Bright Lights, Big City: The Allure of Big Brands
Today our guest blogger is David Kippen, PhD and Vice President Global Brand Strategy for TMP Worldwide.
 | Let's face it: established brands have a huge advantage in competing for talent. Names like Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike and others--brand names that each generation grows up with have an allure and appeal that's hard to beat when it comes to finding that first job. Though brands like these are developed and cultivated to cut through the clutter on the consumer side, that very drive to relevance makes them ever so attractive as places to work. And yet….
And yet, if you've been in the talent space for any length of time, you know well that big name brands aren't necessarily the best places to work--or to learn how to work. Wherever your organization finds itself, it's an interesting problem to have. If you have no brand--or not much of a brand--you actually have a great opportunity to define yourself starting with a blank sheet of paper. And, while you might assume this would cost a fortune, it doesn't have to: after all, there's a far greater difference between saying nothing and saying something than there is between saying something and saying it more loudly. |
What should you say? Beyond the cardinal rule of recruitment that you absolutely must tell the truth, what you should say will obviously depend on your particular business situation, but as a rule of thumb you'll want to message to the higher, or more aspirational ways in which the work experience you can provide intersects with the kind of people your prospects want to become. In other words, no matter how good the pay and benefits are, don't let them be the message, and as appealing as "fun work environment" sounds, many of the best and brightest actually want to, ahem, work for you. So go easy on the pizza Fridays and focus on the real-world development opportunities your company offers.
And if you have a big brand? Well, the bad news is that your prospects already have some very strong ideas about who you are and how it "must" be to work there, and many of these are at least a little off. The bad news is that you'll probably never be as fun, as exciting, as wonderful a place to work as your prospects imagine. The bad news is that you've got some really, really stiff competition and your prospects are looking at them, too.
But there's lots of good news, too. If your prospects are a bit off on what you offer, they're clear on one thing: they know they want to work for you (or someone just like you). If you're not as wonderful as they think you might be, you're still pretty darn cool--and, by association, your brand's pedigree has put your talent in a very special league--kinda like Harvard, but with pay.
And the competition? Well, the good news and the bad news are the same: you all keep raising the bar on each other. And that's good news no matter where you sit.
-- David Kippen, Ph.D. serves TMP Worldwide’s Vice President, Global Brand Strategy. Dr. Kippen leads branding and communications initiatives for TMP Worldwide’s largest accounts, including Burger King, Catholic Healthcare West, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dell, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft and T-Mobile, with emphasis on integrating internal and consumer brand positioning, national and global employment brand portfolio management, intra-corporate communications and internal/external communications organizational structure and alignment.
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