The U.S. Marines have made a career out of recruiting based on letting 18-year-olds know how tough and challenging becoming a Marine actually is. It's a concept that can also work for businesses of all sizes. That's why we invited Charlotte Marshall, director, global employer brand & recruitment marketing expert & best selling author of “Give and Get Employer Branding Repel the Many and Compel the Few with Impact, Purpose and Belonging” on the podcast. In it, Charlotte reveals why the most effective employer brands don’t attract candidates; they repel them. This episode is part of our Cult Brand series, sponsored by RecruitmentMarketing.com and the boys are joined by Julie Calli.
TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY: Disability Solutions partners with our clients to build best-in-class inclusion programs and reach qualified, talented individuals with disabilities of every skill, education, and experience level.
INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel (23s):
Oh yeah. What's up everybody? It's your favorite guilty pleasure AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. And this is the cult brand series. I as always, am Joel Cheeseman joined by the Moe and Larry to my curly, please welcome Julie Calli and Chad Sowash to the show!
Julie (43s):
Hey there!
Joel (44s):
And we are giddy guys. We have a really special guest today. Get excited. We welcome Charlotte Marshall director of Global Import Brand New Recruitment Marketing, and best selling author of Give & Get Employer Branding: Repel the Many and Compel the Few with Impact, Purpose and Belonging. She's as impressive as that book title is long. Charlotte, welcome to the podcast.
Charlotte (1m 9s):
Good to be here.
Joel (1m 11s):
Good to have you. So for our few listeners that don't know you, haven't seen you speak at a conference or heard you on a podcast, give us the Twitter bio on Charlotte Marshall, and what makes you tick?
Charlotte (1m 24s):
I started out in internal communications and quickly found employer branding 15, almost 20 years ago. And the thing that makes me passionate is learning and growing in the space. So I have just embarked on my seventh global employer brand build at a fortune 500 company and definitely always learning and growing.
Joel (1m 43s):
And tell us where you're recording from so we can all hate you for that.
Charlotte (1m 47s):
I am on a little island outside of San Diego called Coronado, which is a little slice of Americana. It's all mom and pop shop, the Navy seals train here. So there's lots of eye candy for any women out there.
Joel (2m 3s):
(bad singing starts) You never saw close your eyes (bad signing ends)
Charlotte (2m 8s):
And it is just a really wonderful place to raise our family. So we've got three kids that are growing up here that we're trying to not spoil to death.
Joel (2m 17s):
Not jealous, not jealous whatsoever.
Chad (2m 19s):
So you say you found Employer Brand (EB) 15 years ago. Did it even exist 15 years ago? Or was this something that you were like, Hey, we should probably do this because it makes sense.
Charlotte (2m 30s):
It definitely existed. I don't know if it existed in the way that we talk about it today, but in 2005, somebody tapped me on the shoulder at Ernst and Young and said, you know, we need to convince a group of employees to relocate from Philadelphia to Washington DC or McLean, Virginia. We're not going to pay him any more money. Can you help us convince them why they should upgrade their families and come and take this job?
Joel (2m 54s):
And, we don't have an office in Cornado.
Charlotte (2m 59s):
Right. So definitely started dabbling in it. And then a few years later, I had moved to Southern California and I was doing an internal HR Comms role at a company called Life Technologies that later was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific and they had a huge need for this body of work. But it reported into communications and they called it something different. But I was the only person in the world that I knew doing the work at the time. And there were a few of us, but it was definitely larger global conglomerates. Whereas now, I mean, it's almost one of the first 20 or 30 hires at startups these days. So it's definitely grown and evolved a lot.
Chad (3m 34s):
That's interesting that it reported into comms because we always have this discussion argument/discussion. Let's say it should EB Report into HR since HR is more focused on compliance and risk, then they are belonging in purpose. Should they, should they should EB reporting be reporting into HR or should it be marketing or maybe comms?
Charlotte (3m 59s):
I have reported to all three in the variety of roles that I've had. And my answer to that question, it's whoever has the most passion and the pocket to fund the work.
Joel (4m 10s):
Cha-ching.
Charlotte (4m 10s):
That's where you can be successful, but it needs to be the person who can fight for the budget and allocate and protect that budget because a lot of people invest in the role and then it's not funded properly if it sits in HR. Whereas if it sits in marketing, it comes with more funding and resource, but the way a marketer thinks and approaches employer brand is so fundamentally different than what we write about in the book Give and Get, that there's a quite a bit of training and nuance that needs to go into making that relationship work. And I'll tell you what I mean, if I'm a marketer and I want to sell you the AirPods you guys had me put on for this interview, I'm going to broadcast and tell you about the features, the benefits and the opportunities of AirPods. And if you can pay the transactional price that we're listing for the AirPods, everyone gets a pair.
Charlotte (4m 54s):
That's how marketers are trained to think and to promote their work. And when I learned employer brand 15, 20 years ago, that's how I was taught to advertise and sell our jobs. We seduce people with our Bespoke coffee and our ping pong, ping pong, and all of the shiny things in our offices.
Joel (5m 13s):
He didn't say ping pong table.
Charlotte (5m 16s):
Ping pong, foosball, whatever it was.
Joel (5m 18s):
Casual Friday, throw that one in there.
Charlotte (5m 20s):
And it worked. And all of a sudden these large companies that worked for the people I hadn't heard of before were becoming more attractive, but it ultimately didn't help our recruiting funnel because we were flooded with unqualified applicants. So somewhere along the career journey, I met an agency that taught me a different way of doing the work. And instead of that one way value exchange that broadcast why we're so great. It's a mutual value exchange where we actually lead with the expectation of what it takes to thrive and what it takes to get ahead in an organization. And the truth is employer branding is much more like online matchmaking than it is a linear sell because rather than giving the job to everyone who wants it, we reject as you all know, 99% of the people who apply.
Charlotte (6m 2s):
So it's a really different proposition. And when sitting in marketing, without that expertise, you'll find a lot of controls and nuances in place that make it really hard to do what you're there to do.
Julie (6m 15s):
I find it absolutely impressive that, you know, you've worked on seven employer brand projects. Did all of these companies understand before you joined in that role that they needed this, or was it part of the role that you had to convince them how that this was going to bring value to them?
Charlotte (6m 34s):
I've been lucky in which every role I've taken, the business case was already established for them to create the headcount and hire me. And so I was the first person enrolled in all seven of these organizations, but I didn't have to convince people to hire me. I had to convince them to grow my budget and grow my team and grow my resources over time. So sometimes I came in with a really small budget. Other times over the years, it's gotten a little bit bigger, but it's never starting where I need it to be. So there's been a lot of learnings around the education of the business, building the business case, and then getting the ROI story down so that we can continue to grow and invest in the function because that education, even if you have someone with passionate pockets where it, the rest of the organization really doesn't really know what to do with me when I come in or how I can help.
Joel (7m 20s):
The touching on the learning piece a little bit. We mentioned your book in the intro, which is what three years old now. Two years old?
Charlotte (7m 29s):
2020 March, 2020 worst time in the history to launch a book.
Joel (7m 32s):
The COVID happened. My sense of time went out the window when that pandemic went down, but your spin on this, and I saw you presented the RA. Repell the many and compel the few. In other words, the most effective employer brands don't attract candidates, they repel them. This sounds like the girl I had a crush on in high school, but go into what you mean by that and why it's important with employer branding. It was
Chad (7m 55s):
It was more than one girl by the way.
Charlotte (7m 60s):
Love to hear that story. So what we mean by this, is Brian and I wrote this book because we found when consulting and working with a lot of different organizations that there's a hesitation or a fear to lean into the cultural reality or the harsh norms that go hand in hand with working at any organization. And while everybody knows that we're not always an easy place to work. And every organization around the world has something that makes it difficult. There has been a hesitation in the resistance to lean in and to share that information. So then in exchange for that, we end up with career sites and messaging that are the Instagram version of the reality of working here.
Charlotte (8m 40s):
And yeah, we're telling the truth and we're proud about the things that make us great, but it's the sunshine version of the truth. And it's like more close to what we're like on our very best day, as opposed to an average or a bad day. So rather than using your employer brand as a magnet that attracts everyone towards your brand, which we all did in the early days and some organizations are still doing it now but to a lesser extent, since the book has come out. We really want you to use your employer brand as a smart filter. So rather than attracting everyone, we want you to use better messaging and better storytelling earlier in a candidate journey so that people can self-select out if they're ultimately not the right match for your organization. So in order to have that, make that really important decision on whether or not you want to take the jump, we first need to know how hard is it going to be to do my job here?
Charlotte (9m 28s):
What obstacles might be in my way? How do people respond on a bad day? Or if they're under time, pressure, resource pressure, et cetera. What are the challenging and supporting behaviors that tend to emerge? And it's funny when my coauthor was consulting with a huge tech brand, when they went in to do the finding report and they're like, okay, we've got some news for you, you have absolutely zero work-life balance here. And it's really the overwhelming defining part of your employee experience. And all the executives looked at each other and they were like, oh God, what do we do with this? We can't possibly tell anybody that if they come to work here, they're giving up their nights and weekends for the rest of their career.
Charlotte (10m 9s):
And we said, it's absolutely the opposite because it's actually the single source of pride and it galvanizes people together. It's not because they have to give up this huge part of their life, but it's the pride of what they accomplish in exchange for working that way. So being able to see your products in millions of people's hands, being able to produce things at lightning speed, et cetera, there was a variety of things that came out, that we write about in the book. It actually is this give and get value proposition in exchange for this, you get this in return and what I've learned over helping define these messages and bring them to life as human beings, our threshold for pain is very unique and it differs person by person.
Charlotte (10m 50s):
So if you were preparing to go on a hike and you were standing under a mountain, and I told you what it would take to get to the pinnacle and to reach the view, which could be the same thing as growing in your career, advancing, accomplishing what you're hired to do one person can look at what it takes and say, you know what? I don't want it that bad. Thanks anyway, I'm going to take the gondola to the top. Where somebody else is sitting there assessing what it takes to climb and is sufficiently turned on by how much challenge is in front of them and how that's going to give meaning to their climb. And this is a really important thing to start to grasp when you're an employer brand, because we want to find people that are turned on by the challenges within our organization.
Charlotte (11m 31s):
And we want to help people who ultimately wouldn't thrive to self-select out, because that has speeds up our recruiting efficiency. It reduces new hire attrition and turnover, and ultimately Canada's really dropped their shield in the recruiting process and they lean in and they get really curious. You know, when we feel like we're being sold to we get defensive, or we, you know, start to get protective, but when are like, let me tell you five reasons you probably, this job might not be for you. When I use that in interviews, I literally see candidates lean in on the zoom screen and they get really curious and they start asking questions and then they actually start convincing me why they're prepared and able to handle all of those things I've just described or like, you know, I'm so glad you told me that because I absolutely hate meetings.
Charlotte (12m 15s):
And if this is a company where I have to sit in meetings all day long, I would lose my mind. So really appreciate the honesty. And I'll think about if I know any else in mine, in my network, that would be a good fit for you. And it's a really great conversation that starts to happen. And that's what we mean by repel the many, compel the few, using your brand as a smart filter, starting to have the courage to embrace what makes you difficult, but present it in a way that gives people more information to make meaningful career decisions before joining your company.
Chad (12m 46s):
Appcast, I actually put out some great data that shows that companies are repelling the hell out of candidates. 92% of candidates don't even finish the application process. So all of that great work that you guys are doing all that great work to attract great people who want to be able to be a part of an organization, the purpose, the belonging, all that stuff, whether they're giving their nights and weekends away, it doesn't matter. You guys are doing all that work on the front end, and then it's taken a shit on the backend with the application process where 92% are ejecting. So you're getting the repel. But the question is, are you repelling the wrong people at this point?
Charlotte (13m 26s):
That's not the kind of repel we're talking about, and you're absolutely right candidate experience and the exposure to your brand, it's a lot more than just turning on your employer brand story. That investment is a bit wasted if your technology and your candidate experience is not up to par.
Joel (13m 42s):
It sounds like you're talking a lot more about the Marines come to mind when I heard you talking about that, the Marines are pretty open about we're the toughest branch, we have the toughest boot camp, or at least that's the messaging and Chad being an army guy might disagree with that. But as an outsider, that's the message that the Marines, you know, give to the world and they attract people that are looking to embrace that. There's areally old classified from way back in the day and I'll paraphrase this, but it was basically saying we're taking an expedition to the south pole. You'll probably die or catch frostbite. Only ones willing to take a risk should apply and they had an overwhelming number of people apply. So I think there's a lot of relevance to what you're saying.
Joel (14m 25s):
What I'm curious about is, you know, since you've written the book, you know, the me too movement has happened. Black lives matter. DEI is at the front of everyone's, you know, thought process and recruiting. It's a really, you know, trending, doesn't this message go against the whole, like, everyone's welcome. We want everyone here. Like, how do you sort of argue the point that you're being really exclusive in a very inclusive world?
Charlotte (14m 52s):
It's such a good question and I'm glad you bring up the Marine example because it's absolutely right. When we talk about repelling the many to compel the few, like hell week comes to mind or the Marine Corps or any of the military branches. The thing that attracts people to a joint to try out and to withstand that is the fact that they're good enough to make it through and the pride that comes from being able to overcome those challenges. And when we think about inclusion and diversity and equity within the companies, we don't want to think about giving it in terms of repelling people in terms of fit. It's more about a motivation or a mindset, and being able to work within those constraints within an environment.
Charlotte (15m 37s):
So for example, one of the brands I worked on recently, one of the things that came out was this is a really meeting heavy culture. And we like meetings. We're going to be in meetings all day long. You're going to be asked to sit in a ton of meetings. So if you don't like sitting in meetings, you probably not going to enjoy working here. But on the flip side of that, it really was a true meritocracy. Good ideas were embraced quickly, regardless of where they came from. If you are new to the organization, if you were junior in your career, you were new to the industry. It was really likely that you were going to be sitting around a meeting with the C-suite, with senior leaders and being asked and expected and encouraged to participate. So when you think I&D efforts, you know, that message, everyone are welcome and everyone's at the table, but if you don't like meetings, you're probably not going to like working here.
Joel (16m 24s):
As people are having conversations about being more inclusive, you're talking exclusivity. Is that a tough discussion to have, or are they totally separate, able to compartmentalize strategies?
Charlotte (16m 34s):
I mean, we build inclusion and belonging into every employer brand that we create. And every employer brand that I create for organizations, that's a core tenant that we're building and we're building messaging and strategy around what it feels like to belong and what it takes to push the organization forward. There's I have yet to work for an organization that feels like they have reached where they want to be in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So we're often talking about what we're building and the opportunity to come and to help shape that.
Joel (17m 5s):
Curious, Julie, are you buying this whole, you know, compel the few and repel the many? Or is this falling flat with you?
Julie (17m 12s):
Well, I'll tell you, I was in a meeting once a few years ago, and someone said to me, I want to learn, how am I strategy? You can help me repel the types of candidates I don't want, instead of talk to me about how to attract them. And I was ready to fall out of my chair because nobody had ever brought that up to me before. It was always about more candidates, fill our funnels, fill our pipelines, but this wasn't about how many people can we convert into our ATS. It was helped me save time and money and effort that I'm wasting bringing people in and hiring them and getting them in onboarding them. And then they leave 90 later because they're not aligned with what we really are.
Julie (17m 54s):
And I think, I think she's absolutely right that Give and the Get the Repel the Many is not talking about taking away the pipeline for your recruiters. It's talking about building efficiency for them so that they can actually spend time hiring the quality people that really fit and will stay with the organization longer because they understand what they're getting into.
Joel (18m 17s):
Pay attention.
Julie (18m 18s):
Yeah. They're very good marketers. You sell the dream, but is a dream real when you arrive at that turns to, you know, high turnover.
Chad (18m 25s):
Yeah. The big question is, can you get budget for it? Right. So we're always scrambling and HR. And obviously if you're not reporting to HR, this might be a little bit easier, but in HR and talent acquisition around trying to get more resources, trying to get more budgets. So the big question is, especially when you're talking about organizations who to be quite Frank over the years, haven't really embraced telling the truth. They want the flowers and the honeysuckle and whatnot. They don't want to show, you know, what it might actually cost you to come work here. So if you know, you're fighting against that. I know Charlotte in working with all these big companies over the years, you've had to focus on being able to sell that whole stream of of thought, how did you do it?
Charlotte (19m 10s):
I know it's one of those things. It's such a counterintuitive idea at first blush and it's provocative. And I remember speaking at an I4CP conference a couple of years ago in front of 200 CHROs. And the title of my talk was why you should be repelling candidates rather than attracting them. And I was nervous walking on stage. I mean, I had a lot of puzzled looks in the introduction, but it was really effective of getting people's attention. And I have yet to after explaining it and talking it through with a variety of stakeholders, have anyone disagree that it's a smart way to go. People are nervous, right? Like they're nervous to start airing their dirty laundry and talking about negative parts of their employee experience.
Charlotte (19m 55s):
But when you look at the type of talent they need to attract to grow and be successful, which behaviors are holding them back, that comes out in our AVP research. Like we'll look at gaps in any experience, and we'll say, okay. So in order for you to grow and succeed, you're going to need to have a workforce that's more agile and less friendly, maybe less nice. I've been working with an organization that feels like the people are too friendly. Everyone's so nice that you don't get honest, direct feedback, et cetera. So you want people that have these skillsets to come into the organization. So we'll use the employer brand as a tool to start attracting people, to level up the behaviors that we need to grow and be successful. But at the same time, we internalize the employee value proposition and try to inspire behavior change and celebrate and galvanize and bring people together for starting to behave in different ways as well.
Joel (20m 46s):
So Julie and the gang at recruitment marketing are having a, I think it's a webinar about TikTok. Julie, is that correct?
Julie (20m 52s):
Yeah. Tomorrow we're going to be talking the talk and using TikTok and recruitment marketing.
Joel (20m 58s):
There you go. So I want to just talk briefly about when you mentioned, when you got into employment branding and it felt like at the time, you know, sort of the rise of Glassdoor was a big part of companies really thinking about what is our brand and how should we, you know, present ourselves to the community? And I think over the course of being in this profession, you've seen the rise and maybe the impending fall of Glassdoor. And now we're seeing the rise of TikTok. It seems like a really hard strategy to go on social media and particularly video and talk about how tough it is to work at your company and sort of filter out everyone. What tips would you give Charlotte in terms of you utilizing TikTok and presenting that message in a social media format?
Joel (21m 44s):
And Julie, I guess, from you after to follow her up is what are, what are you guys seeing on TikTok on the community? What are people doing on your end to brand themselves on TikTok that you're finding is pretty unique?
Charlotte (21m 57s):
That's a great question. I mean, I love social media for activation of an employer brand because it helps so much with the authenticity. It makes a lot of organizations still very uncomfortable to invest in advocacy and to unleash their employees, to start being ambassadors for the brand and letting them speak freely. And I'm always in that debate and conversation on let's go, let's release them. Let's let people start talking and showing. TikTok is particularly interesting because you need employees to be the stars of them. This isn't something that can traditionally be highly curated and produced by my team or a video team. We need to find employee actors that want to star in them.
Charlotte (22m 37s):
And what I would say to anyone doing it is just be really clear with your storyline. You want people to say if you're the type of person that thrives in challenge that wants to see your work in the hands of millions of people every day, and is motivated by working with the smartest people on the planet. You're probably going to love working here, but if you don't like this, this and this, we're probably not the place for you. So you always have to have that balance, but on TikTok, you want to make it fun and humorous so it's an opportunity to really not take yourself too seriously.
Joel (23m 7s):
And I can see the company that likes meetings on TikTok. Now just TikTok in the meeting, going. I love meetings. Meetings are great, fantastic.
Julie (23m 15s):
But you can have fun with that. I mean, TikTok, it's number one use is entertainment and people are digesting content for the intent of entertainment. They're not going on there to do their job search, but they are absolutely absorbing brand while they're there. And brand is who you are when you're not in the room. It's what people are saying and thinking in their impressions of you. So this is a great way to help influence those stories. But yeah, big organizations should have concern for it because it is like user generated content is really what fuels it and you can't really control that.
Julie (23m 58s):
So if a large organization is really concerned about risk, it's something to be very careful about. But also at the same time, if you're going to come in with a strategy is one thing, but it's already happening anyways. They user generated content. Is there whether you want it to be or not. The big one I'd say right now, that's going on is all the salary transparency, gen Z is the biggest user of TikTok and they are not afraid to get on there and share, tell what's going on in the world. They're not afraid, like past generations have been, are a little hesitant to get on video and be commital. They'll put it out there. So that information's there.
Julie (24m 38s):
Salary transparency is happening. Reviews about the company, whether they're positive or negative, they are happening and you cannot control that. So I understand why companies fear that, but the difference is, do you just let it go and you don't have any story? Or you don't have a voice in the room? Or could go on the platform and you start making influence into it. It's a big decision companies have to make, but in the end, people are talking, they are putting it out there. And I think, that transparency, it's just what's happening now. So should you be honest about the things that are probably difficult? Well, there's always, that's why great comms people like Charlotte know how to take a negative thing that somebody might view and look at it from a different angle and say, how might this be a positive to someone else?
Julie (25m 23s):
And then tell that great story. But Charlotte, I'd love to know your thoughts on salary transparency. Like this is a big thing that's happening right now. States are starting to make it the law that you have to disclose the salary in the job posting in certain states and companies are nervous. Is this going to cause people to be detracted from my company if I disclose it?
Joel (25m 49s):
Is a low salary in your strategy?
Julie (25m 52s):
Yeah.
Charlotte (25m 53s):
I'd be nervous too if I wasn't paying market rates. I mean, I am here for this. I love it. I love to negotiate and I love to negotiate salary. I just joined a new organization and got to do it all over again. And it's one of the most thrilling things to do. And I think particularly women, we're not traditionally comfortable asking for what we feel like we deserve and what we get. And it's really difficult when the information isn't there. So why not? The only reason not to post it in my opinion is to low ball people and to give them what they're willing to accept versus what the market rate for that position is. So we're going through the same exercise in my organization now. And we're looking to re-scope our career site to launch our employer brand at the end of the year.
Charlotte (26m 37s):
And I'm looking to build it in so that we can add that transparency of all of our jobs. We do not pay bottom of the range. I'm not worried about where I am currently, but I would be worried with low unemployment and a lot of choice, I'm hoping this encourages organizations to stop hiding behind other things and just raising the level of what everyone can expect.
Chad (27m 2s):
Question, let's just say around transparency. Charlotte, you've worked again for a bunch of bigger companies or practitioner, you have to do this on a daily basis. We're talking about companies who move slow. These are monolithic sized companies in some cases. How do you get them to move fast in the direction that you want them to move in? And let's say for this case of salary transparency, case in point, how do you get them to embrace this, to see it as something that is a positive for them, that they have to do?
Charlotte (27m 33s):
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is showing the risk. Big companies only move quick when you connect show, if you can expose how much risk they're exposing themselves to, from a legal perspective or something else, you'll be surprised how fast big companies move if you can show risk avoidance. The other thing is just really strong data. And the more data you have, whether you're negotiating your own salary or trying to get an organization to do something, the better you are. So concise data points, business case, and most places I've worked are very competitive. So you, you need to know the competitors that your C-suite cares about, who they're watching, who they are nipping at the heels at, who they absolutely want to beat at any cost and go in our work as much information about what they're doing or gearing up to do.
Joel (28m 16s):
It seems like on a regular basis now, Chad and I talk about companies that are raising money or getting into the employee engagement game and work from home has made it very challenging for these companies to engage or employers, to engage with their employees and candidates. I'm guessing that you have sort of taken a new look at what you do and what you recommend to companies when they have a primary work from home workforce. Can you talk about that? And what tips would you give employers who have gone from everyone's in the office to no, one's in the office.
Charlotte (28m 55s):
It's such an advantage from a recruiting perspective if you're open to remote work, because you're no longer looking for the strongest coder in Dallas, Texas, you know, you're able to look at the entire US or potentially internationally. So it opens your pool quite considerably, a lot of top talent aren't going back to the office full time. You know, the companies that are are mandating, full-time are really easy to poach talent away from because during the pandemic good, bad, or otherwise, we all got a taste of a different type of work. And I like to ask people when I'm doing employer brand research, if you woke up tomorrow with a winning lottery ticket in your pocket, and it was so big, that work just became optional.
Charlotte (29m 38s):
What would you do? And it's my favorite question to ask in a focus group, because you can imagine almost nobody says, I've come back and do this job tomorrow. Like that's almost a given, but watching them light up and talk about what they would do next or how they would spend their time is a really magical thing. And I think the pandemic and the shift to different ways of working is trying to teach us the same point. So we're not having this huge jackpot lottery win, but in the last two years, we have all made quality of life wins that we're not willing to compromise on whether it's, I want to go to yoga in the middle of the day, or I want to be home to tuck my kids in every night, or I don't want to sit on the road.
Joel (30m 20s):
Let me flip that real quick. So we talk about the JP Morgans.
Chad (30m 24s):
Here we go.
Joel (30m 25s):
Yeah. Like the Wall Street firms, the Goldman Sachs that are like, you're going back to the office. This is the way it is. You know, I know commuting is a bitch, but it is what it is like given your strategies to companies, wouldn't you advise them to double down on that and to really appeal to the people that do want to go to an office every day.
Charlotte (30m 43s):
Yeah. And you've got to be prepared to tell them what they get, that they can't get from home and they've got to be prepared to lose either in terms of engagement and productivity or retention, a large part that got a taste of something that they don't want to give up. It's easy to not give something that you've never had. Right. If you don't have a promotion yet you're used to working on that salary. It's not a takeaway, but after you've had it, Ooh, it's like taking candy from a baby. And there's a couple large companies that are making these mandates. And they're really easy to steal talent from it's exposing your brand and your people in a really competitive time, in a way that I would encourage people to be more flexible and to not have an all or nothing approach.
Charlotte (31m 30s):
My advice is always find a way to flex. And everyone has different points where they can flex.
Julie (31m 34s):
Yeah. I, people had a taste. I agree with that and now some people are not willing to sacrifice. I think the overwhelming majority as people still would like to have from the employee perspective, is that they'd still like to have contacted engagements with coworkers, but not in the office every day. So those companies that are all or nothing like we're back on the first and everybody needs to be an office. Yeah. The moment you do that, go look at how many of the contacts grow on your LinkedIn employees profiles because they're out there networking and they're immediately looking for what's next. You don't want to force people into change too quickly.
Julie (32m 16s):
Like you have to have a reason why there's a great benefit to come in there. People are seeing the advantages with flexible work. And they're not going to just go back into a mold of, of this or that. They want to have choice. They want to have options. They want to flexibility. And if you're not going to give it to them, somebody else will. And there are plenty of jobs out there for them to go explore right now.
Chad (32m 41s):
Amen.
Charlotte (32m 41s):
I was chatting with a financial services organization for a large employer brand role, end of last year, maybe beginning of this year. And they still haven't filled it and it started out being remote. And then right at the point of like the last interview, like, oh, we're flipping, everyone has to come back in the office and people don't want to go and move to this town in the Midwest where they're headquartered. And they're really struggling, the position has been open gosh, over a year now because they can't find for such initial, with the level of experience that requires someone who is willing to go and move there.
Julie (33m 13s):
I think of the, like the cascading effect of that. Like I can't get someone to come in and help me figure out why my company's valuable to work for, but yet I'm still. So if I can't get that person and how am I going to convince others?
Charlotte (33m 26s):
And it's such an advantage. If you are headquartered in a place that isn't Coronado, California, you're not limited by that anymore in this new normal.
Chad (33m 37s):
Oh, she's saying you're not limited by it. And I think that's the smart play, right? But again, companies are doing what they feel like they have to do. Quote, unquote, "have to do" whether they're ripping people back into the office or allowing that autonomy that we've had for the last few years. I got to say, Charlotte, we appreciate you coming on. The name of the book is Give and Get. Charlotte, where can people find this book and buy several copies for their friends?
Charlotte (34m 6s):
You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble anywhere you go online to buy your books. It is likely there.
Joel (34m 13s):
And we all just learned that Barnes and Noble is still in business. Charlotte thanks for joining us, Julie, it's always fun to get your insights. Chad another one in the can.
Chad and Cheese (34m 27s):
We out.
OUTRO (35m 16s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.