Employer Branding in Early-Stage Companies

My colleagues Slobodan and Rasmus at one of our house events 🙂

There’s a lot of talk out there about Employer Branding and how important it is nowadays in attracting and retaining employees. There is a war for talent across industries, every company is treating their employees so well, and early-stage companies seem to have no chance of fighting more established ones investing heavily in their employer branding efforts.

But what is employer branding actually about and what should early-stage companies focus on?

For the past 6 months, I’ve been working with founders of very early-stage tech companies and employer branding has been coming up every now and then. These are the type of questions and comments that I’ve been getting:

“What social media channels should we use and how?”

“What should we do to be like [insert big, successful company]?”

“I don’t want to talk about our company / product / service because we aren’t quite there yet.”

“I know we should have a blog, but I don’t know what I should write about.”

“What are the best tips and tricks (=silver bullets) to build a great employer brand?”

I think these notions are all either missing or skipping the main point of employer branding which is: you are your employer brand. Which makes the most essential underlying question: who are you?

I like to think of employer branding as three distinct phases:

1️⃣ : Who are you and what do you do?

2️⃣ : Packaging your thoughts and perceptions.

3️⃣ : Putting the content out there.

These phases don’t necessarily need to be followed in numerical order (1–3). It’s more like making sure that you are completing all parts amidst all your employer branding efforts.

Also, talking about goals in employer branding, I think for an early-stage company it makes the most sense to first strive for a specific amount of shared content or external offline engagements on a weekly or monthly level. This will allow you to gather learnings, build confidence and start putting together a process of consistently contributing to your employer brand. Later on, once you have some data, you can start optimising your content and the channels you use.

My main observation has been that most companies fast-forward and get stuck to phases 2 and 3. In fact, one of the most repeated questions has been: “What channels should we use?” My usual response has been: “Okay, well what are you trying to share?” Thinking of EB as 3 phases can help you overcome the thought of it being only about “continuously posting stuff on LinkedIn and Twitter”.

Phase 1: Who are you and what do you do?

”Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” — Oscar Wilde

Everything starts with you being You. Don’t compare yourself to other companies, or think about competing against them for the same people, because in the end, you aren’t. You are unique. And guess what? The people you really want in your team, they really want to join Your team!

Start by answering some of these questions:
- Who are you? Where do you come from?
- What do you do?
- Why are you doing what you do?
- What did you learn last month?
- How does your team like to work?
- What do you think is most important in your work?
- How would you describe a typical day at the office?
- What did you do at your most recent team day?

Phase 1 involves taking a step back and being perceptive about who you are, what you are doing and how you work. It also takes a lot of courage to open up to the world and tell something about yourself.

Your goal is to find moments, thoughts, emotions and learnings that are created at the workplace and along the path of building your company. Potential candidates want to know what they can learn from you and what it’s like to work at your company. Reminiscences can also have a positive effect on the work motivation of existing employees.

Examples:

• Piia Heliste from Aibidia sharing a pic of their tech team wearing capes and giving kudos to her colleagues:

• My colleague Mari Luukkainen sharing a personal survival story (in Finnish) to highlight the responsibility everyone has in supporting wellbeing at work:

Phase 2: Packaging your thoughts and perceptions.

”The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mysterious glue that enables millions of humans to cooperate effectively. This mysterious glue is made of stories, not genes.” — Yuval Noah Harari

Storytelling has been the most effective way to communicate for ages and it efficiently activates the receiver’s brain. It should be your preferred tool of choice when it comes to packaging your thoughts and perceptions. Here are a few pointers on storytelling:

• Be honest: share what actually happened and who participated.
• Keep it simple: it’s ok to shed some details and events if it makes the story less complex because a story is easier to follow when it’s simple.
• Involve emotions, feelings and excitement: these will make your story more relatable and engaging.
• Share a learning or idea: leave the receiver with something valuable or something to engage with.

Nowadays there is a lot of freedom of choice regarding the form of content. It can easily be anything in the range of a long blog post, short tweet, picture with a caption, video, landing page, audio, keynote, chat over coffee etc.

The most important thing here is to just select the medium that is most natural to you. Doing this will make it much easier for you to create the content in a timely fashion and end up having something to share to the world. A few guiding questions:

• What form of communication is the easiest for you?
• What is the best way for you to learn?
• How do you communicate on a daily basis with the people around you?
• Where do you hang out online and offline?

Examples:

• Kapwing sharing their struggles and learnings from recruiting 10 people in San Francisco:

• Hurricane Unwinder joining a timely discussion topic with a history lesson and sharing their knowledge on hurricanes:

Phase 3: Putting the content out there.

“What channels should we use?” — Startup Founder

Now that we have 1) identified something worth sharing, and 2) we have packaged it into a story via a specific medium, we can start taking a more in-depth look into what channels we should be using. After all, you can’t really have a brand if no-one has heard about you.

I think it makes sense to start with online because it is a very scalable and impactful way to spread your message, and all of us consume massive amounts of online content daily. These would be my guiding questions for choosing the correct online channel(s):

1. Is the channel part of my daily routines? Do I hang out there?
2. Can I share the content I like to produce in that channel?
3. Does the channel have sufficient means of tracking engagement?
4. Is the audience I want to reach active in this channel?

I’d also suggest to always remember the offline channels (lunches, meetups, events, conferences) as well — especially when you are just starting to build your business and brand. I believe that there is so much more for you to learn and you’ll have much more impact when selecting offline channels in the beginning. The main reasons for this are:

• You are getting more information from the receiver (reactions, body language, comments).
• You are in a situation where you can immediately counter someone’s doubts or questions, or even ask them to explain their thoughts more.
• You have the receiver totally engaged which is very rare online.

When selecting offline channels, consider the following:

1. Can I fit it into my weekly, monthly routine?
2. What is the impact versus investment (time + other)?
3. Is the audience really the one I want to reach?
4. What is my preferred offline way of engaging (1–1 chats, speaking, mingling at a meetup)?

“Employer branding is everyone’s job!”

Lastly, I like this quote because employer branding by nature really is everyone’s job. Everything we do as employees of a company constitutes to its employer brand.

However, I don’t like the fact that this quote sort of implies that everyone has to do employer branding in a certain way, eg posting pictures on Facebook. What if you’re not on Facebook?

For employer branding to succeed in the long run, I believe that everyone should be encouraged to participate in the ways that feel most natural to them. This also includes recognizing everyone’s efforts — and doing it across the board.