Eleven Burning Questions to Answer When Hiring for Employer Brand Talent

Okay, the title of this post is a lie. There are way more than eleven questions we're sharing that employer brand practitioners want answered when they're being approached for a #talentbrand job. So, bonus there for everyone reading.

Most companies who have had a dedicated employer brand function are larger consumer brands. They're also the ones who already have teams of people getting the work done. Unfortunately, they're not always the companies that need the most help raising the visibility of their talent brand. That means that smaller, less known companies are acknowledging that they need help and more importantly, are hiring.

Here are the anonymized random responses from some of the TalentBrand.org group members when asked what they care about most in a new opportunity.

1. Do they just want to increase the pipeline of candidates (which is sometimes confused with branding), or are they actually committed to developing a credible and sustainable brand?
2. Does the organization want and value talent brand or will you have to do a lot of internal selling as well?
3. How much time will be given to educate the organization about the role? Living this right now, coming into a company with little understanding why, support this role takes a lot of time. Zero budget, team, or support during year one is tough without being given time to educate the key interdepartmental partners.
4. Is this an initiative being driven from the top down? C-level buy in? Size of company?
5. What do they feel are their current strengths and weaknesses from a talent brand standpoint? What are the immediate gaps to fill? How are they defining Talent Brand from an internal and external perspective? How much visibility will this person and role have to the C-Suite?
6. One thing I think gets confusing is strategy vs doing... is there room and resources to write the strategy and then implement how to get it done... I'm seeing a lot right now where company's want a talent brand manager to basically run social channels 😉. The answer will give insight to their understanding of talent brand. What part of the candidate / employee experience will they have the ability to impact? This looks different from company to company.
7. Will the focus be internal, external, or both? What's the mix/where is the greatest need?
8. I would ask if enterprise or consumer marketing leads will be participating in the interview process and if not I would specifically suggest this.
9. Are employees encouraged to post brand messages on social media? Do they have an established brand advocacy program in place? What platform is used? If none, what's the process. What's the adoption rate? How is it audited/monitored?
10. For me the biggie is will this person have the ear and buy-in from the top table. Also will they have free reign over what gets produced; many companies still want to put their corporate spin/lies on content before it enters the world.
11. I'm assuming this role will report to the head of talent. My main question will be asking the head of talent what he/she envisions talent branding to be. Getting top-level (and bottom-level) buy-in is important to successfully launch initiatives like a brand ambassador program, but one my biggest supporters (or detractors) will be my manager. If we aren't aligned then it's going to be a lot of educating him/her to try to get into alignment or it will be an extremely rough journey when asking for resources to help craft our talent brand.

The patterns? Will I have the freedom to get this done because chief leadership understands the value? How is success measured? Will I have the support or a team to help get the real work done while I work on strategy?

What questions do YOU want to know? (throw them in the comments and we'll append the list)

There you have it folks, if you're looking to hire an employer brand leader, manager, specialist or just someone to manage your tweet stream, be prepared to answer most of these questions. Also, check the #ebjobs hashtag on Twitter to see where companies are hiring and what their job descriptions look like. (your competition)

If you're looking for a community of peers in the talent brand space, you can request to join the Facebook group and answer a couple of qualifying questions. Corporate or consulting practitioners only.