Are You One of Us? Applicants and Employment Brand
It’s no small wonder that applicants are often confused by the experience and expect very little from employers. Applicants see differentiation in employment brand , certainly: the marketing speak and graphical style for employers differ wildly. From the complete lack of employment brand in hedge funds, to the visceral sexuality that retail employers often employ, to the vaguely cultist exclusivity of the nation’s top tech firms, at least on the surface, employers appear to offer a very different set of opportunities and challenges to their job applicants.
Employment branding is, after all, marketing. Marketing puts not only a veneer of positivity over everything, but rather seeks to address fundamental human desires. You don’t want a job as a software engineer. You want to make an impact, find a home, fit in with your peers, discover the world, etc… Employers then just have to ask themselves how employment at their company can address those urges. A recruitment slogan is developed to frame the question and then drive that messaging throughout the site and job descriptions.
If you develop your career site or participate in employment branding, it’s not only your duty to develop impactful recruitment campaigns and branding that convert traffic to applicants, but to develop programs that accurately reflect your company. The whole “truth in advertising” debate is a separate topic, but most can agree that some more truth in employment brand would be appreciated by most applicants.
However, before you develop your branding, copy, and slogans, you have to ask yourself a fundamental question of purpose. Are you talking about yourself or the applicant? If your vision is to address a fundamental human concern of your target talent pool and map it to your company’s career opportunities, should you be describing what makes you different or asking the candidate what makes them different? Should you portray a strong message of corporate unity or play up employee differences?
Two career sites to consider: IBM and Microsoft. Both companies are what you might consider large, rather conservative brands. Both are major employers and in roughly the same industry. But they have, at least at first glance, radically different employment brands.
IBM: The employment brand of IBM has somehow transcended description over the years. It’s almost pervaded our popular culture. If someone is wearing a red tie and black suit, someone might casually remark, “Man, you look like you work at IBM or something.” Being an IBMer carries with it a large set of inferences and IBM knows it. It is not surprising then, that on their career site their main marketing slogan is “Are you an IBMer?”
IBM may in fact be taking a somewhat self-referential and tongue in cheek approach to the perception that their company culture promotes conformity. However, their primary question does make a strong assertion. It asks: Are you one of us? However inclusive of differences and nuanced that corporate identity is, it still rings of the Borg.
Microsoft: When we think of Microsoft employee’s we also carry a number of preconceptions and stereotypes. We immediately think of their iconic leader, Bill Gates, that has framed their employment culture in much the same way as Steve Jobs has influenced Apple. Many of us probably think of Gates when we think of a Microsoft employee, calling to mind an amalgam of glasses, work ethic, big business, and geekiness.
Microsoft, however, asks a very different question of applicants. They ask “How do you see the future?” and then follow this with a Nirvana lyric: “Come as you are” and “Do what you love.” A stock Microsoft employee holds his tattooed fists in the air with gusto, still dressed in the omnipresent NorthWest plaid and thick rimmed black glasses. It’s a different message at first. Microsoft isn’t asking if applicants are “one of us,” but rather implies: “We think you’re ok as you are.”
Notice, however, that although Microsoft wants you to come as you are, they do imply that they know who you probably are. You can “Do what you love” at Microsoft because Microsoft assumes that you like coding in C# and wearing plaid shirts. Their employment brand assumes knowledge of the audience, whereas IBM comes across more like a challenge to your identity. Where IBM checks your ID and sees if you belong, Microsoft lifts the rope and says come on in.
To develop your corporate employment brand and drive the right kind and volume of applicants, some corporate soul searching is required. Very few companies have the type of unified corporate brand and identity that IBM has. If you work at ABC Corp, what does it mean to be an ABCer? If you are like most regular sized employers, it probably means very little. To develop this type of brand unification requires you to come up with a definitive statement of company culture.
To develop the Microsoft employment brand actually requires the same introspection with the addition of some more subtlety. When it comes down to it, you don’t want applicants to come as they are, you want the right kind of applicants to come with the qualifications that you need for your job requirements. But what demographic are they appealing to with a Nirvana lyric and a tattooed, plaid shirted guy with glasses? It’s actually pretty specific and pretty smart – marketing that Don Draper would be proud to call his own.
When looking at the two companies, we at first see radically different value propositions and employment brands: conformity versus individuality, exclusivity versus inclusiveness. However, upon closer examination, both ask the same question to applicants: Are you one of us?
You can see how complex and thought-out these career sites really are. Unless you’re in the Fortune 50, chances are you haven’t paid as much attention or used the same level of marketing as these companies. However, if you are looking to develop your career site or position careers at your company, it’s good to understand the fundamental question that you want to ask of applicants. You have to ask “Are you one of us?” only after answering the prerequisite question “Who are we?”