The premise is that if you demonstrate your workplace’s culture
and values, the best qualified applicants will self-select.
Google is an illuminating case.The company thrives on what
appears to be a hyper-casual environment, but a closer look
reveals much more.
Google is a magnet employer for lots of reasons, but much of its
drawing power derives from its expansive, high-concept notion of the
work setting. Working at Google distinguishes you as a resident of a
self-contained 24/7 workplace community, and an elite one at that.
This is a powerful attractor for many high achieving candidates.
For the relatively tiny percentage of the million-plus yearly applicants
who survive Google’s rigorous screening, the company’s on-thejob culture imparts a sense of belonging to an elite and prestigious
team, and fosters deep personal connections to corporate values and
strategy.
The ideal talent brand finds its power in the organization’s top-line
business focus, its workplace culture, and ultimately in the shared
values it embodies. In Google’s case, all this is entirely consonant with
the company’s marketplace brand. Its inside and outside brands, if you
will, have co-evolved in parallel, and as much intuitively as consciously.
Is there a better way to attract the candidates most qualified,
inclined by their own values and temperaments, to contribute to
an organization’s future? To succeed in this pursuit, organizations
have to take responsibility for defining their own distinctive talent
brands.
This is rarely a simple and straightforward proposition in established
organizations, and not always a painless one either. This collective
discovery can emerge from many activities: interviews with leadership
and staff, formal or informal focus groups, and online surveys of
employees, to name a few.
A n authentic talent brand has to emerge from honest discovery
from within.
And while the perspectives of outside segments should not drive the
effort, they can support it. Best practices among similar organizations
can provide useful models too.
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