Don't dwell on the competition when you build your Talent Brand

Authentic talent brands emerge from honest inside-out discovery. This is rarely a simple and straightforward proposition in established organizations, and not always a painless one.

This collective discovery can emerge from many activities: interviews with leadership and staff, formal or informal focus groups, and online surveys of employees. And while the perspectives of outside segments (for instance, primary research into how outside communities view your organization) should not drive the effort, they can support it. Best practices among similar organizations can provide useful models too. But it’s essential to use these market findings to support, not mold, your organization’s talent brand.

 Here are four rules-of-thumb for branding your organization as a place to work.

 1. A talent brand is not about hard-sell.

The key point to remember here is that the traditional notions of consumer branding are relevant but not central to what we’re aiming to do when we set out to develop a talent brand. Although the needs and preferences of “target audiences”—i.e., potential recruits— have to exert some influence on how we construct the brand platform, our primary motive is to portray what it’s like to work at an organization with accuracy and impact. This is an inside-out approach, not a market-driven one.

2. A talent brand is about much more than attracting recruits.

If we think of a talent brand merely as a recruiting platform, we’re dissipating the value of its breadth and power to inspire. Hiring is only one aspect of human capital strategy. If the brand accurately portrays what it’s like to work at your organization, why shouldn’t we use it to inspire themes for programs like retention, events promotion, team development, and so on?

 3. Authenticity is the key.

Accuracy is step one. The brand should capture with felt authenticity the full experience of working on your extended team in all its dimensions: strategy, mission, process and routine, team interactions, culture, work-life balance, and so on.  In a word, the brand has to ring true to the workplace experience. It can’t be created to meet the presumed preferences of the job-seeking population; it needs to be discovered and shaped based on reality inside the walls.

4. A talent brand can empower you to attract, develop, refine, and retain the talent you need today and tomorrow.

This is a big claim, and it elevates the notion of talent branding into the realm of human capital strategy, where it rightly belongs. By capturing the spirit of the workplace experience, it becomes a touchstone for the team members already on the inside --and a compelling attractor for the outside candidates most likely to succeed in the real-world culture of your workplace.