What Are the Latest Trends in Employment Branding?|What Are the Latest Trends in Employment Branding?
glassdoor-employer-branding-summit

What Are the Latest Trends in Employment Branding?

Just when I thought the team at Glassdoor couldn’t out-do themselves, I was proven wrong – way wrong!

As a recent attendee of the second annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit (#GDSummit), I was blown away by how dynamic, enlightening and enjoyable this day was. The sharing of industry knowledge and research by some of the leading experts in our field, the keynote by one of the top rated Glassdoor CEO’s and the nearly 8,000 total viewers from around the world attending the event are just a few highlights.

If I were to sum up the top takeaways in just 8 words, this is what they would be:

Transparency

Being transparent is the “new normal” and creates opportunities in the marketplace, according to Glassdoor CEO, Robert Hohman (@bobhoman), who opened up the day by providing a number of insightful takeaways and facts for the attendees and viewers. His kick-off really was the fuel needed to start the day’s fire!

Human

Provide a human element and touch for your employees, candidates and followers. Spencer Rascoff (@spenserrascoff) knows this better than just about any CEO on planet earth, personally reviewing and responding to many reviews made on his company Glassdoor page.

Evolution

Salesforce’s Jennifer Johnston (@jjjohnstonsf) shared her vision of how to evolve the talent ecosystem and process. Take a little pipelining, some qualifying and most importantly nurturing and then add a dash of an awesome candidate experience and powerful on-boarding, your organization can create advocates for life.

Powerful

Employees today have a lot of power in the marketplace – they are trusted and listened to more than the company CEO according to my co-presenter extraordinaire, Christopher Hannegan (@cphannegan). Empower them and trust them to be your greatest advocates.

Measurement

Measure what matters to your organization and your company culture. I would like to attribute this to my presentation (@JenniferNAtDell) and all the great work we are doing at Dell (@CareersAtDell). In actuality,  everyone agrees that measuring something meaningful and monitoring trends over time will help you and your organization shape and tell your unique story.

CX

Candidate experience is more important than ever. Stacy Zapar (@stacyzapar) said it best in her presentation, “you can never focus too much on the candidate experience.” Every other speaker brought up candidate experience in some form or fashion (so it MUST be important) but Stacy did so with pizazz and personality (oh and a shot of Fireball Whiskey beforehand!).

Differentiation

Universum’s Richard Mosley (@RIMOSLEY) summed it up with a very entertaining, refreshing and bold presentation about differentiation, cautioning everyone that we tend to all sound alike and are saying the same things to our candidates! He stated simply: Look different, talk different, be different. If employers want to capture the eye of candidates and capture the RIGHT candidates for our culture, we need to be clear who we are and what we believe in and value.

Authenticity

Authenticity was probably the second most said word of the day (after transparency) but I have to give it to Celinda Appleby (@CelindaAppleby) who summed it best by simply stating, “Don’t be a brand narcissist.” Your candidates want to know the real you, your real culture and your real employees – not some “Hollywood” version. Be authentic and genuine!

I would be remiss if I left out the other bold and charismatic speakers at this year’s event who also provided loads of wisdom: Josh Bersin, JT O’Donnell, Carolyn Eiseman, Alison Hadden, William Tincup, Emcee host with the most Lars Schmidt and live streaming entertainment Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett.

Can’t wait for 2016!