Let’s face it, the talent brand tech stack is oversubscribed. As more tech tools are invented for each stage of the candidate journey, our lives are supposed to become easier and our jobs more efficient. In reality, many tools end up being more trouble than they’re worth. That doesn’t mean there aren’t the rare standouts that have talent brand marketers gushing with praise.

At this year’s Talent Brand Summit, Bari Polay challenged talent brand marketers from across the country to let it all out in the open when it comes to which tools we love, and which tech we’d
rather. . . lay to rest.

As a veteran B2B and B2C marketer – and most recently a leader of the global talent brand team at Lyft – Bari is no stranger to tools. 

Many marketers who move into the talent brand space receive a rude awakening: they’re expected to do the job of an entire corporate marketing department with half the teammates and a fraction of the budget.

As an industry, we have a visceral reaction to tools because they're still an unsolved problem. There’s no clear “winner” in any category, no “right choice;” oftentimes we don’t even have control over which tools we employ. 

Polay began the session with a brief poll to gauge just how much control many talent brand marketers have over their tool budgets — and therefore choices. The poll resulted in the majority of attendees confessing that although they have input into which tools their companies choose to purchase, someone else has the final say.

Even though purchasing new tools isn’t as straightforward as we’d like, Polay points out, “that doesn't mean that your voice is any less important.” As talent brand marketers, we owe it to our teams and our candidates to build the best tech stack possible, making the recommendations and warnings of our peers ever more pertinent.

Ranking Tech Tools: “Shag, Marry Kill”

With a landscape this crowded and complicated, Polay focused the group on the three core categories of technology that talent brand practitioners can’t live without. *These are the aggregated attendee opinions shared during the virtual Talent Brand Summit and not necessarily those represented by the entire Talent Brand Alliance community.

1. Content Creation, Curation, Amplification

   Think: employee advocacy and employee generated content (EGC)

2. Candidate Engagement and Campaign Management

   Think: CRMs and career site overlays

3. Social Media Management and Measurement

   Think: social scheduling, posting, and reporting tools

Once the categories were established, Polay laid out the ranking system modeling the popular school bus game Shag, Marry, Kill.

Qualifications for each category were left open-ended. Maybe you want to “marry” a tool because you had it at an old job and now cannot achieve the same perfect workflow without it. Perhaps you want to “kill” a tool because the implementation process was so difficult that your team gave up before you got a chance to actually use it. You might “shag” a tool in your role as a solo operator but kill it once you have a whole team behind you. The key to remember about tools, says Polay, is that “one person’s ‘kill’ can be another person’s ‘marry,’ so be kind!“

After our introduction to the messy yet meaningful world of talent brand tech, small groups broke out to spill the tea on their tool du jour. Quote sources will be kept confidential because TB Summit is a safe space.

Content Creation, Curation, Amplification

You’ve heard it before, content is king. And in 2020, tools that help you amplify the great content your recruiters are already making and ensure that they’re making it on-brand, win the day.

Marry: Canva

Canva is a rockstar in the online design world because it makes consistent design easy for non-designers. It has team friendly features to run approvals through and is cheap or free depending on your use.

“Canva is a graphic design platform for people who aren’t designers. What I love about it is that I can upload my brand colors, my fonts, and select images so that if a recruiter wants to make an ad for their own personal LinkedIn, they have all the tools at their disposal.”

Shag: Altru 

Altru is a platform for capturing employee video testimonials. Their mission is to “build an authentic view of what it's really like at your company by putting your employees front and center.” Altru takes a process that usually feels clunky or awkward and creates authentic content that performs for your brand.

TB Summit attendees ranked Altru as a platform they either already love using or are hoping to try soon. One attendee put it simply: “It was awesome.”

Kill: Avature 

One unlucky software made it to the kill list in this category by trying to do too much at once. Avature is a favorite of big brands, counting over one-fifth of the Fortune 500 companies as their customers. But, when it comes to empowering content creation, talent branders aren’t fans. The most common complaint was around their email marketing offer not delivering the same flexibility and performance that a purpose-built tool can (and for a fraction of the cost). 

Candidate Engagement and Campaign Management

Similar to content, candidates are also king (and queen). This means the tools we use to engage with and market to them are incredibly important. One awkward “Deat [NAME]” email from a CRM system can turn away your dream candidate, never to be heard from again.

Marry: Clinch

Clinch is all about personalization. They espouse the idea that “Mass messaging no longer works. Experiences must be local, fast, and relevant to the moment.” It seems the majority of TB Summit attendees agree. One attendee raved, “It has the best landing page builder and customer service,” while another applauded their “incredible front-end and metrics.”

Shag: Dynamic Signal

Dynamic Signal is a tool that seems purpose built for running successful talent brand campaigns. Many attendees praised the tool for how easy it makes tracking and reporting, while some pointed out that it can be clunky at times.

“There's such friction to employee advocacy. I like any tool that makes that really easy. What I really love about Dynamic Signal is that tracking on the backend helps you understand and reward your biggest advocates.”

Kill: Workday 

With large HR tools like Workday, implementation can make or break a purchase. One talent brand marketer lamented that not only was the implementation experience subpar, but it was also “hard to educate others on how to use it, and the overall the user experience was poor.”

Social Media Management and Measurement

Marry: SproutSocial

SproutSocial was “built for connection,” and talent brand practitioners seem to agree. Many attendees lauded the platform as effective, affordable, and easy to use when it comes to analytics. 

“Our marketing team uses it [SproutSocial], and that's probably where we'll go next and ask, ‘Can I join you over here?’ ”

Shag: Sprinklr

If there was an award for “most talked about tool” at TB Summit 2020, Sprinklr would win. The platform clearly delivers on its promise to engage audiences, but it’s also “shockingly expensive” and “requires a huge learning curve.”

“Sprinklr is like the high-maintenance person who doesn't know they're high maintenance. It's really amazing if you can feed it, if you can engineer it, and if you can stay on top of it. Then you can leverage everything that it can do. We were on it for less than a year. We got out of our contract because people weren't using it the way it was intended.”

KILL: None!

Social is hard. Like, really hard. It’s constantly changing. Keeping your employees talking and your candidates engaging is never easy. It's no surprise that any tools at all are welcome help, leaving us with no one in the Kill category.

About TBA Member Danielle Frider

Danielle Frider is a marketer, designer, historian, and observer of the universe. She’s worked in marketing for brands such as WeWork, Shyp, and Airtable and found her love for talent brand marketing at Samsara. She’s passionate about the future of work, circular supply chains, and corporate social responsibility. Depending on the snow forecast, you can find her in either
San Francisco or South Lake Tahoe.