not, but based on the tiniest data point, I can infer much of the rest of the shop and company.

Your prospect’s understanding of your EVP isn’t because you tell it to them, it’s what they infer based on lots of seemingly tiny touch points. It is a bird’s nest they build in their mind, collecting bits of whatnot to establish the form of the nest.

As an employer brand professional, your job is to establish and maintain the bird’s nest. But you can’t just tell the bird: no, you’re doing it wrong! Build it wider! If you want to change the nest you change the environment, replacing the coffee stirrers and plastic bag detritus with twigs and grass. The bird, taking what is lying around, will inevitably create a different kind of nest.

So if you want to change people’s sense of your EVP, you need to change the touchpoints. In the same way that you could tell a lot about the coffee shop by their menus, chalkboards and napkins, your prospect will be making conclusions about your employer brand based on all their touch points with the brand.

For example, if your brand is predicated on the promise of better candidate service, look at every element of outreach communication. Is every element driving the idea that you will take care of the candidate? Does it communicate the process and what happens next? Does it help the candidate understand what to expect? Or do you ghost them for weeks at a time and come back surprised that they aren’t interested any longer?

Look at your career site. A company that is claiming to care about its workers had better not have stock art on their career site. It should have stories about how the company goes above and beyond to ensure each person can focus on doing great work when they are there and not worrying about child care, health care, parental care, etc.

A company claiming to truly care about the employee must be clear with exactly how far they will go to provide support. On-site gym? Unlimited paid time off? Maternity and paternity benefits? Spell those out in detail (detail provides certainty and credibility). What about your social channels? Are they filled with job openings or stories about how an employee was supported by leadership, their team, or their boss?

What about your consumer touchpoints? If you sell something that your candidates interact with, will they be getting aligning or dissonant messaging? What about your application process? Does it look like everyone else’s or are you simplifying steps, communicating why you need certain bits of information, how carefully you will protect that data? Yes, even the help text of your application process is another bit of stuff in their mental birds’ nests. Will they be adding another twig or an old cigarette butt?

There’s really no level too granular when it comes to supporting that brand promise and there’s a reason for that: Stating a brand promise is cheap. Proving and reinforcing that brand promise all the way down to the DNA level is how the promise becomes real, because it isn’t easy. (Spoiler: the easier something is to do, the less impactful it becomes because if it is easy, everyone else is already doing it).

So if you think you’ve got your EVP nailed down tight, look around. Look at every single touchpoint a prospect sees in the journey, from passive to active to candidate experience. Look at every item and ask, “is this supporting the brand promise or undercutting it?” No element is too small, from the “thanks for applying” automated message to the signature on the recruiter’s email to the hiring manager’s willingness to turn their phone off during the interview. It all matters.

James Ellis

It’s possible that the stories are true and that a radioactive recruiter bit born-marketer James Ellis years ago. All we know is that James Ellis has become a well-known podcaster, writer, speaker and consultant in the growing employer brand industry. He’s done everything from putting a public Fortune 1000 brand on his back to building a 19-person employer brand activation team within the biggest recruitment marketing agency in the world. What drives someone to write, podcast, speak and work so obsessively towards revolutionising the recruiting and talent industry? Coffee. Yes, he would like another, thank you.

Website: employerbrand.consulting and jamesellis.us

Twitter: TheWarForTalent

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/saltlab

The post What’s your employer brand DNA? The secret to bringing your EVP to life appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.

Even if you don’t have a dedicated employer branding team like EY, you can still benefit from learning about their winning strategies. EY, named one of 2018’s World’s Most Attractive Employers by Universum, shares how their purpose of “building a better working world” shapes their forward-thinking talent attraction strategy.

We asked Jacqui McKeown, Oceania Employer Brand for EY, about the employer branding strategies they are using to attract the best people.

“I began at EY ten years ago and moved into attraction and selection,” said Jacqui. “After moving into employer branding two years ago, I now look after the Australia and New Zealand markets, and also focus on student recruitment in universities and schools in New Zealand.”

So, how is EY attracting students, and what other employer branding strategies are they using?

Recruiting students

“The war for talent is so competitive in this space. We’ve always been doing campus events to attract youth to join us and showcase the career they can have with us. We have campaigns that we work on throughout the year to recruit graduates, vacationers, and cadets, and we also run competitions to raise brand awareness on campus with different student groups.”

The employer branding team is responsible for their overall campaign messaging for recruitment efforts, creating marketing collateral such as flyers and banners, as well as content for digital, print, and their two careers websites for students and experienced professionals.

Employee profile stories

“It’s great to have content around our different service lines and areas of the business. One way that we provide insights and showcase what our people do is through people profile stories. We’re really looking to attract people from STEM backgrounds and provide insights for students about how their degree can fit with the work we do by showing what kind of work is available, what they can gain by working here, and what the teams and people are like.”

Separating social channels: clients and candidates

Interestingly, EY uses LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, but distinguishes their social channels, with channels for their corporate brand and channels for their candidates (which the employer branding team manages).

“We have two different audiences: clients and candidates. Different audiences are looking for different content. We have a strong relationship with our Brand, Marketing and Communications team and work together to ensure that we leverage and showcase the best of our global and local content for our audience.”

Data tracking

EY prioritises data tracking to ensure their content is hitting the mark. Part of this is analysing which images are working, the best times to post, how much engagement and reach they are getting through all their social channels, how many visits they are getting to their careers pages, from which sources, and more. This, in turn, drives their strategy.

Learning and development

EY offers leadership programs, and learning and development opportunities for their people, supporting them in their career development.

This year, they started offering their people “digital badges” when they learn “future” skills such as design thinking, AI, data science, data visualisation, inclusive leadership and more. This is just one way EY sets their people up to succeed. People who earn badges can add these to their LinkedIn profile (another great form of sharing and engagement!).

Creating brand ambassadors

The best employer brands create and empower brand advocates. EY has brand ambassadors throughout campuses and internal programs for people to opt-in as talent ambassadors. EY has an internal brand advocacy tool to empower their people to share content that resonates with them.

“EY people can propose content they find interesting, (such as thought leadership pieces, or on topics such as the future of work, diversity, inclusion, or industry news). Then, we distribute a range of suggested content to our people, they choose their favourite pieces, and share within their networks!”

Showcasing values

Employer branding is never one-dimensional. Part of it encompasses showcasing your organisational values.  EY’s Employer Branding team works with their Diversity & Inclusion team to find opportunities and to promote their values to candidates and clients alike. It was their Diversity & Inclusion Team that entered EY’s submissions into the 2018 LGBTI Inclusion Award, which led to them taking out this year’s award! Check out their incredible video about winning the award.

EY also has a Foundation Team that manages their social responsibility and charitable involvement. Four of their Australian offices competed in Tour de Office week, a charity that creatively combines corporate wellness with philanthropy. Tour de Office is an in-office cycling relay event where employees ride on stationary bikes over the course of a week, competing, engaging, and raising money for their chosen charity.

Through Tour de Office, EY was able to build their employer brand and showcase their values of corporate health and philanthropy. The event created a lot of excitement and engagement, with plenty of photos to share on social media.

“Because of the size of EY, it’s important for us, the Employer Branding Team, to maintain good relationships with the Social Media, Branding, Foundation, and Diversity & Inclusion teams so we can showcase the great variety of initiatives and events that take place within our organisation.”

Jacqui’s challenge is activating EY’s global message locally. It’s important for EY’s messaging to resonate with their candidate market, thus the Employer Branding Team has to produce content that is relevant to the local market.

“For example, we recently held EY Care Day where our people in Australia could choose a local school and volunteer there for a day, doing gardening, painting, and other work to benefit the school. We received photos from people on the ground, then published them through our social channels to give people an insight about how our people give back to the community.”

Video content

It’s hard to miss EY’s beautiful video content. Some of their videos feature their global messaging, and others are targeted more locally. They showcase their people stories and careers, as well as specific areas of the business, such as auditing, transactions, and advisory.

They also share videos about living with purpose, how EY is shaping the world, and what they are doing to build the future.

“Other organisations focus a lot on print and words. Nowadays, it’s all about how to bring your story to life through video. We think about whether candidates are interested in professional or raw style videos (we do both!), and what works with our messaging. We’re working hard to move towards more video content.”

What’s next?

The EY Employer Branding team’s next big piece of work will be around their March campaign to attract graduates. Jacqui will be working behind the scenes on ways to market the theme of their campaign, updating their content, and developing and designing marketing materials to support their campus recruiters throughout Australia.

“We give them the tools and resources they need to speak to candidates about the type of experience they can gain at EY. For example, ‘the future of work’ is a big theme for us. It’s about the world and technology changing, and things being disrupted rapidly. So we have to find a way to talk about the types of careers candidates can have in this changing environment.

Being a global organisation, EY’s people can benefit from alliances, gaining skills and experiences in different locations, industries and technologies.

“Our purpose is, ‘building a better working world’, so we are upskillling our people so they can thrive in the future of work. We encourage them to develop an analytical, global, and innovative mindset. Because the world is changing, we are embracing change and the future of work.”

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and interviewee,
not Ernst & Young. This article provides general information, does not constituteadvice and should not be relied on as such. Professional advice should be sought
prior to any action being taken in reliance on any of the information. Liability
limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Is your organisation using any of the above employer branding strategies? Let us know in the comments.

Want to share your organisation’s recruitment marketing strategies in an article with us? Get in touch with us.

The post What makes you a World’s Most Attractive Employer? We asked EY appeared first on Recruitment Marketing.