There’s a great article over at SystematicHR entitled The Top Role of Brand in Recruiting. It’s referencing a recent post by Tom Peters arguing against the notion of a “war for talent”. In essence, Tom’s arguing that companies shouldn’t look at recruiting as a competition, but look inwardly at their own culture and environment and how that’s projected outward to the world.
“…it’s not an externally directed “war to snatch talent from the other guy” by “being more aggressive than the competition”—but an internally directed competition against ourselves (and our outrageously strong beliefs about people) in which we aim to create an unimaginably attractive workplace.”
Tom’s certainly preaching to the choir about the importance of a company’s brand, culture and work environment. But as the SystematicHR post points out, you still need to go find people. You need to reach out, find people, and draw them into your kickass work environment, and show them why they should work with you.
This is where we get an intersection between sourcing and employer branding.
If all you’re doing is hunting for people and nothing else, you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone to join your company. You might find a lot of potential candidates, but where are you driving them? What are you selling them? If your culture, team and work environment are all hidden behind closed doors, you’re simply not providing enough information.
On the other hand, if you do a great job of promoting your brand and culture but expect that to solve all your problems; again, more trouble. You could have the best workplace in the world, with all the killer perks and an idea worth billions — but if no one (or not the right people) know about it, you won’t build up a big enough candidate pool.
SystematicHR puts it nicely, “The great brand probably can never replace a great sourcing effort, but the sourcing effort can be completely dismantled by the lack of a brand or by a negative one.”
