Employer Brand

Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash The employer brand diagnostic should evolve, and this way. I’ve been closely observing the changing dynamics of EVP with AI in play now. It is happening and is seismic. Now candidates no longer wait to hear from you. The first action is that they ask the machines. AI is taking over counselling already, as you may have heard. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI have also taken over as the first career counsellors. Their systems synt

There are constant conversations around how AI is changing the skills companies need now. But there is a bigger shift happening, that is, “AI is changing what we mean by talent." For years hiring was largely built around: ➡️Open a role, find appropriate experience with the skills and then make the hire. As technology is changing, work is faster than job descriptions can keep up. Experience alone becomes a weaker proxy. Now there the movement is towards. ➡️ Identify the pro

Marketers need not become technologists. I do think they need to become technologically fluent. In the decade where technology has ruled the highest, it seems like 'marketers' and 'technologists' are spoken in the same breath. You need to understand enough to know about AI, to know what it can do, where it can fail, and what it could change about your customer experience. Not become a data engineer, but understand enough about data to know what your personalisation strategy

You think your talent database is your asset? Think again. It is most likely a graveyard of old candidate records. Is your talent database your asset? This interesting statistic from ‘The economics of recruiting' says that 🔔 71% of placements come from candidates already sitting in the firm’s database. Still, when a new role opens, recruiters often start searching externally on job boards and other sources all over again. Because… having a CV doesn’t mean that it is still

Photo by Cherrydeck on Unsplash While attracting talent, there is only one goal that we are constantly aiming for—how to convert them into a hire? There isn’t any interest in investing time into building a community or inviting them into nurturing conversations that may or may not lead to immediate conversions. The goal largely in recruitment marketing is to broadcast one way through a newsletter and not really think about having a two-way conversation. We can learn a thing o

Building your talent community

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash AI may change the work people do, but human capabilities will determine whether organisations can adapt, collaborate and grow. For years, Employer Branding has competed on culture. Great place to work. Inclusive environment. People-first values. These are not wrong things to say. But they are no longer enough to prove. The next advantage will come from showing that your organisation helps people stay capable and employable as work changes. I

Photo by Andrés on Unsplash For as far as I can remember, as marketers, we used to obsess over: - What should we say? - Which channel should we use? - How often should we repeat it? With the creator economy setting in, there is a shift towards how brands are building influence. Now we are increasingly seeing another question evolving: - Who is saying it? Kantar's latest research found that when YouTube creator ads were combined with brand advertising: - Long-term brand equity

Photo by omid armin on Unsplash Last December, I did what half the internet did. I opened Spotify Wrapped. Within seconds, it told me my top artist, my most-played song, my total minutes listened, and a slightly embarrassing "listener personality" I did not ask for. It knew I had replayed the same three songs on loop during a stressful week in October. I hadn't noticed that pattern in myself. Spotify had. I didn't search for any of this. I didn't fill out a form or browse a

Photo: Snapshot from Unilever site Dove won 6 Cannes Lions award for a campaign that featured something most brands spend years trying to control. 'Customer opinions' They didn’t take carefully curated reviews or influencer-polished testimonials. They took the first 50 Reddit reviews, positive and negative reviews of a product, and turned them into the campaign. As Emily Barfoot, Head of Dove U.S., put it, "We're not going to please everyone, but we will hopefully please a ma

The talent market looks calmer on the surface. Application volumes are up in many segments, layoffs are making headlines, and the fevered hiring conditions of 2021 and 2022 feel like a different era. It would be easy to read this as breathing room. It isn't. Underneath the surface, five forces are permanently reshaping how people choose where to work, and most employer brands are still built for a market that no longer exists. The research is unambiguous. Organisations that u

For decades, the employer-employee relationship rested on a quiet promise: join us, work hard, climb the ladder, build a career. Organisations built their employer brands around that promise. Stability. Tenure. Loyalty. The long game. That model is quietly breaking down. According to the 2026 Randstad Workmonitor report, only 41% of employees still want a traditional linear career path. More than half the workforce has already moved on from the idea of a single, predictable t

A brand that was never Indian but truly belonged here. Photo by Loc Dang on Unsplash The morning of a new school academic year was always exciting... The uniform may have been reused, the bag a little worn… Thankfully, one luxury that my growing feet received was a pair of shiny Bata shoes. A statement... a source of quiet pride. For the longest time, and, like so many of us, I was unaware of Bata’s origins outside India. To me, it felt local, familiar and truly Indian. A rec