Your employment brand (once done right) probably needs less refreshing than you think…

You get sick of your own stuff at a much more rapid pace than the marketplace does.

Trust me, I’m somewhat of an expert related to being impatient with things that are done well. But the reality is that once you (or I) create something, we see it more than anyone else.

Whether it is a comprehensive employment brand strategy or simply an analog handout you are using at job fairs, you see the creative related to your employment brand about 1000x more than anyone else.

The result? You and I call for dramatic recasts/redos of employment brand artifacts much sooner than we should.

Let’s offer up some realities in support of this:

1 — You are responsible for creating the brand around your HR/recruiting/Talent practice at your company.

2 — You do the work. It is like having a child. It is a LOT of work, and once done, you hopefully feel good.

3 — You see the brand EVERY day. The imperfections and woulda/coulda/shoulda grind against you on a weekly, if not daily basis. A year in, you are sick of it and thinking about doing it again. It feels necessary!

4 — THE DIRTY SECRET TO REMEMBER – nobody gets exposed to your employment/HR/Talent brand at the same level you do. You are sitting on Main Street in Chernobyl related to your brand, everyone else is thousands of miles away. They come around every once in awhile, get what they need, then leave. They come back occasionally. THEY HAVE NOWHERE NEAR THE BRAND EXPOSURE YOU DO AS THE CREATOR.

The rule of seven in marketing says that prospects have to hear messaging 7X before they get it. Whether it is an internal HR brand or an external employment brand you have create, PLEASE RELAX. If you did a great job on it and are proud of it, don’t recreate it every 12 months.

Chill out. If your brand efforts in recruiting or HR sucked the first time, then by all means, recast it and make it better. But remember, no one is seeing it as much as you are.

I think a good rule of thumb for a brand done well is to look at a rebrand at the 3-4 year mark. If you have had the same brand for that period of time, I think it is OK to think about a HR/recruiting brand refresh.

I’m reminded of the power of leaving pretty good alone by our website at Kinetix. We get comments on how much people enjoy it on almost a weekly basis. If you asked me or my partner, Shannon Russo, what we want to do differently, we have have a laundry list of items. 

But based on the continuous feedback, we’d be suckers to change it too much.

Once your brand is good, don’t rush to redo it. Add depth to the brand components, tools and messaging you already have rather than starting from scratch.

Cover image: Shutterstock

This article first appeared on The HR Capitalist blog on 1 Oct 2019.