How fear gets in the way of hiring

Let the people speak.

If you can get your team excited to talk about their job, in their own words: it makes a massive impact. Your talent attraction will go through the roof.

It sounds incredibly simple. Because it is. But there’s 2 things that get in the way of everyone doing it:

1. It doesn’t work if you suck.

So all the micromanaged, toxic environments have no shot at this. F ‘em anyway, who cares.

Onto the real issue…

2. Traditional marketing (and employer brand) thinking wants that centralized, polished, perfect message. The kind everyone learned in school.

Boring corporate speak that sounds like every other damn firm out there.

By taking the guardrails off, you kill two birds with one stone: your teams get a voice. And you stand out above your hiring competitors.

What’s stopping everyone? 

????Humans kinda suck at assessing risk.

Virtually every 1:1 convo I’ve had about this over the years uncovers two fears:

1. Leaders are afraid their friends will clown them. Their social neuroses prevent them from leading the way.

They think their presentation will suck and their friends (or whoever) will notice. 

Plot twist: they’re right, it will. But just at first. 

They get better. See the results. And realize how dumb it was worrying about it.

2. The rogue employee will burn it all down. And cancel a well-run whole org.

How many times have I seen this? Never. 

Sure, people say dumb sh*t online all the time. ✋

I don’t mean whistleblowers. I’m talking companies that are actually good. And the fallout affected the whole org.

As far as tail risk goes, there’s a lot more realistic ways your business will fail vs your team using social media.

To reiterate: I don’t sell this stuff. I have zero vested interest in promoting brand ambassador programs to boost your hiring. (Aside from being right.)

It just works and you should do it.

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.