I know one of the reasons why I was interested in participating in the Blog Swap was so that I could celebrate my own emerging blogebrity while better understanding a medium which I sense one day will replace – if only for me – Oprah, the corporal world and email. Quite possibly in that order. As I am going through the list of the blog swappers I am beginning to see each of them through a prism of community whereas prior I may have seen them as simply promoting a point of view or product offering or their availability for new employment. So, it is with this new perspective that I offer this suggestion:
1. Take a moment to read – Great Brands in Action posted today by systematicHR.
2. Snuggle up with a warm cup of cocoa and read David Kippen’s TMP blog which also discusses employer branding.
3. Sit back and wait.
systematicHR asks a great question in his post. I know from my own experience how trying it can be to ask questions to be ignored by those presumably best qualified to answer them. If this blog swap thing has any legs beyond the sharing of content – which in itself may serve little meaningful purpose over time – it should be the swapping of comments, ideas and new perspectives for us all to share and learn from. It should be to ensure there is communication even within the broader community among those of us who seek more from the Blog Swap experience than an honorable mention and yet-to-materialize blog-bling and backtracks.
systematicHR says: “Nobody markets for you better than your own employee workforce.” True, but I hope David will take a slightly different view recognizing there is more of an iceberg below the waterline than above it.
As we came together as a collective, a community, it was delightful to see so much overlap in our specialties. That, along with the fact that we are all working toward making this endeavor a success, made me realize those who cover careers and job search, those who talk about management, those who are experts in OD are not really my competition. Instead, they are my colleagues and those who have essentially similar ideas spoken in a different vocabulary.
It’s good that we’ve come together so that we can gain the perspective of being different voices. Some people will hear the same message, the same words, but the sense of what’s being said will not resonate until they’re said in a slightly different way. That’s what we’ve got going for us right now.
The other thing we’ve got going for us right now is the opportunity to learn and appreciate the areas in which we do not have expertise yet come to have something meaningful to say about those areas so that we provide some illumination for others. (A definite test of understanding.)
Thanks for making us think about these matters, Amitai!
Yvonne, thank you for your thoughtful and complimentary comment. You do, however raise, indirectly, an interesting point. There is a lot overlap but also some gapping holes too. Did you see anyone focusing on engagement/retention or metrics or screening and assessment for example? I may have missed it but we all seem to gravitate to the gravy and may well leave a lot of readers hungry for meat and potatoes. When what you do is a process - and recruiting is a process that starts with profiling and ends with retention - when you miss critical steps you are bound to trip up.
Thoughts?
Amitai, you nailed it in your response. I think we’re all a little hungry for the gravy. Anyone who’s been in this business for more than five minutes knows that HR lives and dies by metrics: in some cases, quite literally. Yet most of us don’t take the time, particularly around creative and brand, to make the case (or to help our clients make the case) for the importance of real metrics behind the pretty pictures we make (stories we tell, whatever).
To your point in your post about the workforce as brand ambassador, I couldn’t agree more: often, there’s lots of ice below and leadership is the last to know it. (Hmmmn. Brings to mind shades of Titanic: the lookouts smelled ice, but the captain, warm down below said, “full speed ahead.”) I’ve hoped for a long time that HR would borrow one of the key songs from the consumer brand playbook and get serious about an internal brand strength monitor. Absent that–or something like it–there’s a good deal of risk in assuming the workforce are willingly on message–particularly if the message is top down or outside (i.e., agency) in.
Right on.