Episode 69 of "The Shortlist" (hosted by Johnny Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Social Talent) features a conversation with Ed Nathanson, VP of Talent and Talent Branding at EQRx, about the future of employer branding in a post-pandemic hiring market. The discussion emphasizes authenticity, trust, and using employees as brand ambassadors. Ed outlines his background in recruitment/employer branding and explains EQRx’s mission—to make affordable, high-quality medicine widely accessible—and notes the company launched in January 2020 and grew from about 12–15 people when he joined to roughly 240 at time of interview, with recent partnerships to discover new molecules.
Questions this video answers
Episode 69
January 2020
From about 12–15 people when he joined to approximately 240 at time of interview
Chapters
Sa. You're very welcome to episode 69 of the Shortlist with myself, your host, Johnny Campbell. I'm CEO and co founder of Social Talent, the learning platform for hiring skills. And you can find me here on this show every week. And you can find this show on your podcast source, whether that be Apple, Spotify or you can find us live. Hopefully you're joining us live right now on LinkedIn or YouTube. We broadcast every Wednesday afternoon, UK Irish time. And if you are listening to us live, you're very welcome. If you're confused about where to get the podcast, where to get the live what's coming up next, you can find out more about the show@SocialTown.com the shortlist. So let's get on with today's show, episode 69. And we're going to be talking about the future, the future of employer branding. Right? Finding a way as an organization to stand out right now from the crowd in, you know, in a way that's authentic and compelling. I think it's harder than it's ever been. It's a super tricky task right now and the kind of post pandemic environment where recruiting is on fire, everybody's hiring, but we all have a different sense of values and we've had different perspective. I think trust and humanity are absolutely rising to the top in terms of the key employee needs that we're all looking for. So the question becomes how can a successful, how can you create a successful employer brand that reflects that in this very fast changing environment? Well, luckily this week we're, I was fortunate to have a really great expert on the show. Ed Nathanson is joining us from Boston and he's the VP of Talent and Talent Branding at EQ or X. And he'll tell us more about who they are in just a minute. If you don't know them, you're going to know about them all the time. He's not only passionate about this topic, he's super knowledgeable. I know Ed a good number of years now and he's always, always ranked as one of the very top speakers at every conference he speaks up at, LinkedIn, Talent Connect, amongst other he shared massive stages, gets a lot of audience because of his unique way of storytelling, but also his unique insights. So he's a real practitioner. And you're going to chat with us about what employer branding looks like after Covid and the importance of not just not appealing to everyone, not just trying to open your funnel as wide as possible, but how you can use your own workforce to be ambassadors to Attract the right talent, the best talent for your business. Ed, welcome to the show. Wonder if you could perhaps reintroduce yourself better than I have. Tell us about EQRX and why you joined the business and what you're trying to do there from a recruiting and employer brand perspective.
So, first of all, Johnny the man, I'm gonna give you one of these. A big virtual hug. I wish I could do that in person maybe one day soon. Thank you. I'm so excited to be on here and I hope one day that I can be one of those talking faces. And the short list words that come up at the beginning, I really like that.
We'll make that happen.
We're gonna make that happen goals. So, as Johnny said, I've been doing this a long time. I grew up as a recruiter in the industry and I think, you know, back in, I grew up in the tech space working with some big, small, multinational companies everywhere in between, and was one of the first people, I think, to kind of start messing around with employer branding. Back when it was even called that, it was just more like, what are we doing here? And kind of like trying new things, new ways of attraction. But long story short, I ran a business of my own where I consulted to big multinationals like citizens, Cisco, small startups, and everywhere in between. And then about two years ago, was approached by a former client that started a new startup that I'm really excited to be a part of called EQRx. And that's what I've been doing the last two years.
So tell me how is EQRX changing the world? And then maybe tell us how you're communicating that to the world.
Yeah. So first off, you'll understand why I couldn't say no about when I explained what they do in a second here. So EQRx quite simply, is about making affordable medicine for people who need it. I know, you know, here in the States, the cost, the burden, the financial toxicity that comes with, God forbid, getting a disease and treatment for that disease, but it's a worldwide issue. The cost of medication and access to medication. So what EQREX is trying to doing is, and is attempting to do is, is nobly going out there and saying, we want to make equally good the EQ is equally good or better medicine at equal access, again, the EQ as well as bring some EQ emotional quotient to the pharma industry. And so that's exactly what we're doing. We started, we launched in January 2020. Something happened two months later, I think that changed the world. So, you know, we, we've grown in a very interesting time. We went from when I joined about 12 to 15 people to today, we're approaching 240. And it's been massive growth over that period of time. We've seen some real significant growth in our pipeline of partnerships. We just announced one with a company today to help us generate and discover new molecules, new treatments. And our medicine is across many different therapeutic areas.
