Our team has worked with scores of organizations to refine employer value propositions, and we have found that traditional, recruit-centered ‘employer brands’ simply don’t take the sponsoring organization far enough down the path of self-discovery and authentic engagement of all human capital stakeholders. While we’re certainly not alone in using the term Talent Brand to encapsulate our approach to branding an organization as a place to work, we find that this new term enforces a far broader and resonant focus on what a well-crafted Talent Brand is meant to do.

In a nutshell, here are four rules-of-thumb that guide our Talent Brand initiatives.

1. A Talent Brand is not about hard-sell.
The key point to remember here is that the traditional notions of consumer branding are relevant but not central to what we’re aiming to do when we set out to develop a Talent Brand. Although the needs and preferences of “target audiences”—i.e., potential recruits— have to exert some influence on how we construct the brand platform, our primary motive is to portray what it’s like to work at an organization with accuracy and impact. This is an inside-out approach, not a market-driven one.

2. A Talent Brand is about much more than attracting recruits.
If we think of a Talent Brand merely as a recruiting platform, we’re dissipating the value of its breadth and power to inspire. Hiring is only one aspect of human capital strategy. If the brand accurately portrays what it’s like to work at your organization, why shouldn’t we use it to inspire themes for programs like retention, events promotion, team development, and so on?

3. Authenticity is the key.
Your Talent Brand should capture with felt authenticity the full experience of working in your organization in all its dimensions: strategy, mission, process and routine, team interactions, culture, work-life balance, and so on. In a word, the brand has to ring true to the workplace experience. It can’t be created to meet the presumed preferences of the job-seeking population; it needs to be discovered and shaped based on reality inside the walls.

4. A Talent Brand can empower you to attract, develop, refine, and retain the talent you need today and tomorrow.
This is a big claim, and it elevates the practice of Talent Branding into the realm of human capital strategy, where it rightly belongs. By capturing the spirit of the workplace experience, it becomes a touchstone for the team members already on the inside --and a compelling attractor for the outside candidates most likely to succeed in the real-world culture of your workplace.

For more on this topic, you might consult “Rethinking Employer Brands”, a recent article of mine in The Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.