This is much less of a blog post than a public service announcement. Thank you to Lars Schmidt and Hootsuite for inspiring it. Sure, it's a rant. But you've grown to expect that.

Consider posting it in your break room, by the elevators...anywhere. For best results, make sure your marketing team see's it.

Date: May 29, 2015
To: All Employers
From: Charlie Judy, on your employees' behalf
Re: Employer Branding

Please be advised that your attempt to craft and control your employer brand is futile. In fact, said attempt is convincing evidence that you don't really understand what your employer brand is. And you certainly don't know how to articulate it. You don't get to control your brand. You may get to influence it. But you neither own nor control it.

Your brand lives and breathes. It isn't one-dimensional. It cannot be adequately characterized by a two-line pithy statement. That's a slogan. And slogans are for TV Advertising.

The best way - the only way, really - to share your employer brand is through your employees. Huh? Employees understand employer brand? Yep...

They, after all, experience it every damn day. They feel it, touch it, smell it, taste it. They have real emotions around it. But you go and muck all that up by subjecting their voice to your filters, controls, firewalls, glossy brochures, career pages, and a bunch of smoke and mirrors. You're afraid of what they'll say and how they'll say it. Stop it. Please.

If you feel the urge to massage your employer brand so that it is more easily consumed by your target audience, then you either have the wrong target audience or you have the wrong brand. Either way, you're screwed.

Let go. Trust your people to sing your praises, to tell your story, and to be authentic about it. Encourage them to do so. Give them permission to do so. And the rest will take care of itself.