Employer branding | Alien thinking

What does your name say about your company; to people who do not really know you that well?  I frequent both of the above establishments on my travels up and down the motorways and amongst the smog filled cities.  Both serve coffee, frappathingys, cakes, pastries, fruit, sandwiches, sweets and over priced water.  But would I go there for anything other than a coffee?  But what kind of people will these employers attract with their name?

What do their names say about them - to you?

• Healthy food and drinks.
• Over priced.
• Poor service/great service.
• Fun and cool place to be.
• Autocratic.

What kind of people do they employ?  The majority will be barista's (as they tend to call the posh coffee servers) but there will of course be a lot of other types of people.

But what does you employer brand say about you?

• Boots - retail.
• IBM - technology.
• Google - software.
• KPMG - accountants.
• CISCO - hardware.
• Dell - computers.
• HSBC - banking.

But what if you have a massive IT department, bigger than most software vendors, but you are a bank?  What if you are a large retailer but have a large buying team?  What if you are a Global technology provider with more accountants than KPMG?  How do you get the right people to know that you are bigger in their niche than they may realise?

Recruiting what you are known for is the easy bit; recruiting for what you are NOT known for is either what you pay your agencies for or where you show some smart thinking!