Last week, for the second year in a row, I got to lead Ajax Workforce Marketing’s Army of Awesome at Linkedin’s annual Talent Connect conference in Las Vegas. We awesome-ized nearly 500 profiles of Linkedin users over our 3 days there.
Our optimization process, which we condensed to 10-minutes for the conference, is designed to quickly uncover a person’s key goals, audience, and unique value proposition. Most users at this conference were in HR and Recruiting, so hiring top talent is their goal, and their value proposition was deeply embedded in the company’s employer brand.
This means that our job there was to turn individual Linkedin profiles, which usually look like resumes (boring!), into brand-supporting marketing documents that would speak to, and attract, the right audience (awesome!). We worked to align employees voices with the company to make everyone look more credible online, and create huge brand amplification in the process.
Without fail, all of the great conference attendees who I asked to describe what is unique about their company’s employer brand that a future employee might be attracted to, had basically the same answers.
“Well, let’s see. We are…
- innovative
- a great culture
- all about work-life balance
- fun
- family-oriented
- stable
- a startup environment (or a startup-environment in an established company)”
Sound familiar? So the problem is, apart from your company name, the words you use to differentiate yourself from your competitors are largely the same.
What, then, makes your company different? What’s the only thing that you have that no-one else has? The answer?
It’s your people—and more than “your people,” it’s the specific personality traits that make them unique.
If you can empower your people to help share your company’s personality in their own profiles and online activities, then you have something original. Because your company’s personality is made up of their personalities. Seems simple right?
When Matt Charney and I presented this concept, two days after Talent Connect, to our workshop on Branding for Culture at the Recruiting Trends conference, the reaction was striking. Employer Brand owners and Talent VPs went from hopelessness, to light bulb moments, to encouraged world conquerors!
We can do this! We can be…original!
You can do this too. Have courage. Empower your unique people to have a voice for their awesome company.
Every CEO says their greatest asset is their "people".
That asset walks right out the front door every day at 6:00 – and you have no idea if they are coming back.
Oh, and by the way, your competitors have the same "asset".
It's what you do with those people that make you different.
Build the people that build your brand.
Serve the people who are serving your customers.
Without them, your company has nothing to offer customers. And shareholders won't be too happy about that.
We can definitely do this! It's kinda hard at first, that's for sure but it's worth it in the end.Motivation and empowerment are the key.