Workplace Romances – Jared Woods

Building The Brand In 140 Characters Or Less

// September 21st, 2009 // Employment Branding

Lots of people (including me, in previous posts) have been talking about using online social networking for recruitment and talent sourcing. It’s a hot-button issue in an industry that loves to exploit potential new media to find candidates. Tell a recruiter there could be candidates (and commissions) in it, and odds are, they’ll throw themselves at it with the gusto and carelessness I usually display at All-You-Can-Eat Ribs night.

I’m from the employer brand school of thinking. All of our talent acquisition strategies are demonstrably linked to our corporate core values and our employer value proposition. We don’t spam mailing lists and we don’t advertise jobs that don’t exist. We take a community approach to employee referrals and alumni that’s quickly moving into the online space. I still think press presence is part of the toolkit for the right roles. I think getting them in the door is easier than keeping them engaged, in love and moving forward once they’re part of the company. And, as I’ve said before, I believe that the more people get involved in communicating for the brand, the more likely the wheels are to fall off.

Brands live and die on their ability to transfer emotion. That ability is the thing that makes you feel what someone else feels. It’s the moment when looking at a Coke poster makes you think you’d be happier (and more like the people in the advert) with a Coke. So you buy one. And you don’t ever think about whether you were as happy as the people on the poster were, because you’re going about your life, drinking a Coke.

Where this becomes a problem for brands (and while I’m not just talking about employer brands, it’s where my head’s at) is that it’s really hard to transfer emotion in small bites.

Video is arguably the best single-direction method to transfer emotion from one human being to another. It’s the reason we watch an unprecedented amount of online video, DVDs, films and downloaded TV shows. Interactions with real people online are also entertaining and can certainly help to solidify opinions around a particular voice. (One only has to look at the stand-up comics joking away on twitter and the subsequent responses to see how quickly single-voice brands can spread.) However, as the richness of content goes down, so to does emotional transfer. And 140 characters is about as content-poor as you can get. It’s text, often used to promote a link or show a picture, usually as a response to other conversations.

How do you paint the employer brand, the physical, emotional and psychological experience of working for a company, in 140 characters? And how do you do it in such a way that it’s going to impact and resonate with your intended audience?

The three R’s. Relevance, richness, response.

By relevance I mean talk the language of your tribe. Talk about things that excite them, not just about what jobs you have open. Introduce team members, talk about what’s happening in the real world. And talk about it the way you’d want to hear about it – in a way that stimulates conversation.

Richness refers to the type of conversation you have. Promote links people will find useful. Demonstrate an understanding of your followers by giving them content they’ll like. Talk to them, not at them. And talk to them like a human, a person who reacts and emotes and empathises and believes in a vision. There are enough bots out there without you becoming one for want of a personality.

Response means just that. Become part of the conversation. Forge a dialogue between your brand and your followers/fans/viewers/audience. Watch the discussions between your people and get involved. Talk to the issue and talk to the people. Share your views, listen to arguments, learn more and be part of the discussions.

It’s not a science – after all, we’re talking about people, who can be emotional, irrational, over-hasty and ignorant. If you want your brand to be a part of the new online environment, posting links to your open jobs isn’t a strategy.  Make your brand a voice, a leader, a pundit in the industry (whatever industry that is) and the right people will find you.

Read more about this in Andrew Weir’s great post about emotion.