The Talent Cast
225 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsFrom James Ellis, the employer brand podcast dedicated to making you smarter about recruiting and hiring. Its time to re-invent employer branding, recruiting and hiring from the ground up! If you’re ready to throw off the shackles of conventional recruiting and employer brand thinking, this is the podcast for you. Nothing is safe. No best practice is sacred. Here, we get serious about what works, so that you can punch above your weight in the war for talent.
For more details: http://thetalentcast.com
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Episodes
Bonus Episode! Retelling Talent Chooses You (in 15 minutes)
August 01, 2022 05:05 - 21 minutesI hope you enjoyed the podcast-as-audiobook update of Talent Chooses You. As a special bonus to celebrate/announce the launch of EmployerBrandLabs, I challenged myself to "retell" the book in just 15 minutes. And I think I succeeded. Enjoy!
Final Thoughts on Talent Chooses You
July 27, 2022 05:05 - 20 minutesI started this book as a way to champion the idea of employer branding. But along the way, I wanted to temper it with reality, the honest challenges and frustrations and employer brand professional faces. Building an employer brand, in whatever capacity you choose to do it, is intensely hard work. What we do is ART. Embrace it.
What Makes an Employer Brand Pro Great?
July 20, 2022 05:05 - 19 minutesThe broadest vision is that employer brand is how we will fix a broken recruiting system. It is the lever we use to reinvent how we see, connect with and engage the people who will make our businesses grow. It provides the WHY to candidates, which attracts the right people to jobs where they will be more satisfied and productive. This shift in perspective leads to better collaboration with all parts of the business to build better systems that give prospective candidates more than they expect...
Facing the Unknown
July 13, 2022 05:15 - 24 minutesEmployer brand professionals are a strange lot, in that we are often people without a country. If we’re based inside the recruiting team, we aren’t recruiters. If we live in marketing, we’re a very different breed of marketer. The market itself is still emerging to define what it is we do. So this is our rallying cry, a flag all employer brand professionals can point to and say, “yeah, this is why we’re amazing (and different by design)” that can be understood by recruiters, HR, business lea...
Good Ideas
July 06, 2022 05:05 - 23 minutes“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.” -Chuck Close, Artist Most starting writers fear the blank page. Most beginning artists stare blankly at the empty canvas. The only way to move forward is to move. So when the going gets rough (or mor...
Turning Pro
June 29, 2022 05:05 - 51 minutesIt would be a mistake to pretend that following along with all this instruction leads to automatic growth in your recruiting and business, and I’m not going to say that. There are about a half a million ways this all falls apart in big ways and small. If you do part of this wrong, you could become a laughing stock within the branding community, or maybe the whole project slowly loses momentum to the point where people quietly point to it as a failure behind your back and never let you on any ...
Making Decisions
June 22, 2022 05:05 - 20 minutesWhen it comes to employer branding, you can pretty much say and show anything at all. Any piece of content will highlight your brand somehow, so how do you choose what to build?
Content Frameworks
June 15, 2022 05:05 - 28 minutesThe power of a story has been written about many times before, but there is a core and undeniable truth: people believe stories. More than that, stories have a depth and complexity that claims simply cannot. You can read and project so many things into a story creating new depths, connecting you to the characters and developing emotional bonds like nothing else. So when you are looking to learn about a company, do you want claims, or do you want to hear the stories. That’s why content, in an...
Content Mapping
June 08, 2022 05:05 - 31 minutesThink of this as a manifesto to stop building empty content, to stop praising things that don’t matter because they are easy to praise. What if you started telling stories of people who had bounced from job to job who were smart and talented to just never felt at home. They never really fit. They were too curious about the wrong things, too focused on results in cultures that were process driven? You aren’t saying “Here is proof that you will be happy here” You are instead saying, “this is th...
How to Talk to Interesting Candidates
June 01, 2022 05:05 - 38 minutesThe funnel makes it really clear that there is amazing talent to be found in places far beyond the job board and the hiring event. Prospects are all around you. The trouble is that trying to communicate with them via a job postings will only work on the limited few who are looking for a job, know your brand and willing to listen to what you have to say (gosh, when I write it all out like that, it’s a wonder anyone ever applied from a job board). You’re going to have a lot better response, bot...
Distilling and Communicating the Brand
May 25, 2022 05:05 - 25 minutesIf you understand what motivates some people, you can look within your company and see which of these motivations you are rewarding. Are you rewarding people who innovate and drive change, or treat them like rabble rousers and try to silence them? Are you promoting the people who cultivate your “together” culture, or focus on the ones who do the best individual work? When you say you are trying to save the world, are you recognizing the people who work towards that goal or the people focused ...
Going Deep with your EVP
May 18, 2022 05:05 - 31 minutesWhat’s the difference between an EVP and an employer brand? It’s not a riddle, but for something so fundamental to our understanding of helping attract and retain talent, it seems like EVP, employer brand, brand position, and brand promise are almost never well-defined. I’ve been guilty of using them interchangeably, or just mirroring the terminology used by my customer in order to get to the work of crafting and communicating the brand. Every experienced and smart employer brand practitio...
That's Motivation!
May 11, 2022 05:05 - 24 minutesLet me start here: is there a job you would consider taking even if it meant a 5% salary cut? Is there a great-paying job you’d reject because the company mission didn’t align to your worldview? I’m willing to bet you said yes to both those questions, destroying the idea that the only thing people weigh when considering a new company or offer is salary. The fact that you would take a job that doesn’t pay the most means that there are other underlying reasons that are not as directly connected...
Employer Brand Architecture
May 04, 2022 05:05 - 57 minutesWe’ve spent a lot of talking about what makes up the brand, but when it’s time to make choices that will influence and change the brand, where do you start? The process of building the materials to attract and validate someone to your hiring process requires answering questions like these dozens of times a day, the answers to which will determine the success of your recruiting initiatives. So, you know, no pressure or anything. The answer to the question of “what video do I make” begins by un...
Where does your employer brand come from?
April 27, 2022 05:05 - 26 minutesIf you looked at all those sources of employer brand touch points and thought to yourself: How can anyone actually manage the employer brand when nothing is in their control? All these touch points that feed the perception come from every level and department of the company. But these touch points, regardless of what channel delivers them, come from a single core source. Every product decision, every customer support interaction, every news story, every recruiter interaction stems from or is ...
Your employer brand already exists
April 20, 2022 05:05 - 46 minutesYou may not think you have an employer brand, but you absolutely do. The fact that you haven’t invested in clarifying or amplifying it doesn’t mean it isn’t there and making a deep impact one way or the other on how hard you have to recruit people.
Episode 13: Candidate experience, counterfactuals and punching above your weight
April 13, 2022 05:00 - 38 minutesWhen you do it right, employer branding shows the right prospects how they will be more satisfied working for you. They might see one of those other "obvious" companies and assume that’s the best company. But as there’s a good chance it’s not the best for them, this is your chance to compete. And win.
Candidate experience, counterfactuals and punching above your weight
April 13, 2022 05:00 - 38 minutesWhen you do it right, employer branding shows the right prospects how they will be more satisfied working for you. They might see one of those other "obvious" companies and assume that’s the best company. But as there’s a good chance it’s not the best for them, this is your chance to compete. And win.
What's the narrative?
April 06, 2022 05:05 - 33 minutesStories rule the world and our imaginations, but more importantly, they are the driver of our choices. When you look at a nice watch and think about buying it, somewhere your brain wonders, “am I the kind of person who spends that much money on a watch?” This isn’t crazy. This is the power Apple leverages when it launches a new product, to know that people who love Apple products are the kind of people who would buy the new thing. They don’t want to be seen as missing out, or falling behind. ...
Relationships move the needle
March 30, 2022 05:05 - 28 minutesThe kind of evolution that comes from embracing employer brand thinking is a shift that starts as a transactional-driven recruiting model (putting butts in seats) and becomes a relationship-driven model. And while “relationship-driven” seems like a pleasant enough term, we need to see what it would mean for recruiters in how they approach their work and how it will impact hiring managers and the rest of the business. Read the book (it's open source and free): http://employerbrandbook.com Sign...
Recruiters and candidates want you to build an employer brand strategy
March 23, 2022 05:05 - 38 minutesEmployer branding isn’t just something that businesses and recruiters should see value in, it is something that your candidates, especially those with higher levels of talent, want you to invest in. In fact, they are desperate for it. Read Talent Chooses You (it's free and open-source): http://employerbrandbook.com Sign up for Employer Brand Headlines (also free!): https://employerbrandheadlines.substack.com/
Your company is begging for employer brand
March 16, 2022 05:05 - 34 minutesCompanies who value a higher grade of talent, but don’t want to spend more money begging them to apply and don’t have to have to pay too high a premium for their skills will see that a more clearly understood and communicated “why” will help them reach their goals.
Employer brand thinking
March 09, 2022 06:05 - 36 minutesEmployer brand (and employer brand thinking) is the lever that will change the recruiting and talent world. In an industry obsessed with best practice tactics, the coolest tool to plug in, and a focus on filling roles without a care to long-term quality, thinking systemically is heresy, plain and simple.
Alumni, Silver-medalists, Internal Mobility and Boomerangs
March 02, 2022 06:05 - 57 minutesOnce you re-think what you mean by a "job" in terms of what you're hiring, you'll see that there are lots of ways to engage forgotten audiences. You into an audiobook, revising and annotating from the text originally written three years ago. The entire project is brought to you by RecruitmentMarketing.com, and will take 6 months to complete. Subscribe to the biggest employer brand newsletter for free. It lands in your inbox every Monday morning and keep you sharp: https://employerbrandheadlin...
What is a job?
February 23, 2022 06:05 - 29 minutesWe live in a time when our roles change on a very regular basis. We’re expected to learn new skills, expand our ability to make an impact and rethink our role every year, every quarter and some time every week. How you described what a “data scientist” or “marketer” or “office manager” did on a daily basis two years ago would get them fired today for lacking the ability to create value. This season of The Talent Cast is sponsored by RecruitmentMarketing.com. Open source text of Talent Chooses...
More funnel thinking
February 16, 2022 06:05 - 30 minutesFocusing on the traditional recruitment funnel will allow you to optimize a sinking ship. The way you make a real impact on speed of hire, quality of hire, and really your entire talent strategy is to look above and below the funnel. This season to The Talent Cast is sponsored by RecruitmentMarketing.com. To read the open source text of Talent Chooses You, go to employerbrandbook.com
Funnel Thinking
February 09, 2022 06:05 - 43 minutesWe've spent the last 10 years embedding the "recruitment funnel" into how we see all our recruiting challenges, and it's time to admit that it is holding us back. This season of The Talent Cast is sponsored by RecruitmentMarketing.com. The open source text of Talent Chooses you can be found at employerbrandbook.com.
Employer branding will reinvent your hiring
February 02, 2022 06:05 - 32 minutes“Why” is the question of our age. It determines how we see ourselves, what we do and how we do it. We live in a world with abundant resources, choices, and options, a world filled with technology that your parents all but think is magic, and any fact, song, show or movie, article, book or idea at our beck and call within seconds. If you can do anything, what you choose to do isn’t based on basic constraints, but on why you want to do something.
Quality, not quantity
January 26, 2022 06:05 - 46 minutesIn this episode, we breakdown one of. the most important and least-discussed elements of employer branding and how it differs from every other kind of marketing: the focus on better, not more.
They aren’t your employees. They are volunteers.
January 19, 2022 06:05 - 43 minutesWelcome to Season Two of The Talent Cast! The big news is that this season, I'm turning Talent Chooses You into an audiobook, revising and annotating from the text originally written three years ago. The entire project is brought to you by RecruitmentMarketing.com, and will take 6 months to complete. In the first episode, we intro the book the jump into talking about how your people aren't employees you can boss around anymore. They are a lot more like paid volunteers.
What Does Employer Brand Want?
January 10, 2022 06:05 - 45 minutesSurprise episode! The Talent Cast is about to launch Season Two as the audiobook for Talent Chooses You. As an hors d'oeuvre (or maybe an aperitif?) for subscribers who have been waiting more than a year for new episodes, here is a "big idea" for you consider. The audiobook, sponsored by RecruitmentMarketing.com, will start airing January 19th, 2022. As always, you can subscribe to the world's largest employer brand newsletter by going to employerbrand.news and subscribing for free!
Thinking With Real Data: The Lost Interviews #4 - Andrew Gadomski
June 07, 2021 05:04 - 50 minutesThere's analytics. There's metrics. And then there's the magic and insight than Andrew creates every day. Prepare to have your mind blown (in a good way). You can connect with Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewgadomski/ Show Notes! Employer Brand Headlines is the #1 employer brand newsletter. It's free. Go sign up: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/employerbrandnews Talent Chooses You and The Employer Brand Handbook Vol 1 are now free and open source! http://employerbrandb...
The Power of Impact: The Lost Interviews #3 - Jill Dudones
June 07, 2021 05:03 - 53 minutesI love talking about employer branding with people who aren't IN employer brand exclusively. That's why chatting with Jill was such a hoot. She has perspective and experience to burn, and it shows in this amazing chat. You can connect with Jill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jilldudones/ Show Notes! Employer Brand Headlines is the #1 employer brand newsletter. It's free. Go sign up: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/employerbrandnews Talent Chooses You and The Employer Brand Handboo...
Talking At The Audience: The Lost Interviews #2 - Lindsay Parks
June 07, 2021 05:02 - 45 minutesFun fact: We recorded the first version of this interview more than a year ago, but it didn't record properly (there were tears). So Lindsay, being magnanimous and generous as always, let me take a second shot at it. Which is great, because she's seen some stuff and always brings such a great perspective to branding and recruitment marketing. You can find Lindsay on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-parks/ Show Notes! Employer Brand Headlines is the #1 employer brand newslet...
A More Efficient Trainwreck: The Lost Interviews #1 - Katrina Kibben
June 07, 2021 05:01 - 49 minutesKatrina Kibben is the reigning champion of all things job postings. There's no need to call a vote. There will be no recount. If you had any doubt, you have only to listen to this interview where they pinpoint any number of instances of "recruiting insanity" that most of us take as gospel. Katrina can be found on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrinakibben/, or through their company Three Ears Media https://www.threeearsmedia.com/. Show notes! Employer Brand Headlines is the #1 emp...
A Better Resume
August 31, 2020 05:05 - 45 minutesLooking for a job? Yeah, I hear you. It is the WORST! But you can take a bunch of lessons from employer branding to create a resume that isn't just "good," but helps you stand out and get the job you want. Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. My free newsletter on employer brand headlines hit 1,250 subscribers, so I decided to revamp it on a better platform. Same great content, easier to read!
The View From Here with Holland McCue
August 24, 2020 05:05 - 46 minutesThe future of employer branding (or maybe the maturation of it) lays in how well it is integrated into the corporate brand. The more your brand looks like a single idea seen through multiple lenses, the more each aspect can support the others. And there are few better examples of that than at Delta, where Holland McCue has pushed to create a seamless sense of brand, even when things are deeply chaotic and the future is uncertain. Here's my interview with Holland. Show notes: Talent Chooses Y...
Lighthouses and Books with Charu Malhotra
August 17, 2020 05:05 - 46 minutesThis week we have a lovely long conversation with Charu Malhotra. Charu's worked on a number of employer brands that you've probably hear of, like Unilever, BP, and Ferrero (just to name a few). Enjoy! Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. My free newsletter on employer brand headlines hit 1,250 subscribers, so I decided to revamp it on a better platform. Same great content, easier to read! At ...
Cognitive Bias
August 10, 2020 05:05 - 34 minutesWe all make decisions based on mental shortcuts and pattern recognition. It's just what humans do. But if you're building a brand, these same shortcuts can keep you from seeing the brand that's right in front of you. And the more you learn about these biases, perhaps there are ways you can use them in increase talent attraction and engagement. Thanks to Jason Kent Crowell for the question! Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Ge...
All Employer Branding Is Local
August 03, 2020 05:05 - 30 minutesWe are seeing the end of "monolithic employer brands," concepts that focused more on consistency that connecting to a person. But if you start thinking about your brand and how it can leverage its pillars better to various micro-cultures, suddenly your brand has more meaning. Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. My free newsletter on employer brand headlines hit 1,250 subscribers, so I decided ...
Beyond Increments
July 27, 2020 05:05 - 36 minutesIn the last four months, everything has changed, including our candidates. They want different things, they behave differently, and the act differently. Have we changed our own processes the same way? Or are we still tweaking and optimizing? If the world is 100% different, why aren't we? Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. My free newsletter on employer brand headlines hit 1,250 subscribers, s...
Employer Brand? Or People Brand?
July 20, 2020 05:05 - 32 minutesI'm seeing a lot of comments/chatter around businesses jettisoning their interest in employer brand as the pandemic/recession takes hold. And it makes sense: if you've built all your metrics and value around filling the top of the funnel, not having much of a recruiting funnel makes employer brand redundant. We all know employer brand is much much more than filling the funnel, but somewhere along the way, we got pigeon-holed into this limited value. So maybe it's time for employer branding as...
Is Employer Brand Evolving?
July 13, 2020 05:05 - 30 minutesLast year, employer brand was the buzz word, but where is the buzz now? Given a year or three to consider and implement employer branding strategies, where has employer brand landed as a corporate function? Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. Sign up for my free newsletter on employer brand headlines Have a questions you would like two employer brand experts to answer on the show? There's a...
Chicken or the Egg?
July 06, 2020 05:05 - 34 minutesThe age old question: where should employer branding live? TA? Marketing? Comms? Like the "chicken or the egg" question, the answer involves a lot of evolution... Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. Sign up for my free newsletter on employer brand headlines Have a questions you would like two employer brand experts to answer on the show? There's a way to record your question on the h...
Who's In Charge?
June 29, 2020 05:05 - 24 minutesWho's in charge of the company? Leadership, right? Well, recently it sure seems like the employees are making their voices heard in the strategic direction of a company. How does having staff more "in charge" of a company impact your ability to manage the employer brand? Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. Sign up for my free newsletter on employer brand headlines Have a questions you wo...
Taking a Stand
June 22, 2020 05:05 - 34 minutesYes, it is absolutely time for your employer brand to quit playing it safe. You and your brand need to take a stand for something. And while that sounds terrifying (trust me, I know), the opportunity it presents is absolutely amazing. Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available on Amazon right now! Get yours on Kindle or paperback. Sign up for my free newsletter on employer brand headlines I mentioned Overthrow II (the book) Have a questions you wo...
What is Employer Brand For?
June 15, 2020 05:05 - 25 minutesIt may seem like a simple question, but how you answer it determines the scope of your work. If you want to keep the employer brand function from being a funnel-filler or the "swag maven," you need to answer the question right. Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available for pre-order on Amazon with a June 15, 2020 delivery. Get yours on Kindle or paperback. Sign up for my free newsletter on employer brand headlines Want to ask me anything? I have op...
Fan Fiction and Employer Brand Universes
June 08, 2020 05:05 - 24 minutesSome stories are so engaging and attractive that other people extend them, telling stories you never envisioned. Which, to be fair, is what you should want from your employer brand. Show notes: Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding is available for pre-order on Amazon with a June 15, 2020 delivery. Get yours on Kindle or paperback. Sign up for my free newsletter on employer brand headlines Want to ask me anything? I have open office hours. Grab your free spot. Lea...
You Can't Party at Lolla Anymore (with Rob Stevenson)
June 01, 2020 05:05 - 31 minutesFor those of you old enough to remember, there was a time when music came on vinyl (sit down old man!). There was a thing (mostly in the punk world) called a "split single," where two bands who were friends would each take a side of the single. In a similar punk spirit, Rob Stevenson of Talk Talent To Me and I decided to have a nice rambling conversation about Covid, the industry, and what was (and wasn't) working for companies. This is part one of the conversation, but part two lives on ...
Taking Your Employer Brand Beyond the Obvious
May 25, 2020 05:05 - 35 minutesCall it "employer blanding" or even "the sea of sameness," but there's a valid reason to think all employer brands look and feel the same. But that's not a rule or anything. The trick is learning how to push beyond the obvious to understand your talent targets and offer them something far more meaningful than what's obvious. Show notes: Yes, the books are starting to roll out!!! The Employer Brand Handbook Vol 1: Working with Recruiters is now live on Amazon Talent Chooses You:...