The document provides tips for transforming HR stories and strengthening employer branding. It discusses what employer branding is, the benefits it provides, and how to make branding stories more powerful. Specifically, it defines employer branding as a strategic image management approach, notes some key benchmark companies, and recommends spreading messages through employees rather than traditional advertising. The document emphasizes using data to inform employer branding strategies and focusing on candidate experiences.

1. Tips To Help Transform
Your HR Stories
Biocom HR Executive Breakfast
September 24, 2015
© Dr John Sullivan
1
These slides are currently available on www.drjohnsullivan.com
EMPLOYER BRANDING

2. 2
Topics for today
1. What exactly is employer branding?
2. What are the positive benefits of EB?
3. Who are the benchmark firms?
4. The best ways to spread your messages
5. How to make your stories more powerful

3. 3
Let’s have a conversation
Please interrupt at any time…
with questions, comments or examples

4. 4
Part 1
Can we agree on exactly what is
employer branding?

5. 5
Most have no EB strategy
Employer branding is a proactive “image
management” strategy
Globally, 87% of companies “believe that a
clearly-defined strategy is the key to achieving
employer branding objectives”
But what % actually have a strategy in place?
Only “17%
Source: Employer Brand International 2014 5

6. 6
The 10 components of external employer branding
1. EB is an “image management strategy”… where
you make your image as an employer visible,
focused, positive and differentiated
2. EB is the only long-term recruiting (&
retention) strategy
3. The 1st goal is to have your firm’s name known
as a great employer by your target audience
4. The second goal is to have your target audience
know the factors that make you a great
employer… known and believed
5. The third goal of EB is to be rated higher, when
compared to other talent competitor firms (there
will be winners and losers)

7. 7
The 10 components of external employer branding
6. EB is a form of boasting or even bragging
7. EB requires a shifting away from a reliance on
“inauthentic” paid advertising and corporate
webpages…
Toward viral messages that are spread by
others (your brand is owned by others)
8. EB drives your target audience to take action
(apply for and accept jobs)
9. EB must be data-driven (science not an art) >

8. 8
You must have a metric driven approach
Use data to
Determine what your targets care about
Where they would hear a branding message
What factors will be “talked about” and spread
virally spread
What factors actually worked (survey of new hires)

9. 9
Shift to data-driven decisions EB
I
Source: Entelo 2015
Poaching seems even… until you add December
During what month should
you start branding efforts?
When do salespeople accept a new job?

10. 10
Only recently has the candidate experience
been considered part of employer branding
10

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The 10 components of external employer branding
10. The candidate experience may become a story,
so it is part of your EB (are they a customer?)
 A bad candidate experience will be “talked
about” on SM (Glassdoor, Yelp, Indeed)
 Ex. - The hiring manager (at Wind River Associates)
took a week to respond, so the candidate said…
 “It's not like I need their job.
 If it takes them a week to respond to a resume like
mine for a job of this importance, they're not the
kind of company I want to work for.
 I move fast, and I can already see that my style
wouldn't fit their culture.”

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The benefits of a positive candidate experience
component of EB
Provide a good candidate experience because
happy candidates act positively:
56% would consider seeking employment again
with the company
37% would tell others to seek employment there
23% would be more likely to purchase products
or services from the company (more rev.)
Source: CareerBuilder
12

13. 13
Employer branding negative consequences
A negative candidate experience also has
consequences
 42% would never seek employment at the firm
again
 22% would tell others not to work there
 9% would tell others not to purchase products or
services from the company (Lost rev. $)
13

14. 14
Fully understanding the positive benefits of
having a strong employer brand
Part 2

15. 15
Illustrations of the benefits of employer branding
15

16. HR must identify and focuses its resources
on activities that increase revenue & profit (BCG)
16Source: BCG/WFPMA - From Capability to Profitability: Realizing the Value of People Management, 2012
Which HR functions have the highest impact on rev. /profit?

17. Does a top “employer of choice” ranking
correlate with business success?
Employer brand
1. Google
2. Apple
3. Amazon
4. Facebook
5. MS
17
Market cap value
1.Apple - $603 b
2.Google - $419 b
3. MS - $344 b
8 Facebook - $248b
8/24/2015
Product brand
1. Google
2. Apple
3. IBM
4. MS
Do you see the similarities?Source: Poachable

18. Are the top branded firms more productive?
Expectation: better branded firms will have a higher Rev. per Employee #
Average rev per ee $208,000
Amazon* #3 $622,000 (Nearly 2 ¾ times the average)
Microsoft #5 $788,000 (Nearly 3 ½ times the average)
Google* #1 $1,290,000 (Nearly 6 times the average)
Facebook* #4 $1,590,000 (Nearly 6 ½ times the average)
Apple* #2
(Source: MarketWatch.com 9/24/15)
* The red # is the firm’s employer brand rank among all firms in the US
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$2,410,000 (Nearly 10 ¼ times the average)

19. BCG found that frequent “best place to work”
placement influences stock market returns by ___
19
Made Fortune list 3 out of 10 yrs. (109%) vs. S&P (10%) - BCG 2012
S&P
10X

20. Positive impacts of branding
Branding improves quality of applicant & hire
Firms “can improve applicant pool quality by
54%”
And “quality of hire by 9%”
Source: Corporate Executive Board (CEB 2014)
20

21. 21
Employer brand impacts job applications
It attracts currently employed not-looking
applicants
87% would consider leaving their current job…
if offered a job with a company that had an
excellent corporate reputation
Source: CareerBuilder

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EB is a prime driver of offer acceptance
Brand reputation is a top job acceptance factor
It is # 1 for senior managers
It is # 1 for sales people
# 2 - All employees (After compensation)
Kenexa Global Survey 22

23. 23
The costs of weak employer branding
23

24. 24
Employer brand impacts job applications
75% of Americans would not take a job at a
company that had a bad reputation, even if they
were unemployed
Top job seekers especially would not consider
interviewing for a position at a company with a
negative employer brand
Source: CareerBuilder

25. 25
Know & emulate the benchmark firms that
have the most powerful employer brands
Part 3

26. The “dream firms” for the average employee
LinkedIn – Most in demand employers 2014
1. Google
2. Apple
3. Amazon
4. Facebook
5. Salesforce
6. Disney
7. Nike
8. Microsoft
26

27. 27
The dream firms for non-lookers
Poachable – Firms that employed people admire
Company Desirability rank
1. Google 1.0
2. Apple 0.61
3. Amazon 0.30
4. Facebook 0.26
5. Microsoft 0.21
6. Uber` 0.17
7. Twitter 0.15
8. LinkedIn 0.09
9. AirBnB 0.09
10.Netflix 0.07
11.Tesla
12.IBM
Source: https://poachable.co/
Bold = Bay Area firm

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What are the best ways to communicate your
brand messages?
Part 4
• Your corporate webpage
• Recruitment advertising
• Recruiters and hiring managers
• Your employees through the referral program

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Ways to spread your employer brand messages
Your corporate webpage has many weaknesses
Candidates today only rely on the employer for
only 20% of the information that they gather
when looking to apply for roles
Why? Because 60+ % of applicants “say they are
more skeptical today of what employers say
about themselves than they were three years ago”
The problem is that websites are written by a PR,
screened by lawyers and they include no negative
information, so they are not judged as authentic
Source: Corporate Executive Board (CEB 2014)

30. 30
Ways to spread your employer brand messages
Recruitment advertising has many weaknesses
It makes it appear like you must pay to have your
message spread
Ads are expensive
Ads may be skipped by everyone (because it’s an ad)
It’s written by you… so it’s not authentic
There isn’t space to say much
Ads are not interactive
Ads are often generic and not targeted to what
top performers and innovators demand An example >

31. High-performers are different
because they are attracted by “the work”
Criteria for top performers
31
1. Appreciation for their work
2. Relationships with
colleagues
3. Good work-life balance
4. Relationships with superiors
5. A firm’s financial stability
6. Learning/career develop
7. Job security
8. Attractive fixed salary
9. Interesting job content
10.Company values
Source: BCG survey
Criteria for average workers
Doing the best work of your life means
1. Can’t put it down exciting work
2. Having an impact
3. Work with top coworkers
4. Great managers
5. A chance to win / be 1st
6. Learn advanced things / growing
7. Opp. to innovate/ take risks
8. Be an expert / mastery of an area
9. Opportunity to implement ideas
10.To be constantly challenged
11.Freedom, a choice of projects
12.Input into schedule / location
13.Opportunity to make decisions
14.Measure & reward performance

32. 32
Ways to spread your employer brand messages
Recruiters aren’t always the best story spreaders
Most don’t like talking to recruiters… “People
don't always listen to recruiters, but they do
listen to their friends” (CEO of ThoughtSpot)
Recruiters don’t always know much about the job
Recruiters have been known to stretch the truth in
order to get a hire (some will quickly quit)
Hiring managers are not good salespeople

33. 33
Employee’s spreading stories as part of the referral
program is the most effective way because:
 Top people… know other top people and they
already have relationships
 Colleagues can get close, with little resistance
from top performers
 Talking to recruiters may be seen as disloyal
 Employee stories are more real and credible
because they “work there” they are considered
likely to know the inside story
 When employees tell stories, questions can be
answered to tailor the story
 One-on-one conversations last longer, so
detailed stories and follow-ups are possible 33

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My extensive “candidate research” revealed what
story elements excite candidates
You can take an ordinary EB story
and make it great by adding these factors…
34

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Add these to make your stories more powerful
A great program name
 Often just having an HR program with a great
name can turn an informal program into
something credible.
 A “cool” or catchy name for any program makes
it even better.
 Ex. – The zombie smashing contest at Google

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Add these to make your stories more powerful
Quantifying program results in $
Using performance numbers to demonstrate the
business impacts of a program is important.
Adding dollars to quantify program outputs or
the reaching of goals makes any story stronger.
Include a benchmark comparison number with a
great performance number & a weak number, make
understanding the magnitude of a number easier.
Also showing the large amount spent per
employee or as a large % of total expenditures tells
the listener right away this program is important.
Ex. – “We invested $10,000 per employee (10%
of revenue) for career development & employee
output improved by 12%”.

37. 37
Add these to make your stories more powerful
Comparison with the industry average / best
Try to show how "your program" is superior to the
competitor’s on a side-by-side basis.
The use of direct comparison percentages or
numbers makes for an even better story
(improvement over last year, compared to the
industry average or the best in the industry).
Being first in your industry or region to offer a
program is also an excellent story builder.
Ex. – “We were 1st to offer 1 year maternity /
paternity benefits and we’re still the industry
leader”

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Add these to make your stories more powerful
Add a WOW to the story
 A WOW is a story element that when told / read,
it is so powerful that the person literally
responds with a verbal sound (WOW).
 A WOW the most likely part of the story to be
remembered
 Ex. – “75% of our managers started out as
hourly employees”
 Ex. – “Applications from women went up
nearly 50% in the position after we let them re-
write the job description”.

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Add these to make your stories more powerful
Add a video clip
 Sometimes words aren’t enough and a moving
picture may be worth 1000 words.
 Short video clips (< 3 minutes) can clearly reveal
the excitement at your firm
 Employee generated videos are often viewed as
more authentic… than professionally done ones.
 YouTube instructional videos can also be
powerful
Two quick examples >

40. 40
Employee generated videos – Film Festival
Make “finding the excitement” easy for outsiders

41. 41
Video job descriptions provide an EB message
A video job description can reveal the excitement
behind a job (Quickstop, Accenture and Deloitte)

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Add these to make your stories more powerful
Degree of participation
Just having a program isn’t compelling… if no one
participates in it.
Show the estimated percentage of workers that
actually use a program helps make the message
stronger.
Ex. – “90% of our employees change their work
schedule each week in order to participate in
family or civic activities.”

43. 43
Add these to make your stories more powerful
Testimonials from individuals
 Short testimonials from individuals outlining
their passion for the program “personalize” a
program.
 Testimonials about their treatment, experiences
or impacts also add value.
 Video testimonials and employee profiles can be
powerful.
 Ex. – “The weight loss and wellness program
literally saved my life – Kim Doe

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Add these to make your stories more powerful
Add a picture to a story
 Many people don’t like reading 100% narrative…
so a picture can be attractive.
 A picture that raises emotions can be a valuable
addition to a story.
 The mobile phone is great for spreading stories
 Also consider posting or encouraging your
employees to place powerful pictures on
Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
 Ex. – “Here is a picture of our employees
building a house for “Habitat for Humanity”
on our community involvement day”.

45. 45
Add these to make your stories more powerful
Add a link to more information
Because of limited space, you can’t often tell the
whole story in the written piece
Make it easy for the reader to find more detailed
follow up information by adding a web / social
media link or a QR code inside a written story or
blog,
Ex. – “Here is a link to the complete report
outlining the extent and the impact of our
sustainability program.”

46. 46
Add these to make your stories more powerful
Note that you’ve been cited in a major publication
Noting that something you have done has been
cited in a major publication adds credibility to a
story, because it is often assumed that editors
demand the best examples.
Rather than avoiding reporters and bloggers,
build a relationship with the credible ones.
Encourage editors and reporters to do a complete
story highlighting your HR program.
Ex. – “the Wall Street Journal noted that we had
the most advanced STEM women recruiting
program.”

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Add these to make your stories more powerful
Note the impact on low-level employees
Many people to remember stories that reveal how
“the common employee” did well.
Seek out examples of where a low-level,
struggling or diverse employee made great
progress in a short period of time as a result of your
program.
Ex. – “A year ago Ted Dias was a struggling
maintenance man, but after completing our
after-hours “Employee Coding Program” he
now holds a six-figure Python coding job.”

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A story inventory makes your stories
more accessible
Part 5

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Put together a story inventory
Benefits of a “story” / best practice inventory
Employee access means better referrals
The goal is to respond quickly to reporters
inquiries with powerful “on the mark” stories
It should also allow managers that are giving
speeches/ writing articles to find powerful stories
related to their topic, function or business unit
Use it for “best place list” applications
Use Excel or develop an internal web site >
49

50. 50
Google has a story inventory
A story Inventory for recruiters and employees
50

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Branding requires story inventories
Microsoft “Spreadthelove” internal website
Their “Spreadthelove” website allowed Microsoft
employees to "write up" their own individual
story about their career with Microsoft (their story
might include pictures, testimonials and video)
 Employees can then share the web link and
"spread the love" with targeted friends, family
and potential referrals

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Additional EB categories
The available time means
I can’t cover the 50 additional employer brand
factors that can excite potential applicants… but
they can be found listed in the slide deck… which
is available right now on
www.DrJohnSullivan.com

53. JohnS@sfsu.edu 63
Did I make you think?
Did I give you a few takeaways?
www.drjohnsullivan.com