Tim: Tell us a little bit about who you are and what's getting you excited right now in the world of work. 

Alex: I think I may be able to help you out with what we're going to talk about, but, yeah, Alex I am a co-founder of The EB Space, an all-Discord community for free employer brand leaders and students of the employer brand industry for about seven to seven-and-a-half years.

What excites me about some of the work that I'm doing is, when it comes to the community that I'm a co-founder of, it's really just spreading the word and getting others involved and not just some of the main countries out there, first-world countries where employer branding has come a long way, but also in a lot of emerging markets where maybe they don't have the opportunities to learn some of the best practices or just have a sounding board to run their ideas off of. So bringing people together, I'm a natural connector. So that's a thing I'm excited about there.

Outside of that, just seeing where everything is going overall with how AI is impacting the work that we do. I think there's a lot of action out there about what it's going to do; your robots are not coming in to start typing for us to take us away. It could be further from that, but. I think there's a lot of potential there. So I'm really excited about that.

Tim: I think we're going to get into AI and employer branding in a bit, because I'm curious how, specifically for HR folks who might have employer branding underneath in their umbrella or their scope of work, we can set the stage first; let's define employer branding.

Alex: So, to me, it's reputation. It's what people say, think, or feel about you when you're not in the room. It's no different than our thoughts. It becomes very foreign, and I think people always struggle with that, but I try to dumb it down. Like I'm talking to, like, a 12-year-old, probably a little bit younger than that since I think 12-year-olds have come a long way since then.

But it's just looking at, let's say, your mobile devices. Like an iPhone, think about Apple; it's very easy to see. Okay, the consumer brand is Apple itself, the logo, the icon that's known for being very prestigious. Everything is polished. Do you want to be something like that when it comes to employer branding? You want to be something that's a little more experimental out there, giving you cutting-edge technology when it comes to maybe the Google Pixel devices or Android-made devices.

So it really depends what you want, but I think that's, I always try to make that comparison so people understand that, and then if they can grasp it, I go a little bit deeper into all the fun stuff that I maybe geek out on, but at the surface level, that's what I feel it is.

Tim: Before we hit record, I asked permission to go off script, and you already said something that's now got me curious: What aspects of EB or employer branding do you geek out over? 

Alex: Everything. For me, it's the simple fact that it's a lot of self-reflection because I think we would employer branding. We join a lot of different companies, and I think everybody is super aspirational. You're going through the interview process. Can't experience this other thing, and it will, their aspiration of those that are; sometimes you can reach those, and a lot of times you can't, but knowing, okay, hey, so once you're in there, okay, what are we really about? What do we want to go? Where are we at now?

I think that's probably something that is a little difficult for companies to really recognize because they see Spotify as the world out there doing fun things, and Spotify is cool, but you're not Spotify. You need to acknowledge who you are.

So it's taking a look in the mirror at where your organization is at, where the culture is at, because how you work with your customers is vastly different than what it's going to be with the people who work there and the people who you do want to attract.

I think that and just diving into all the little golden nuggets you can find, whether it be creating stories, reels, video spotlights, TikToks, blogs, paid campaigns, or long-term initiatives in terms of strategy for the year. There are just so many things to take away.

And I think at the heart of that, what really does excite me is it takes you back to when we were all job seekers. And when you're on the market of either of your own doing, when you have the opportunity to choose, you're not rushed to go to the first employer that says yes; you take your time, and then you're very intentional, and you think of the places you've gone to where the career page is; it's not trash. It's not Workday or something like that, or I love them as a platform, but then, their ATS is a little hit or miss.

But you got these great videos, these great photos that really capture your attention and make you excited about that, and that's where, okay, you have the opportunity to reflect that. And that's what initially hooked me on to this employer branding world seven and a half years ago. And I have yet to let go of yet to lose interest. It's only gotten better and stronger, I would say.

Tim: Thanks for sharing that with us. employer branding, we look at that product, like you described to Apple. It's a product that's customer-facing. Employer branding is that internal-facing. It's also attractive for that candidate. It is how you're presenting yourself to that job seeker, but also to all your employees. 

I like that you brought in that candidate experience because, I mean, I've landed on career pages. And you think, wow, this is phenomenal. Then you start reaching out to a few people at the organization, and it's, Oh, is that really what they're doing there? 

Alex: Definitely. What I will say is it's a mix. I say a lot of times it's more external. There are opportunities where we can join forces internally to work with our teammates. And I think that's where you get to a much more mature employer brand where you have the opportunity to do that and really dive in.

But I agree with you; some of these companies seem phenomenal. We will go without naming names of companies where they have this amazing product that we love as consumers that doesn't always translate over to a strong culture and a strong employer brand because sometimes they're too focused on producing what makes our lives amazing but makes hell for their employees.

Tim: Thanks for that distinction, especially as a newer company with maybe a smaller company, in how are you presenting yourself to that market, that external rather than that internal? When you think of somebody who's maybe in HR, people in culture, and they're doing it all.

They can't bring in someone like yourself or bring in an employer branding team. Where does somebody start? If somebody is looking at, Hey, one of their corporate goals is to revamp how they're facing the market, their careers page. Where did they start? How do you actually get your brand out there to the market? 

Alex: I would say, if you're looking to see how you can get your brand out there in the market, maybe identifying where you're at the moment, because you don't really know what the bar is. You have an idea where you should be headed? If you're in the podcast game or podcast audio, are you closer to Spotify, Apple Music, or are you probably maybe more along the lines of iHeartRadio or something like that?

You need to know where you need to be going, and then internally, just seeing exactly where you're at, are you a company that has a Glassdoor rating of 1, or are you at a 5? But outside of that, what do your internal surveys tell you about where you are? And then, doing a pulse check with, I think the simple thing that people do forget about is you do have people who work there.

It costs you nothing to talk to them. All it does is send a simple team's message, email Slack, and make some calls with them because that's what you would otherwise do, let's say if you had the money to bring in an agency or a consultant to come do things. They have that direct access to do that, but that requires spending a little bit of money, which in this circumstance you don't have to use.

So do that yourself and figure out, Hey, maybe speak to people across different departments and ask them, Hey, how are we doing? Are we, are we good here? Are we good there? And that kind of gives you an idea. Okay. Like how innovative can I…It could still be innovative, but what can I truly show?

What can I not show? What can we talk about? What are we really about? And I think that will give you much more to work with versus just going out there and just trying to build something that maybe doesn't align with where you're at the moment.

Tim: Based on what you've seen through your community and through your own research, what are some trends that you're seeing from an employer branding perspective or candidate experience perspective? 

Alex: Definitely AI. That is one thing, and I think if you're starting as a team of one, that will really help you out and get you much further ahead. The one that's big, that hovers over two different things, is influence on marketing, because it's been a big thing that's been big on the consumer side.

A lot of companies do that with their consumer brands. It has not been done as much on the employer brand side, and where I say that kind of hovers over two different areas is if you look at that, where you have an influencer who is doing something for a company, it also goes into employee advocacy, because typically with that, we're looking for people who are natural advocates, ambassadors on different social platforms; they may have that much of a following where they become your influence or do that influence of marketing.

So I would not discount them at all, but going into employee advocacy, that's a huge one. It's been around for the longest time, but I think people, in my opinion, have struggled to really crack the code per se, because they fall in love with that. They buy these platforms and then they don't know what to do with them.

Basically, all you're doing is just leveraging great teammates who are natural storytellers. They're great at putting stuff out there. You're educating them, enabling them, helping them build their networks while also building yours, telling the good story of your employer brand.

So I've got something that is huge, been around for a while, but I think it's still picking up more steam. And this is more, going back to what we talked about in terms of building the employer brand. It's being very transparent about who you are and being more direct behind that, because you're either an AI company or you're not.

So, the cool AI companies that are doing that ChatGPT, like, great, they have something amazing to tell, but you can't beat them. So, I think there really are companies that are doing that. Bolt is one that did that phenomenally well recently. And I think it was a, for the location out of Poland, they did a phenomenal one about, okay, what they're not; I believe it was to the effect of, they don't go into the office or what makes them different than any other company there in their market.

But I thought that was great. And I think more of that will do more good than harm for companies.

Tim: It's owning who you are, getting confident in that identity. You mentioned the word culture. I've recorded an episode with Gustavo, the founder of Fearless Culture. I think that's a foundation: understanding the culture, your values, your purpose, and how you translate that into a message to attract the right audience but also the right team members. 

Alex: I agree because I did work for a company in a distant past, and what they wanted versus what their culture was was two different things. It was never going to happen. So I think that gives you a lot to work with. Initially,

Tim: I see that employer branding is the promise you're making to somebody who you might be attracting into your organization, that candidate pool; it's a promise. 

I'm sure after this, I'm going to start looking at some career pages and say, Is this actually their language? Are these all stock photos that you could find anywhere else? It matters, doesn't it, to somebody who might be applying for a role there? 

Alex: It does. I would say I just got back from your home country, Canada, and one Hollywood superstar who is a stock photo, I wouldn't be surprised if he's on someone's career page, is Simu Liu. He was big on the, I'm trying to think if it was Unsplash or one of those sites, but then, you could very well find him or other, probably, unknown actors who are on stock photos, but yeah, I think you'll go out there and you'll have a different opinion once you look at these pages now.

Tim: I think what's really important from an HR perspective is you can't just throw something out there and try to attract the right candidates. It's intentional. You have to be intentional about it. And I spent a lot of time in advocacy work through disability inclusion. And so this one is, I'm really curious about finding that employee advocate; have you seen it be successful?

Do you have an example of that? And a company might be listening to this going, Yeah, that's a good idea. How do I get started? How do I find that advocate to say, Yeah, go out and tell the world about us and how good we are? Hopefully they're aligned with that. 

Alex: I think it's rather easy because, obviously, I'm a bit naive there because this is what I do; it's my bread and butter, but LinkedIn is much bigger than it was 8, 9, or 10 years ago. So going out there and seeing some of your most creative people, obviously in marketing, your social media teams, see what they're doing, see what they're creating, what they're producing.

They'll naturally be sharing stuff on their own. And that's an opportunity to say, okay, hey, if they're doing this, maybe it wouldn't hurt to put a little call on their calendar, a little Zoom chat, and see, hey, you're doing this; can we maybe work with you?

It doesn't hurt to maybe give them a gift card, free lunch, or give us some internal points if you have an internal reward system, and then try that out. Then, hey, maybe on top of that, you realize you have more than one person who is good at this. Then that's when we start building your employee advocacy program.

But, if you take the time and effort into it, I say connecting with people at your company is probably the best thing you can do first, but then outside of that, see what they're doing, see what they're posting, and engage with them.

You'll be surprised; like at every company I've been at so far, you'll come across people who are onto something, and either they know that or they don't, but they have something that you want to jump on a ride for and just say, Hey, let's try to make this work, and who knows where it can go from there. It doesn't hurt to try.

Tim: I agree. I've worked in organizations where there are outspoken champions of that organization, and it's being a bit more intentional about creating that relationship with that employee. Not from a place of, Hey, post about how awesome we are twice a week, and we'll pay you five bucks a post, but thinking of it from that perspective of, Hey, we love that you're a champion. How can we help you amplify your voice and your mission as well?

Alex: Exactly. You want to enable them, like you said, I think. They'll take your money if you keep saying, Hey, you don't come here; we're a great place. Eventually, they'll get sick of that. Their network gets sick of that. They'll stop posting for you.

Tim: Absolutely. It comes down to creating that plan and that it's more than just, Hey, let's throw it a couple of posts and try and attract the right candidate and create that right candidate experience, or just that right customer, or whatever it is that you're trying to do. 

Somebody might be listening to this and HR going, Okay, we haven't spent a lot of time on this piece, let alone that candidate experience. Let's shift the conversation there a little bit because I know you do some employer branding, and candidate experience is, I think, closely tied. Would you agree? 

Alex: Yeah, I agree. I've had the chance to do that either with me as a team of one. I would say with the full-time gig, I have the luxury of having a candidate experience team along with my team. And you're locking stuff with what you do. Like, I can't imagine that employer brand or can't experience team, but like, go be very siloed, not work together, because there are so many great opportunities just to work together. It would be a huge miss if you were not.

Tim: Having that candidate experience and just having that dialed in, it just makes sense. 

Would you have any advice for someone who maybe is part of their remit, part of the employer branding, part of that candidate experience, and how to get started and where you see that there's opportunity just based on your experience of what you're seeing, maybe through your community or through your other work? 

Alex: I think if you're questioning where you should be going with the care experience and where you can infuse the employer brand, it's time to take a test drive on your career page. So do an A/B test. I guess it's simple QAIT logic that we all forget about, but we all do naturally. It's okay.

Maybe see what your career page is like; if I apply for a rec, do I get an email right away? If I do, is there branding infused there? Are there logos? Are there social links? If there's not that, not a video, that's a mess.

Okay. You can work on that outside. That is okay. Are we keeping candidates warm? And then if we finish the interview process, do we just drop them like a bad habit? Do we do the annoying thing everyone cries about on LinkedIn?

But it's true. Six months afterwards, when you don't need the job anymore, you get a disposition email that says, Okay, hey, sorry, we moved with another person, or even before then, That's not happening. If you're not hearing anything at all, that's a huge miss. And then go look at the company that you do admire.

Maybe we talked earlier about companies that do things, but maybe they're lacking on the EB or experience side, but there are a lot of companies that are more than that, who probably have that down pat. So, go through their experience, and I'll tell you more times than not, I've walked through, and I'm like, Hey, we could do some work here.

We need to be doing more of this versus what we're doing. So you'll have a comparison there, and that will give you a whole bunch to work with that you did not have before.

Tim: I love that. It's approaching it from that A/B test, but also with a mindset of process improvement, not just process.

We talked on a previous episode about, hey, laying out that candidate experience process, but I love how you're bringing in, Make sure your brand is there. Put in some videos, put in some logos, your social links, testimonials, like make it yours, put it in your language. 

Alex: Exactly. It's there; you own it. You're probably paying a huge contract with that ATS. There are a multitude of options there for you. They always give an option to brand that in some shape or form. It may not be the best, but they give you something. So if you're not using that, I think it's a huge missed opportunity.

Tim: Where do you see the future of employer branding going? I'm curious about employer branding and that kind of experience. I know AI is here, and I can't even fathom where it's going to go. And so what are you seeing? What are you thinking about these two things? 

Alex: I think it's going to grow even more, and we're going to be more strategic, which is good because we've come historically from being someone's dark secret on the comms or TA team with the like, Yeah, we know we need a person who does this because we maybe don't get the love we need from another department.

And we'd love for people to spread the good word about our culture and our jobs. But maybe we have some headcount. We'll give it to this one person here. This one person does the work of five or six people, which is not very conducive. It's actually just you checking the boxes, but then you can never get down and find those hard-hitting stories and truly identify what you are.

But I think that's where there's a huge opportunity. I've been looking at this a lot myself, to be quite honest, and we talked a little bit earlier about the fear of AI, but in my opinion, there are so many different tasks that we do where, okay, like competitive research, which is always necessary when you're going into different markets instead of throwing money at some of these platforms.

Hey, maybe you can do that with GPT, Gemini, Copilot, or whatever your choice is, whatever you can use. I would say, but then, the legal balance of your company, look at that and see what you can do, because you can get that done in a matter of minutes versus several hours.

So, where I'm going with that is, okay, knock this stuff down; stuff that may have taken hours before takes a matter of minutes now, obviously a little bit of refining, but that opens up the ability for you to truly be creative and do different things.

You may still have a lot of one-man shows or one-person-type shows with one person who does everything, but they're going to be a lot more strategic because they have AI there to help them out. They have different options that will systematize it, and it's not just for research or copywriting; it's also for, this is, always having a lot of thoughts about this, but you can generate videos or photos using AI.

So that gives you more to work with. It's still hit or miss when it comes to being very authentic, but it gives you a lot if you have nothing to work with. And I think that puts you miles ahead of where even I would have been 7 years ago.

Tim: I couldn't imagine being a one-person show trying to write it all myself without a team member called GPT or Gemini or Copilot, using it as a sounding board.

But what I'm hearing is leverage these tools, but make it your own, making sure that you've got it; it's your voice and not just an AI bot writing everything for you. So, it cuts down time, but make it your own. 

Alex: You do. What people forget too is we've had Textio; if you've had the budget with their company or Grammarly, which is free, and they have given you the ability to not rewrite it in a sense where it's not your own words but give you helpful suggestions, maybe your, I'll just call the elephant in the room here.

Us Americans, we write stuff; it's never the way the rest of the world writes it. I'm not oblivious to that. So if you're working in the UK, you want to speak with UK English, Canadian English; okay, that will help you out. Versus you going in there and manually doing that, in a few seconds, Grammarly will pull it up and say, Hey, this is what you could be doing.

Or maybe you're writing a paragraph that's way too long. Help you minimize that. That was there long before GPT. But there are a lot of great things that can, I think, really make a difference and help you out. But I know it's helped me out because I've come from where I was writing everything on my own.

So I still appreciate that. But if I don't need to spend an hour doing that, I'm not going to do it.

Tim: I do some consulting in the HR space and often just use AI as a brainstorm partner and am able to just flush some ideas out, even if it's, Hey, we need to rewrite X, Y, or Z and make it your own. 

I want to flip over to your community for a sec because I do my research, and hearing from you, you run a Discord community on employer branding. What are some of the common themes or common questions that you see coming through the community that people are asking right now and seeking insights and support on?

Alex: I wish I could take all the credit for that, but that does involve my good friend, Claire de Souza, who's a co-founder of that. So I would say the community, we do run together. A lot of the questions we see are, What's the best HR tech out there?

Because we work a lot with the ATSs. We're always working to connect with what's the tracking mechanism, how can we show what sources are coming in from the work that we're doing, what are the app platforms out there, and also, what events are you going to, which locations are the best to work with, what did you discover about this market that I didn't know, and what are some of the opportunities that maybe I'm missing or you're missing when it comes to things such as Google Tag Manager and analytics? What are also just maybe some events where I can go to learn more about this? Because the Discord community is great, but there's also the desire, ever since COVID, to get back there in person to meet up with people. Because there are ways you can type when it comes to messaging, WhatsApp, and Discord, but sometimes it just does not match talking to, if, let's say, you and I are talking in person.

That conversation is much more intimate and personal. There are ways you could take that to deeper conversations. So that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of some of the stuff that we talk about, but I would say on top of that, just sharing jobs, sharing what the opportunity is out there for someone who is maybe an APAC versus NIA or here in North America.

Tim: I'm really curious about what happens inside these communities, and there are a number of communities out there that I love. And so I'm going to definitely check yours out because, as part of FlexOS, we want to make sure that we're providing resources to our audience as well.

As companies are asking these questions, people are in these communities asking these questions. From my perspective, this conversation is, Hey, how are we going to attract that top talent? How are we going to continue to attract that top talent? 

What one or two strategies can we provide our audience/listeners today on how to leverage employer branding and attract that talent that you need?

Alex: I think probably the easiest thing you could do is identify what top talent is because you and I, let's say we work for a company and we have an idea/perception of what the perfect candidate may be in top talent, but it's always in the eye of the beholder.

Maybe hiring managers and engineers fill. I don't care what you guys think. Top talent is someone who is from a place where I'm very biased; I'm going to choose someone from a FANG company. Our efforts that we're doing from an employer branding effort, poor branding approach, we could be putting these amazing videos and everything out there, blogs, but no matter what we do, they're not going to accept anybody unless they're from a FANG company.

So there becomes an issue, but if we're aligned on, okay, our approach is we want the best person for the job, you can go with a term that either people love it. They hate it. They're a cultural fit. They match with what you want to do. They're probably very green, and you don't care where they're from. You don't care which college, which university, or which tech school they went to. That's the perfect candidate for you. We'll train. We'll build on potential. I think that makes it a hell of a lot easier.

Then we know, okay, our efforts, whatever we do, it's always going to be when it's going to add onto that and not take away or end up being something that's not a huge ROI at the end of the day because ultimately you do want to show some sort of return of investment in the work that you're doing.

Tim: That's the magic word, isn't it? Return on investment. The founder and CEO might be listening to this and going, What is the return on investment for this? And I have my ideas on that return on investment. 

If somebody is listening to this and saying, Yeah, we need to invest in the employer branding. We need to invest in the candidate experience. What is that ROI metric that you have in your pocket? Or do you have one that you say, Hey, this is what we've got to focus on"? 

Alex: It depends where you're at, because in my opinion, and this is an opinion shared by a lot of folks, James Ellis is one of them as well. Really good dude. But you have to know exactly where you're at, right? Because you could be going in, and okay, it's the goals. If you're brand new and you're just now managing your employer brand, okay. ROI for you could be. A million people to your career page. That's great.

But once you get much more mature with that, okay. I would say probably you're several years into it. You've built something really good. Like, where are we actually saving money? Are we not relying on job boards as much? That's a huge one. Are we not going to events as much because we've identified that maybe if we spend six figures a year, we don't get a hire?

Okay. That's not a good ROI. That's a terrible ROI. Or if we're just paying for all these different partnerships that should be giving us what we're looking for, whether it be tech talent, diversity, or whatever it is that you're looking for. If you're not getting that, that's a terrible ROI.

And then I would say, Everyone's pockets, because it does impact all of us, and it would make sense outside of employer brand. We have those deeper, more meaningful conversations that do matter. Are we getting people to start sooner? Like time to fill, time to hire, because if you're getting people butts in seats sooner, it equals more people working on different products and different innovative things that the company's doing, and there's less time to hire, so you're not wasting more time and effort to create more content.

Keep this job on Indeed and LinkedIn much longer. Go to X amount of events and do that because you're lacking. You're doing that; you're doing the work.

To me, that shows that, okay, if everything you're doing, whether it be advocacy, you're applying a great kind of experience, you're doing everything from a content marketing, recruitment marketing perspective, that is funneling folks in, let's say you're knocking your time to fill down for maybe 50 to 45 days.

You're saving the company money. You're saving the time and money and then going back and building more things and, honestly, bringing in more money for them, and people hate hearing this, but they're going to make money for whoever their investors are, the shareholders; you don't want to address that, but it's true.

So if you're helping them get to where they need to be sooner, that is showing a huge ROI for you and your team.

Tim: Absolutely. I 100% agree with that. Getting people in seats virtually, physically, or whatever that looks like, that's the ultimate goal. Defining that top talent, defining what that means. What are the competencies? What are the skills? What are the traits that you're looking for? And building the job descriptions and career pages and the marketing to attract what you're looking for. It's a great place and a great thing to do. It just makes sense.

Hey, Alex, as I look to wrap up here, I've learned a lot about employer branding, and I think I had my idea of what it is wrong, and I've now corrected that about how closely tied it is to the candidate experience. Somebody's listened to this, maybe an HR professional, maybe somebody who's maybe just starting their career or is thinking of that future of work that next year or two years down the road.

What is one thing that they should be doing today to be able to master this for their organization or even in their career? 

Alex: I will say before you go out and buy the latest and greatest tech and you try to go out and just spend thousands of dollars on the EVP and build out a team or whatever it is you're trying to do, look within first, identify where you're at, what your problems are, where you need to be going, if there's improvements to be made, because I think if you can look at that and then say, okay, hey, maybe we're not where we should be, but if we had this, we know we have a true business case to build this out.

And if we had, let's say, a team of two, we had proper, what is it? A career page vendor, ATS, is just throwing things out there, a video vendor too. And this is how we're going to approach that. But I think if you do that, you're better off versus just going out there and assuming, Hey, if I go buy whatever. You have the best HR tech out there that's going to solve my problems because I've always seen it fail when that happens.

But so I think first and foremost, look within; don't rush to throw all your budget at a set product because you think that's going to fix everything. That's probably the last thing you should be doing.

Tim: I love that. I see so many organizations just jump into, Hey, we've got a problem. Let's buy some tech. Figure out what your problem is. Map it out, figure it out. Hey, why are people not applying to our jobs? Figure that out by asking yourselves the hard questions before trying to find a solution. 

Alex, I appreciate you coming on. 

Where can people find you? I know people are going to go, Hey, there's a community out there. What's this about? Where can people track you down? 

Alex: So for the community, right now it's open to, in-house and external consultants of employer branding specifically. So you can go to theebspace.com. If you're not able to join the community, we are vendors. We keep that wall there to keep the conversations Chatham House Rules, but we're always willing to work with any vendor or partner who feels there's an opportunity where we can provide value vice versa.

For myself, you can find me on one of my favorite platforms, excuse me here, TikTok. I love that. And I think it's. It's great for short videos. So who knows? Maybe our session here will be on there. But I do a lot of talking, sharing, and conversing on LinkedIn. So, you're not going to find many people with this last name that's unique, but look up Alex Her and send a file request or a connection request, and I will definitely connect with you.

Tim: Mine's already sent. I definitely want to continue the conversation, Alex, and learn from you. I've learned so much.