The future of employer branding | with Ed Nathanson

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 at socialtown.com forward/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 EQRx and he 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 at. But 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. It was 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 going to 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 going to 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 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. You know, I know, you know, here in the States, the, the, the, 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 EQ Rex is trying to doing is, and is attempting to do is nobly going out there and saying we want to make equally good, the EQ is equally good or better medicine and 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, 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.

And if I, if I'm correct in thinking this, there's the company in the news recently about growing even further, you know, several billion dollar raise to the public markets. So I think whatever crazy hiring you're doing now, Ed, it's about to go even bigger. Is it international, Ed? Is it still Boston based or where are you, where are you hiring?

So actually, you know, this goes to a lot of what we're probably going to be discuss, but we, unlike a lot of traditional pharma, and we're not like traditional pharma in any way, and we'll talk to that in a lot of different ways. But one of the things we did very early on was adapt a virtual first kind of mentality. And yes, is a bit of a reaction to Covid, but also just a way to think about how we create an amazing workplace for people to be part of a mission like this. So, long story short, yes, we are, you know, we've, we have a, what we call a hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which if you know, is the Silicon Valley of life sciences. There's a joke we say here you can't walk five feet without tripping over a job offer, you know, in Kendall Square, the Cambridge area, in bio. But we have employees all around the United States and now, yes, some overseas.

And I'm interested to know before we jump into it, you know, how has the pandemic, do you think, affected employer branding? Like what's. It's obviously affected many, many things. But if you were to sum it up in one or two sentences, what do you think have been the big, big changes on employer branding that you guys have leveraged?

Yeah. So, you know, I think what the last two years have done has accelerated a process that's been happening for the past 10, which is it's now 100% digital. Right. The personal touches have to remain, but what's happened is now the conversation has moved digital. The research is done digital, the interactions are done digital, the interviews are done digital. Like in all of these areas, there's been this massive quick Transformation. And when you move digital, there's a tendency to lose the people, lose the humanity, lose the emotional piece of what goes into that. Just because it's a different avenue, that these conversations and interactions are happening, doesn't mean the same emotions aren't percolating in the audience that you want to engage and attract with. I always say, outside of marriage and children, there is no more important, more emotional, more impactful decision in your life than your career. Think about it. What's the first thing you do when you meet somebody is you say, what do you do? What do you do outside of brother, sister, mother, you know, father? It's how we identify in this crazy world we live in that is not a transaction. It will never be a transaction. And I don't care if you're hiring for hourly retail or for precision scientists or anywhere in between. You have to understand that. And because it's moved so fast, this transformation, a lot of companies, you know, are kind of fumbling a bit about how they're handling it. You know, I'm going to, you know, I'm a big nerd, Johnny, but a lot of your audience probably doesn't. I'm going to quote Bane from the Dark Knight Rises, and I'm going to say, when he says to Batman, he said, you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. And that's a very bad impersonation. We were. Me at EQRx were born in virtual. A lot of other companies adopted it. Literally 95% of that 240ish employees and growing have never known anything but that. With us, we have never known anything but that as a company. So it's enabled us to do a lot of things probably quicker and more nimbly than a lot of other companies who were adopting the dark, as Bain would say.

I spoke with someone this morning who I thought put it really, really well. They. They claim they use this line at a conference recently. They said in January 2020, you could do anything you want to do on the Internet. In January 2021, you had to do everything on the Internet.

I love that.

Yeah, I love that on that. Let's go. Let's go to the news because. Lots of explore, Ed.

Yeah.

So, Ed, I want to start with an article that appeared recently in People Matters for those who don't follow. People Matters. People Matters.in publication, online publication out of India. Great people. Done some conferences in the past, spoken at some of their events and did some interviews with them. And they've always have great quality content coming out and they recently published an article on employer branding that was differentiating your employer brand in the next normal. And they kind of built this on the framework of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Needs.

Those of you want to read the article, we'll share in the show. Not on the podcast. I'm put it in the live links on YouTube and LinkedIn for those of you listening live. But I want to kind of summarize this and get your thoughts on it in the article. They cover a lot about working from home and there's a line there that talks about how, you know, how employers differentiate themselves from the competition. Now is so different because two years ago things like perks, perks that would have been work from home, flexible hours, overnight they became normal. They became what the article refers to as the physiological needs at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, whereas they would have been more top of the of the pyramid things you aspire to have and how this is very difficult for organizations because they've had to rethink what is it that differentiates them. Because added to that, as the second year of the pandemic rolled around and we went back to work, growth returned. With all the money that was flooded into the market, hiring returned like crazy. So you have this, you know, double edged challenge where you had enormous amounts of hiring and for a lot of organizations their employer brand was just no longer relevant or no longer differentiated. So what is your take on that observation? Is that one you'd agree with and how do you think the better companies have reacted to that?

Yeah, I mean a lot of what this article said is spot on. You know, I'm going to say something that'll probably upset a lot of practitioners out there who spend lots and lots of money to come up with corporate values and these precious EVPs and all of those things. And survey and survey and survey. Prior to my joining EQRx, as I said, my consultancy worked with big and small companies around the world. And I got to my process was I'm never a big fan of surveys. I don't think people are truthful on them. I think there's a fear of an anonymity even though you tell them to your blue in the it's anonymous. People don't necessarily believe that, especially in a workplace. And it's also limited to the scope of the questions you're asking. So what I would do is I would go in and I would say to the CEOs of the leaders of the companies I work with, give me the 10 to 15% of the people you would clone if you could, the best of your best. And I want diverse diversity and not just gender, age, ethnicity, but tenure level groups, functions in the company. And I would kick any HR and execs were not allowed in the room. And I would have a question in just a session, a BS session, you know, but really getting to the meat of things for about two hours, I would have someone there taking notes, right? Transcribing it. And I would tell them the rule is this. I will show you the notes after this. No names, I promise you, let's have a conversation. And I would go through and you ask questions, but what ends up happening is people would riff on them, so on and so on. I would get into bigger and bigger, deeper things that you couldn't get in a survey. Now, I tell you this to tell you that not once in the six years of that business and not once before, not once after has anyone told me I joined this company because of their values. I joined this company because of the words on that wall or the coffee mug, right? No one's joining a company before and especially now to ascribe to something that they had no part in creating, to kind of do the II captain and get in line, everyone's in it. You know, people forget that people are individuals. The one thing I did hear consistently over and over again, there was always differences in different companies, different cultures, different nuances. But the thing that I heard consistently over and over again was I call the two A's. It's appreciation and autonomy. Am I being appreciated? That matters to me a ton. And am I given the autonomy to do my job, the trust to do my job, the freedom to do what I do without so many hands in the pot, so to speak? Those are things that I think are ultimately what people drive people at a workplace. Now, yes, I'm not minimizing the importance of alignment with how a company positions itself. I'm not minimizing. The mission is hugely important. You got to believe in what you're doing. But not everyone's doing what EQRX is doing. Let's be honest. Some people are making widgets, some people are making, you know, you know, pieces of paper. Whatever those things are, those all matter, right? But to think that someone's like sitting there dreaming one day about growing up to make a piece of paper, I would question that. Right? What really matters to them is the old question that people seem to forget. What's in it for me? What's in it for me? And so as you look about this article, what I really love about it is it's really that. And so today, you know, unlike five years ago, 10 years ago, there's more information for a job seeker than ever before in the history of job seeking. What do they do now? Well, first thing is they hear from a recruiter. Where are they going? They're going online, they're going to Google, they're going to LinkedIn, they're going to your social media, they're definitely going to your LinkedIn employees profiles. Right. All of these things as they go. And what they see, all of the interactions are forming an opinion long before they decide to respond to that recruiter. And it will absolutely drive that from a brand perspective. And then of course, it continues through the brand journey. And the question is not anything but the simple one. What's in it for me?

I'm going to bring up a point you mentioned. People are looking at your social. One of our listeners, a good friend of both of ours, Jeremy Roberts, has been looking at your social. He's saying, is that the kid on the cooking shows dad? It's his uncle if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, there's, you might want to just give as a side backstory to that question for those of you listening live and looking at that in the feed. You, you've got a bit of history beyond recruiting and you've got a bit of a profile beyond recruiting. Would that be fair to say, Ed?

Yeah, I'm a very proud dad of a 13 year old girl who was just on Top Chef. So it's all on Peacock right now if you want to go out there. And I'm the benefit of a lot of those experiments in the kitchen. I don't, I don't, I don't want for delicious food for sure. And also I think you're, you're hinting at that we do a family snack video channel called Family snack reviews on YouTube to Together.

So, so to, to say that Ed understands how people consume content or influence. It's not just that he has experience leading EVP for organizations and consulting. This is a person who lives and breathes it. I'm going to bring us on to our second news article because it brings on to a point you were hinting at there, if that's fair, Ed. And this is coming from Forbes and the article's title is Dissonance Disaster when Employer Brand and Talent Brand don't Align. And it's written by a practitioner who is himself ahead of ta. I think the practitioner for this Article again, we'll share it in the show Notes is the head of talent acquisition at a company called Bamboo, HR Bamboo, a guy called JD Conway. So, again, not written from a theoretical perspective, not written from a. An analyst or a media person. It's somebody who lives and breathes and doing this themselves. And I want to highlight that difference. And, Ed, I wonder if you could talk me through what you believe is the difference between employer brand and talent brand, because essentially, that's what this article is all about. But I think you can probably give a great summary as to your perspective on this.

Employer brand, quite simply, is what the company is saying it's like to be work, you know, interact in that company. Talent brand is what the employees are saying it's like to be in work in that company. And I 100% agree with the. With the concept that if those two things don't match, it's over, game over. Right? We've been, as a world. I know this isn't a word, but I use it a lot. We've been Yelpified. Everything has been Yelpified. Right. It's almost like now it's instinctual because of all these resources I just mentioned that are online and available for people to say, prove it. Right? It's always this prove it thing. And if you look at, you know, any trust barometers, I like the Edelman one they do every year, year in, year out, people will consistently say, I trust the people more than I trust. Trust the company. Right. I trust people I know people who've been. And so if you look at Yelp, for example, if you look at the restaurant ad and they're saying, we have the best steaks, the best spirits, the best location. And then you go on Yelp, which most people do, and it says the opposite of that, I guarantee you that is affecting your decision of you wanting to go to that restaurant or not.

100%. 100%. And it may have been a decision. I've done this myself. You know, if they. If they don't put out there that they're amazing and you see a few negative reviews, you're like, I. I think that could be a disgruntled person. Maybe they had a bad day, you're willing to kind of get over it. It's when there's that dissonance when the restaurant or in this case, the employer is so validly saying we are one thing, and the employees or candidates are saying the complete opposite, that's when you. You don't just disbelieve them. You hate them for it. Yeah, like, you know, they're assholes.

What are they doing here?

This is. This is nonsense. Like, they're. They're so bold to be saying this thing when everyone else says this other thing. You know, it came up last summer in particular around this when you had the George Floyd murder and you had companies coming out kind of jumping on the bandwagon, maybe. Meaning, well, saying, oh, you know, we, you know, we're all for inclusion and diversity and their employees going, no, you're not. I live and breathe this. And that, again, was that dissonance that affected a plural brand and talent brand, where they really picked something and went crazy on using, to your point, all of the available social tools. Because everyone's a writer, everyone's a reviewer these days, it's so simple to comment, to post anonymously against something. So this is a real challenge. So talk. Talk me through the process, Ed. Then of. And I want to move on to your specific example. How do you align that? Because I'm guessing it's not just a case of keep trying on the employer brand until we get it right. I imagine there's a process that you should go through as an organization to really then develop what is a true and honest and authentic employer brand. What is that process? Have you gone through it? How can others do it?

Yeah, so. So this is something I'll be talking about with social talent at another point in the future, but this is something where you don't. Let me start by saying that you do want to talk to the executives, but if the executives are the only people you're talking to, you're going to be portraying a company that has chocolate rivers and marshmallow streams, and everyone's holding hands, and it's just not reality. It's not reality. So what I like to do, as I mentioned, is I like to talk to people, not survey talk. Take that information, bring it back, put it together. I love using Word cloud software because if you pump these words and you see the themes literally popping off the page as you do it, and then you start to ask questions around what really matter to these folks, right? What do they think? How would they describe the culture? Why are they here? What matters to them? What do they look for in a job? What do they think they do really well at your company? What do they don't? And you take that, and then you mix in a little bit of the. I did the salt bay. That boom, Right? That thing. You mix in a little bit of the inspiration, the aspiration. I should say the aspirational elements of what you want to be, but it has to be grounded in reality. Let's be honest. No one is going to put out there like, you know, hey, you know, we work 60 hours a week and people are burned out. No one's going to do that. But if you're honest that hey, you're signing up for something that there's a lot here, but there's also this. But also look here, there's something great that you can really gain from this. That's, that's, that's being, I hate the term because it's so cliche now, but that's being authentic but aspirational too. Right? And those things, you can't underestimate that emotion that happens, that human instinct when we, when we intake these things and we absorb these things and continuing messages and all of those. So, so there's that. But at the same time, you know, what you say has to be relevant. It has to be real. So I again, I'm going to quote a nerdy reference and I'm going to quote my favorite quote of all time, it's by Tyrion to John Snow in episode one of Game of Thrones. Jon Snows be upset is upset about continuing Tyrion continually calling him a bast. And so, you know, John Tyrion says, you know, wear what you are, bastard. Wear it like armor. That way the world can never hurt you. And I think the best brands do exactly that. They say this is who we are, this is our personality, these are our people, this is what we believe. And if you like it, you are going to love us. And if you don't, that's cool too, right? But a lot of companies say they do that but they're really afraid to do that because they want to be everything and everything to everyone. And when you do that, you become vanilla. I love vanilla ice cream. But in marketing it does zero. It doesn't attract, it doesn't repel, it's there, it's just there.

Unless it's Ben and Jerry's vanilla. I do love Ben and Jerry's vanilla, but not since they became part of Unilever because they the edge and so on, so forth. But hey, I, I, I want to, I want to take that angle that, that kind of, that need to identify and I'm going to use the word tribe here for a second. Right? Yeah, you know, get, you know, people matters. India on their article took Maslow's self actual actualization as hierarchy of needs and stuff. So if they're allowed to do that. I'm allowed to go, go here. We all, we all seek identity. I think, you know, that, that, that's been proven psychology. And we, we look in brands and I'm going to assume this applies to employer brands and brands. We seek out brands that mirror the identity we ourselves. Right. So it's not that we want to become the brand images that we have an identity and we seek out brands that seem to align with that identity. And identity is a really important thing to folks. I'm really intrigued to have you perhaps share a story around this, but I got a peloton recently. Bear with me, you'll see where I'm going with this. I was really impressed on peloton as a. You know, it's the, it's the running, it's the bike, spinning bike with a big screen. And you're part of a community who are also joining on the classes, right. And you see other folks on the class with you and you see a kind of leaderboard and their username. But a big thing on Peloton is everyone can have a hashtag. And like there's peloton moms, peloton dads, there's all sorts of stuff, you know, you know, Boston Pelotoners and whatever the heck they want. Right. And you can click on the tag and see everyone else who's then decided to have the same tag. I just really got to me that, you know, they've really nailed something there in allowing folks to identify in such a simple way with a hashtag, as many have over the last couple of years with me too, and Black Lives Matter and other hashtags. The hashtags become a way for us to wear our identity in public. And you've been able to leverage a little bit of that in EQRx, which is very different to how others think about different groups that they're trying to target and inclusion. Talk to me about how you've used the hashtag and what it means to you.

Yeah, so very early on, I 100% ascribe to everything you just said. And you're right. You know, I think of, you know, waving that flag of this is Sparta as you're running into battle. What is that thing, right, that you rally around that you would fight for, that you would die for? Like, you know, and I'm being dramatic, but hey, I'm a dramatic guy. So it's, it's, you know, hashtag in a lot of marketing terms is really around like a tracking tool tool, an adoption tool. All of those things. And sure, it is that I look at it a bit differently. As I said, it's like it's our. This is Sparta. It's our. It's our thing. And here at EQRx, to your point about identity, but a part of a collective, we started very on saying we're trying to disrupt an industry. The last thing we want people to do is fit in. We want people to ask why. We want people to also ask why not, right? And push and challenge because we're trying to transform, you know, an industry. And so we wanted to encourage a behavior from the very beginning that. And that celebrates the individual amongst the broader purpose and mission and collective of that group and individual identity. So we came up with the hashtag buck with that. You'll see it all over if you go look for it. People sharing everything from, you know, memes to I'm with my kids to, you know, I'm working on a very important project to whatever it is. But it's the. It's this, the aspect of making it from an individual lens as part of a broader thing. On top of that, to take that to the next level, we also started building from the very early on that that again, we want to attract the individual, not the collective. We want people who are excited about, like, wait, you want me? Not, like just my resume? Right. You know, all of that. And we talk about that throughout the brand journey. But one of the cool things we also did is we invented a superpowers quiz that people take on our careers page where they answer three questions. It's based on actual psychology. We hired a vendor firm to help us through this, and through those, they. They find out what their professional superpower is and how that superpower aligns to our purpose of making affordable medicine for people who need it. So there's the dreamer, there's the warrior, there's the champion, there's the disruptor. And each of them have their own cool logos, like houses, you know, houses in Harry Potter and all of those things. And it's something that when we announce them as a company, that's part of their announcement. It sits with them on the Internet. It's part. They have zoom backgrounds and banners and all of these things that happen, it's all about, again, to your point, it's a different way of thinking about employer, brand than even I was doing four or five years ago, which is to say you matter more now than ever before, especially, as I said about the digital world that we're in now, how it gets Colder and colder and less personal, less emotional people. Especially when you're not getting that in a lot of companies that aren't in person. You miss that human element, that sense of individuality amongst the collective. Let it shine. And what's, what we're trying to do to how you fit with us and how you. And then whatever that special sauce that you have, it always comes back to food, doesn't it? But special sauce comes back to us and how that fits with us.

And I love that because too often we look at our employees and talent through the lens of very traditional demographics. Male, female, black, white, binary, non binary, Caucasian, non Caucasian, Irish American. And we all know that we're much more than those things. And you know, I might look at you and go, okay, he's a white guy, you know he's a guy or you know he's an American. And you might go, above all, I'm a sci fi nerd or I'm a movie buff. And each of us has an identity that we mainly latch onto. Our primary identity, you might say many identities, but, but maybe a primary identity. And it isn't what some company says you are or some stranger who meets you and go, oh, I know all about you, you're a white male from Boston. I know what that is like. No, my primary thing is this. And that's where you can get, I'm a gamer, that's my community, that's my thing. I love that as a way of going to market. But to your point, I think going back to the articles different between employer brand and talent brand, it's not just there on the website, it's not just there as part of the hiring process. To your point, you, you come in, your zoom backgrounds, your, everything is built around this because it follows all the way through to the employee experience. And I think that's probably how you connect those two. And often I think there is a challenge and I'd love to hear your views on this, Ed. There's a challenge in that the person who's often responsible for the employer brand, she or he or they aren't responsible necessarily for the employee experience. And unless there's a connection, it's really hard, isn't it? Like, so how do you, how do you do that? Like how have you done it? But how could you do it in different scaled organizations? Larger, smaller than yours? What's your, what's the success there?

I love that you're asking this question, Johnny, and I'm not surprised because you're brilliant, but it's Something a lot of companies don't think about enough. And the analogy, I'll say, is, like, if I want, if I'm all of a sudden interested in buying a new car, and I see these amazing ads with Matthew McConaughey driving pensively through the streets, right? And then I get a glossy ad in the mail of that same car. I'm hooked. I want to go look at the car and I go to the dealership, and it's nothing like what it looked like to me. The salesperson is nothing. What I. What I want to interact with, it's not consistent with the messaging that got me there. I. 100% of the time, I'm not going to buy that car, right? And even if you buy it, and now that the car and the dealership match the same, but the car doesn't perform the way you were told it would, it doesn't drive the way you're told. It doesn't have the bells and whistles, say you're returning it, you don't want to do. You're stuck, you're unhappy with that purchase. That same analogy works here. And so one of the things that I really think about a lot is exactly what you said is not, you know, putting lipstick on a pig, as they say here in the States, but. But being, you know, presenting something that we can actually deliver on that promise, promise that goes through. And so what I do very early on is I work with an incredible chief people officer and people team here at EQRx that we talk about consistently. What are we saying, right? How do we deliver on it? And we work together. Now, it's not my purview and my responsibilities to do those things. It's theirs. But they seek my opinion, right? And we try to pull through the campaigns that we do externally to every day existence. So the superpowers is something, as I mentioned, that lives throughout. It's on their Internet profile. It's something we talk about, right? It's how they interact in person. You know, it's. It's part of that journey that goes through our company. We talk about it. Our CEO says bu. We talk about it constantly in company missions and company meetings about how we mean it, right? Ask questions. We. We relate it back to what we're trying to do, that behavior. And it's something that, you know, if you deliver on that promise, you deliver and result in genuinely happy and engaged people. Right? I'm very proud to tell you that, you know, we've only entered one best place to work in which we Won. And I'm very proud of that. But we've won 20 something awards based on anonymous employee reviews that we didn't enter in and two years of existence. 20 right. From just, just this week, Happiest employees, which I was one of the best ones. How could you not be excited about that? Right? And it's just the nature of to. And I don't want to say that, you know, like we're the best place ever, but it's, it's exactly what we're talking about is we said this is what you can expect by working here. And when you have people who buy that, who want that and they get that, well, that ends up people who become ambassadors. Those are people who would say, you know what? I'm going to go leave a review on comparably. I'm going to go leave a review on Glassdoor. That's, that's the good stuff.

I think there's a challenge because even in the last article I mentioned there, the Forbes article, there's a quote, the very start, that says, you know, the quotes, two sources. A strong employer brand results in a 28% reduction in turnover and a 50% reduction in cost per hire. And I looked at that and I said, I smell bullshit on the first part. I said, because saying an employer brand results in a 28% of reduction in turnover is the wrong way of thinking of it. If you develop an employee experience that's really amazing, you'll probably reduce turnover by 28% and then it's going to be much easier to have a strong employer brand. It's the correlation and causation piece, they correlate. But you don't have a strong employer brand and reduce turnover because to your point, and the articles point, employer brand and talent brand are different. The talent brand is about the experience, like the hiring, but also the working for your organization and the exiting and the coming back and all the different touch points you have in this consumer elements as well there. So I think that misses the point. It kind of suggests that if I just market the shit out of this will reduce turnover. No, you won't. That's not gonna work. But like, I think people still read that and go, oh my God, you know, I could just mark my way out of this and I can spend loads of money on LinkedIn ads. And we're gonna, the ROI is a reduction in turnover. It's not, you know, to your point, you're gonna do the hard work of are we creating an environment where people really are happy? Not because we we took a quote and we blasted the crap out of it. But because they're happy and if they are happy, how can we leverage that happiness and that support and tell the world about it and find more people who want to join our tribe? So on that, on that kind of leveraging piece, Ed, you know, what have you seen, particularly in this digital first model that you've accidentally but happily found yourself in post Covid, how have you accelerated that? Like with such good material, such a great culture that the business has a great way to approach its employees and good experience. What's working for you in 2021 into 2022 to accelerate that? Like, where do you spend your dollars? Do you spend your dollars? How do you get that brand amplification these days?

Yeah, so it's, first of all, it's focusing on the areas that matter. I'm not, you know, there's feature and there's solution cell as any salesperson knows. Right. Feature is going to be, we have this, this, this, this and this. And this is why you should join versus solution is this is your problem. This is how we could potentially solve it. I like to think of us as a solution sell kind of strategy. So first it's, we're always telling stories about our people and we encourage that kind of behavior. Week one, when someone joins, they're unfortunately spending about two hours with me where I talk about, you know, unlike every other farmer, we're saying, hey, be yourself. I know you've been told for, you know, however many years you've been in the industry, don't go on social media, don't talk like this. And I say to them, look, you know, if you start talking like corporate Johnny, people are going to think EQR kidnapped you. We don't want that. Right? We want, you know, send help. No, we want, we want to unleash that. We want to unleash people. And when it's kind of like the analogy of you take a kitten who's never been let outside into your home and then you open that door and you say, hey, it's okay, Run, go play. Right? That's what we're thinking about as we do that from a people side. And then the interesting thing with us, and I admit it's something that's really unique to EQRx and maybe other purpose based, mission based companies like ours, is that we also have a really good rallying cry and cause that we put out there. So it's a mix of those two things where we're saying ads and we Do a lot of paid SEO and all of things where you'll see ads from us with smashing pill bottles that say wealth should not equal health and things like that. Right. But then you have the personal side on the other piece that's really showing that this isn't some soul crushing big pharma company. As a matter of fact, it's the opposite. It's a place that's encouraging you to be you. As we say over and over and over again, probably ad nauseam to, you know, to a kind of a different personality that we show of our people from. You know, one of my favorite things one of our employees did is where our color is red and so we have lots of red swag that we send to people's homes. It's really a bright red and we had one person take a picture, I'm laughing. As I said, take a picture of himself and head to toe red in the woods. Like the Bigfoot pictures from a distance of him and that Bigfoot thing all in red. It's saying if you want to blend in his Bigfoot, probably not the best swag, but otherwise it's awesome. Like that person, I can tell you, I know this for a fact, would never have done that and never would have been allowed to do something like that at another point place. When you have that mix of purpose and mission and why and then the people, the culture I'm going to do it in, it's intoxicating. It's intoxicating.

So how have you leveraged that though? Like how have you leveraged happy employees, people who are willing to post and allowed to post on social media? How do you leverage that and harness that power to really kind of amplify the brand and drive the talent inbound? Because you're driving a huge amount of your talent needs inbound, which is highly unusual in this market. So what are you doing to make it work?

Yeah, so we amplify a lot of it. We do do a lot of paid targeted campaigns. We are consistently posting. It's, it's not a onesie twosie thing. And on places where a lot of other companies might not be is more open to sharing some different unique voices. So for example, LinkedIn is a very scary place to show personality to a lot of companies. I would argue it's the place to do it, but that's a whole other conversation. So it's that, it's, it's, it's putting out, you know, messaging across all the platforms or we've discovered where we searched that find that Our people are there. It's also going to different conferences, different conventions, and not in person, obviously these days, but targeting audiences. One of the groups we look for is people who do clinical trials, clinical operations. So we're looking and advertising on sources, conventions, groups that meet that are solely focused on those things. It's understanding your audience, it's going where they are, it's amplifying, it's acknowledging. One of the things I think that we do really well is that leadership is bought in from the very beginning on the importance of amplifying our people's voices. So, for example, we have a quarterly contest we do where we give out a pretty awesome prize that I want to put out there so people will steal it, but it's a pretty awesome prize every quarter that we announce in front of the whole company of our social brand ambassador of the quarter, make a big deal out of it. You know, all of these things. I tell you what second place is, is we give EQRX branded earbuds to the person in second place there and we make a big deal out of. We share weekly on our internal message boards. You know, the posts that we're watching that we love, as I said, we enable them, we give them the tools, the capabilities to do this. It's a mix of paid, it's a mix of organic, it's a mix of, you know, driving the, the behaviors that you want to have happen and you reward those behaviors. It's consistent messaging. And it's the biggest one is trust, Johnny. It's trust. You know, most companies, you know, when they start, they give an Employee this like 25 page book of all these things you can't do. They never really read it. They sign it and they say, wow, geez. If they're gonna say that I'm gonna go to jail and not passco and not collect 200 because I'm gonna go post something. This I'm never gonna post, period. Right.

But you, but you're, you're doing something different. You're. If I'm not mistaken, you're training people in their first week on how to do it well, not what to say, but how to really do it well. Is that true?

I mean, I could go on and on, Johnny. Another thing I do once a month is I have a LinkedIn post profile training session with anyone who wants to attend. And I work with them on their page. And one of the things I say is, this is not our page, this is yours. If you want to be an EQX brand ambassador, go for it. If you want to amplify your presence, let me help you. Either way, it's a win. Either way, it's a win. And it's a big benefit to that individual, too. It's not just what's in it for the company, it's what's in it for you. And when it's presented that way genuinely, people really see the value in it.

They do. And again, the transparency, authenticity, it follows through with the consistency. Ed, we could, we could chat a lot more and we're going to, but we're going to move it online to our platform over the next couple of months. Ed's going to be filming new content for social talent that goes live, I believe, at the end of next month, November 2021. If you're a social talent user, you'll get that in your library pretty soon. If you're not, you can always reach out to us to find out more in terms of how the master does it and Ed's great learnings and stories as well. If you want to check out more of them right now, go find his YouTube channel. I dare you to find it. International snacks. Ed, thank you so much for sharing those insights so fast. Over 45 minutes, I'm going to ask you for one more. As you hopefully know, we ask all of our guests to close out with one tip, one piece of advice to add to our shortlist of 68 so far, soon to be 69 pieces of advice that we've gathered over the last couple of seasons that you either have been given by somebody else, passed down, or you've garnered through your own experience you want to share with our audience. So, Ed, what would that last piece of advice be?

So, you know, I love the Tyrion quote, I love Yoda's quote about fear. But I'm going to go a different way and I'm going to, I'm going to quote a peer of mine who said something. We do a podcast and she's our VP of clinical operations. And she has this wonderful philosophy of how she looks at everything that she does. And it's quite simply, why not, right? Instead, people typically ask the others, why, right? Or think, you know, I can't do it because of this, this and this. The way I love to look at things and I've inspired by her is to say, why not? Why not? Right? Why not? Think big. Try push. What's the worst that can possibly happen?

I love it. You have to have that positive, positive, can do attitude, but also the don't look at the barriers look at the, look at the, the opportunities. Try and take chances. I think that I advise my kids something similar at my kids ask, you know, how do you, how do you be successful or happy? I'm like I said, work hard and take chances or take risks. You got to take risks. You know, one got anywhere being safe, but you also don't get anywhere taking risk without working hard. So you got to do, you got to do both. Ed, thanks so much. It's been brilliant to have you tons more we could talk about like the HBO Game of Thrones prequel shows coming out next year, you know, Venom sequel where you know, can, can, can you move from a Bane mask to a Venom Part 2 and so much more. Snacks of the world. Your take on Potato Chris vs King Chris, Ed, but we're out of time. We'll get you back again once your new content's live. Great to have you join us. I know you're a super busy guy, so best of luck with everything with EQRX over the next couple of months, growing the team and fighting the good fight. Thanks Ed and thank you for listening to Show 69. A pleasure having you. Hopefully you've gained some insights on employer branding. It's made you think about what you're doing within your organization, whether you're responsible for employer branding, you work in a recruiting team, you're responsible for HR talent in the business and how it's so important to align that with the rest of the business. We're going to be back next week for another fantastic show. I hope you join us for show 70 and that's going to be on 13th of October, 4pm UK Irish time live. If you want to listen to us on LinkedIn or YouTube that's 11am in the East Coast, 8am in the west coast of the United states. Next Wednesday the 13th of October. Or you can find us Wednesday evening on your podcast channels, Spotify, Apple or you can find us on the website socel.com the shortlist where I'll be joined by Rupesh Panchasara. Rupesh is a good friend of mine. He's moved to the global to Uber as global Head of Executive TA and he's going to be talking about the new world of succession planning. Rupesh is a long experienced individual working in exact search over the last year a few years runs a big team in Uber doing exact search and he's really kind of got to the meat of in a very fast paced, fast growing organization where what does succession planning look like? How do the biggest companies, the fastest growing, most successful companies in the world. Think about succession planning and what does the new world of succession planning look like? Tons of insights combining diversity goals with how do you gain more productivity leveraging the team you have. And Rupesh's insight coming live from London is hopefully going to be invaluable to all of you. So make sure to book your spot and join us next week. And don't forget, by the way, we're going to be running another social Talent Live next month in November. I'll tell you more about that over the next couple of shows, but you can find out a sneak preview what's going on by going to socialtown.com live anytime. Until then, hope you enjoy the show. Do check out Ed's snack channel on YouTube. Go find his son on the cooking show as well and we'll see you next week for Rapesha show on succession planning and how it's changing for the future.

Take care.

See you then.

Sa.