Why Reputation Is The Gateway To Recruitment
You wish you had a crystal ball to see what lies ahead for the future of the modern workplace. No one, it seems, can accurately predict what it takes these days to attract top-notch talent. There is no easy-to-follow roadmap to inspire hordes of eager and hungry applicants to be tripping over each other trying to join your team.
Or is there?
What if you’ve been searching for answers in all the wrong places? What would happen if you stopped focusing on trying to forecast the future and started studying the wisdom of the past? As Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once said.
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward”.
Ever since the pandemic of 2020, many feel too many things are beyond our control. All of us, however, have control over one thing.
Our BELIEFS.
Do you believe, for example, that the study of HISTORY has the power to unlock the future? If so, what lessons from the past could be applied to solve some of the biggest business issues you face today? Whether it’s labor shortages, the hybrid workplace, supply chain disruptions, cash flow, rising inflation, or reinventing your current business model, is it possible a trip down memory lane might offer clues about a solution that has been at your fingertips for quite some time.
In this case, the bigger picture solution dates back to a 1996 essay that accurately predicted an opportunity still staring at you and everyone else in the face; especially those who claim that good help is harder to find than ever before.
Turn the clock back to 1996 and re-discover Why Reputation Is The Gateway to Recruitment on this segment of Leaders & Legends.
It was January 3, 1996. The first clamshell flip mobile phone, the Motorola StarTAC went on sale and this essay appeared on the Internet.
Titled, “Content Is King”, this excerpt is more relevant than ever, especially if you are hunting for the key kernel of insight to solve your biggest labor and recruitment issues. It will also assist greatly in how you attract new customers, grow market share, and create many other opportunities you can’t even imagine right now.
“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.
The television revolution…spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.
One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows the material to be duplicated at a low cost, no matter the size of the audience. No company is too small to participate and no business is too dull. And if you can supply information and entertain, then you’ve reached the jackpot. Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.”
In case you were wondering, the author of this essay was none other than Microsoft founder Bill Gates. What seems so obvious now really isn’t. What percentage of companies and organizations make the publishing of consistent, original content their #1 marketing priority? Before you answer that question, consider that Gates 1996 observation may sound like a bit of a no-brainer, but not when you factor in there being no content platforms in existence back then. Long before YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok, Gates took a long hard look at the past to forecast the future.
Go back and re-read the first line. Bill carefully examined what happened four decades earlier when he wrote, “…just as it was in broadcasting.”
Similarly, you can begin solving your biggest recruitment and talent issues by jumping into your metaphorical way-back machine. Go back to see the future like a latter-day Marty McFly and detect what has always worked before and always will.
Recruitment & Reputation have always walked hand in hand like two star-crossed lovers strolling a golden beach at sunset.
Despite the "Great Resignation", there will always be people eager to work for a company with a stellar reputation. They seek more than just a paycheque, benefits, a cozy cubicle, casual Fridays, and/or catered lunches. Today’s workforce is craving purpose, a sense of fulfillment, mutual respect, human connection, and flexibility. They are motivated by those companies with a strong, healthy culture; a company they can believe in, where they can feel part of something bigger and make a difference. Searching online for their next career stop, they stumble on to your published content and start silently asking themselves questions like:
Do other people think highly of this company? What are the reviews saying?
What would my friends think if I joined this firm? Would they approve?
Wonder what the culture is really like? How much can I trust the leaders?
Are their brand values and vision aligned with my own?
And therein lies the real issue.
It’s impossible to build an admired public reputation without being a consistent publisher of original online content.
In other words, content creation is now the baseline for any organization that wants to be taken seriously by potential candidates in any job market. Incredibly, our first-hand research indicates less than 5% of organizations are fully committed to a strategic content publishing calendar. It is exceedingly rare to find a company like Charlesglen Toyota in Calgary, AB that implemented a video publishing strategy more than three years ago and stuck to it. Over the last three years, our study of more than 3,000 websites also reveals that upwards of 90% of small-to-medium-sized companies do not even have their own YouTube channel. Considering that YouTube is the world’s 2nd most significant search engine (after Google), do you see the problem or can you spy on the wide-open opportunity? Only you know how much of a priority you have been placing on leveraging all of the free platforms at your disposal and doing what exactly Bill Gates suggested in 1996 …. just as it was in broadcasting.
On a scale of 1-10, where do you stand today with the Digitization of Your Brand Reputation?
Do you have a weekly YouTube series like New Brunswick manufacturer Thermalwood Canada, , a monthly podcast or release extended mini-documentaries like Ohio-based Valmark Financial? With a single click, any job seeker or prospective client can immediately get a sense of what these companies and their leaders are all about.
Talented, hard-working, and genuinely good people are always attracted to values-based organizations that have made serious investments in their reputations. Recent reports indicate that 92% of people would consider leaving their current jobs if offered another role with a company that had an excellent corporate reputation. Three out of four employees admit they consider company culture before applying for a job. Meanwhile, 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agree that brand reputation has a significant impact on hiring.
In the 17th century, the poet Lord Byron ripped off a page from the King James version of the Bible when he said, “The best prophet of the future is the past”.
What if recruitment and hiring is a long-term problem that’s not going to go away anytime soon? As far back as 2018, West Shore Home CEO B.J. Werzyn began contemplating how his Pennsylvania company would need to re-think how to win The Second War For Talent. Could you hunker down for a moment and reflect on how to apply a similar approach and become a Destination Employer?
Is it possible you have placed too much-misdirected energy complaining about this problem and blaming factors beyond your control? Have you been too focused on the short-term urgency of scrambling to put bums in seats? What if you played a much longer game and built a brand reputation that would inspire a steady stream of hard-working, talented people who would be proud to wear the uniform?
What’s stopping you from applying what Bill Gates observed in the mid-nineties and using that strategy to outdistance your competitors?
Is now the right time to be thinking more like a broadcasting company?
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” ECCLESIATES 1: 9
p.s…. Two years ago this summer at a TEC Canada meeting in Kelowna, B.C. the phrase “Reputational Equity” first gained traction with business leaders who were curious about earning public trust. Since credibility and social proof are the driving forces that lead to customer acquisition, it would only make sense that same principles apply to attracting first class people. In short, “Reputational Equity” is the marketing equivalent to what the world of investing refers to as compound interest. Look back at this post from two summers ago on Lake Okanagan, make the connections and see that the Bible had it right all along.
There is nothing new under the sun …
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