#17: You Are What You Reward — How Incentives Reveal Your Employer Brand

The Changing State of Talent Acquisition

This week we welcome James Ellis to the podcast. A self-proclaimed employer branding "nerd", James is a leading voice in the world of talent branding, having led EB initiatives at GroupOn and Universum before assuming his latest role at Roku. He's also the author of several books, including "Talent Chooses You" and "The Employer Brand Handbook Volume 1: The Real World Guide to Working With Recruiters."
Topics include:
The relative lack of formal education programs for employer branding in the US, what the COVID pandemic and George Floyd situation has (and hasn't) changed about the nature of employer branding, how the rise of remote work has challenged the traditional notion of company culture, why employee testimonial videos often fail to be differentiating, the ways in which employer branding is (and isn't) about people, how formal and informal rewards reveal an organization's values, the similarities between understanding an employer brand and psychotherapy, why there's no such thing as a "great" company to work for, why recruiters tend to be resistant to process changes, the difference between backward- and forward-looking recruiting metrics, why measuring quality of hire is difficult at scale, how to use the lens of "rewards" to attract candidates most likely to thrive in your organization, the importance of understanding your employer brand's competitive set, understanding recruiter bias as a kind of workflow shortcut, how generic job descriptions undermine recruiting, and the importance of salary transparency in job descriptions.