Pop Quiz: What’s Up with your Employer Brand?

Building on last week’s post (Everybody Else is Recruiting…), here are 5 hints to assessing your employer brand (a distinct:

1. Is your agency’s website well-designed and highly-navigable?
   1. When on your agency’s website, does it take more than 10 seconds to identify the careers or jobs page?
   2. Is there an intuitive approach to the way the site’ content is organized?
   3. Is the text crafted for the layperson? Too much or too little?
2. Does your agency rely primarily on printed brochures and booklets with smiling group pictures of a diverse cross-section of employees from the early-90s? (If so, find the recycle bin. And then think about alternative ways to present your agency’s work in print. Maybe it’s a compendium of unclassified memoranda. Or a short story).
3. Is your social media presence consistent, thoughtful, and engaging? Are you actively pursuing new followers? if not, chances are your
4. When is the last time you and your colleagues discussed your employer brand, mission statement, or elevator speech? Ask everyone to record themselves separately and then play them back to each other in a team meeting (FYI – all BlackBerries and iPhones have free, pre-installed voice recorders). See where the high points and low points are, and then work to refine a set of talking points to ensure clarity and consistency.
5. How is your agency or office portrayed in the media? Whether federal, state, or local — it’s highly likely that your job-seekers will already have strong opinions (favorable or otherwise) about your organization vis-a-vis current events. Are you helping to shape the story? Or a helpless victim of reporter cruelty?

Andy Lowenthal is a public sector strategy consultant. Follow him on Twitter.