“If you’re not thinking about employer brand / talent brand now, you are not just behind the 8-ball, you are behind the 8-ball, behind the 8-ball, behind the 8-ball because the world has changed, everything has gone digital”
So boldly says EQRx’s VP of Talent and Talent Branding Ed Nathanson, as one of the highlights of a recent webinar with Comparably COO/Co-founder Mike Sheridan. Nathanson ends up quoting Sting, Jack Nicholson, and Tyrion Lannister in the process.
Previously a talent brand consultant at his own company, Nathanson was able to convince the brass at EQRx to lean hard on employee brand development early when the company was still putting its basic shape together and had tons of other more traditionally foundational areas to focus on.
Here are some of the key takeaways from this impassioned and often funny discussion about the fundamentals of employee branding in action.
- The Three Pillars – When it comes to building an employer brand that works, Nathanson identifies three cornerstones to his approach. They are having an amazing digital footprint (“That doesn’t mean checking all the boxes of ‘I’ve got to be here and here and here, because that’s the playbook.’ Screw the playbook,” he says); an employer brand ambassador mentality (“In pharma, there’s an inherent fear of allowing the employees to do anything that isn’t what I call ‘corporate-lobotomized.’ But we wanted to unleash their personalities, their real selves.”); and, lastly, a relentless focus on candidate experience (“You can have the best branding in the world. If the branding doesn’t match the experience, you will lose 100% of the time.”)
- Your employees are the ideal brand ambassadors – Consumers trust employees more than companies and company leaders every time. Knowing that is realizing that your employees are a fantastic tool for spreading the word. “Your culture is that person’s experience with the people they experience it with that day, that week, that month,” Nathanson says. “Allow that window to be held up by the people who are actually experiencing You’ve got to trust them.”
- If execs need convincing on the power of brand, show them the data – Nathanson talks about once giving an unnamed but well-known tech brand a wake-up call back in his consulting days. He says the company thought their brand was cutting-edge and youthful, but a quick gut-check Google search on Nathanson’s part (of the exact places interested talent might look to find out about working at the company) revealed something very different: “Their brand was basically a bunch of old white dudes in suits,” he laughs. “I was being a little bit of a smartass. But they started to realize there was a big disconnect there.”
- Employer brand platforms offer major benefits in maintaining an attractive brand – Nathanson says his first real interactions with Comparably’s employer branding tools were eye-opening(“Comparably is not paying me to say this,” he jokes.) While he found the ease-of-use factor and the ability to lock in on current employee ratings critical, he was most impressed with the social media and social asset tools that allowed real employee voices to be heard. “Being able to bring in a lot of the logos and a lot of the data and a lot of the stats” is hugely valuable, Nathanson attests.
- One effective and moving social media post can be more valuable than a slew of ineffective ones. – Nathanson relates another story from his consulting days about another unnamed but well-known organization that had taken to cluttering LinkedIn with corporate press release material. After asking these clients for the chance to show how effective one single thoughtful post could be, Nathanson spotted a breakroom group having a small birthday celebration. He snapped a photo. “That post got almost 3 million impressions, and they usually averaged at 1.5% engagement rate,” he recalls. “There’s a formula of what works in every form of marketing. If you look at everything that’s ever gone viral, and the things that fall flat on their face, it’s because it either doesn’t make you laugh or doesn’t make you feel anything. It can be anger, it can be sadness, it can be outrage. But if what you’re doing doesn’t check one of those boxes, you are wasting your time.”
- For talent who have a choice, what puts it over the edge is the interactions they have during the interview experience. – At EQRx, everybody who interviews for a role gets a substantial response, including a welcome video from the company CPO. Even applicants who don’t make the final cut for interviews get a video (“It’s not a ‘no,’ it’s just a ‘not now.’”) “The messaging is basically saying, ‘Hey, you could have been anywhere today, but you took time out to talk to us. We’re so excited and thrilled that you’re learning about us. We’re learning about you, too. We’ll be in touch soon,” Nathanson says. Even those applicants who EQRx doesn’t get with have given the process a 90% approval rating.
- There’s such a thing as employer marketing that’s too polished. – “One of the mistakes I think branding and marketing make, in general, this need to polish it up to make everything seem like it’s all chocolate rivers and marshmallow trees, but that’s not the world we live in. And it never will be. And the more you’re honest about these things, the better they’re going to be and the better they’ll perform. People smell b***shit 100 miles away. You don’t think they do, but they do.”
- Use the common language spoken at all organizations to determine ROI in a world where what matters to one organization doesn’t necessarily matter at another. – “Am I hiring to goal? How many referrals Am I getting? How many people are visiting my website?” offers Nathanson as good questions to determine ROI. “Ultimately, the easiest way is the big three, right? It’s hires, it’s referrals, and it’s inbound. Those are very easy things to track.”
- Choice conversations are the best way to take the temperature of a company culture. – “I think surveys and employee pulse stuff is nonsense. People are told it’s anonymous, they don’t believe it’s anonymous. And let’s be honest, a lot of the times it kind of isn’t.” Instead, back in the consulting days, Nathanson would ask to speak to a company’s best employees. “I would say to the leaders, ‘Give me the 10 15% of your company that you would clone if you could.’ The best of your best, diverse as possible, not just age, ethnicity, gender, but people who joined a week ago to people who’ve been there since day one, right?” he says. “And I go through and I talk and I ask lots and lots of questions.” This includes the basics like why they joined the company and why they stay, to things like their favorite social media sites or the place they get their news every morning.
“People buy from people, and that will never stop being the case,” Nathanson says. “I always say, outside of marriage and children, there’s no more important, more emotional, more impactful decision in your life than your career. It’s the first or second question you ask when you meet somebody. ‘What do you do?’ It’s part if how we identify ourselves in the world that we live in.”
Listen to the entire webinar here for more on how employees can be ambassadors of employee brand in the ways that really have an effect on outside talent.
