Brand Love Hate

Know How Much You Want to Make

When speaking with job seekers about opportunities on my team, the discussion may turn to compensation, especially if it's going well and I'm trying to get a sense of their requirements.

Sometimes this part of the interview is fine, and the candidates share their current compensation and/or their ideal salary moving forward.  But often, it quickly gets confusing and frustrating.

Some answers I have heard are:

"I didn't think salary would be discussed in a first-round interview."

"I would like to be paid based on the value you expect me to provide to the company."

"Career services told me to not share a salary number in an interview."

"Oh, I hate that question." OR "Oh, that's the dreaded question."

"I'm open to whatever."

It's hard to totally blame candidates for these answers, as the Web is filled with similar advice that basically guides people interviewing for jobs to avoid or deflect questions about salary.

I think that's bad advice.  As a hiring manager, I want a potential new employee that understands and can express the value he or she can bring to the team.  Being coy and avoiding tough questions comes off as a lack of confidence, and even a lack of preparation for the interview. Why do you "hate the question," because you don't believe you can do the job?

While I understand that most job seekers don't want to turn an interview - especially one early in the process - into a salary negotiation, I want candidates to be able to clearly communicate how much they want to make, or have been making. If they flounder with that question, I definitely wonder why they weren't prepared for that discussion, and what else they might be struggling with.

Don't Send Thank-you Notes

One of the most dangerous things a job seeker can do after an interview is send a thank-you note or letter.  After already opening yourself up to an employer, you're creating another opportunity for criticism, but this time you have no control of the situation, and no opportunity to answer.  While the purported benefits of the thank-you note include letting the employer know you want the job, I think the risks outweigh the benefits.  A recruiter or hiring manager may think you're great, but a terrible thank-you note could change his or her mind very quickly, or at least call into question whether you are the best candidate.  I also highly doubt that a strong thank-you note ever helped someone overcome a lackluster interview, so if you had a good conversation with a company, why risk it?  Here are some of the problems I have seen, almost all of which warrant removing the candidate from the list of finalists:

• Having typographical and/or grammatical errors
• Using IM language ("u" instead of "you," "ur" instead of "you are")
• Misunderstanding the job, the product or the company
• Becoming a rambling mess and/or bringing up unrelated topics

If you must write a thank-you note or letter, it must be 100 percent error-free.  It has to kick butt.  It has to make you look better than you did in the interview, not worse.  Not even a little bit worse.  So if you are brave and want to take this risk, spend time on it - even sleep on it before sending.  And keep it very short and to the point - many of the examples I've looked at online are way too long.  Here's my stab:

Susan:

Thanks for taking time to meet with me today - I know you're incredibly busy.  It was great to learn more about the Account Manager position.  Based on what you shared, I feel like I would be a good fit and could really contribute to your team.  Please let me know if I can answer any additional questions.

Thanks again for your time,

Jason

I'm not saying it's perfect (I'm saying don't do this at all), but it meets my new criteria for these things:

1. Short
2. No errors
3. No new topics

Let me know if I'm crazy, or if you have any other good examples.

New Series of Posts - The Job Search

I have been hiring a lot recently and, along the way, have seen a number of things that job seekers think are good ideas, yet those decisions have not helped them at all.  I wanted to share the details because my thoughts generally go against the job search advice I seem to find on the Web and at campus career centers.  So I basically want to find out if I'm crazy.  Also, I'm hopeful that some of it - even if you choose to do the opposite - will prove helpful.  I'm going to tag the posts with "job search" so you can find them all and judge for yourself.

Intel's Employer Branding TV Spots

The latest TV ads from Intel that focus on its people rather than its products are both well done and often hilarious. My favorite is "rock star," which treats an Intel Fellow as a celebrity. Bummer that they used an actor instead of the real guy - that does take away from the authenticity and the impact a little.

Employer Brand Advertising in Time Magazine

I was surprised and impressed to see two employer brand advertisements in the front of a recent Time magazine (June 1 issue, Michelle Obama cover). One, for Verizon Wireless (VZW), promotes a new recruitment Web site called Who We Are and focuses on teamwork:

At Verizon Wireless, we're all part of a team. Whether it's cell technicians working together to make sure every call gets through, or sales reps collaborating to help a customer, teamwork is a top priority.

While I have a hangup with posed diversity group photography, I like the ad and the Who We Are Web site as a way to promote the company and its opportunities. It does a nice job of mixing hard-sell employer brand messaging ("a great place to work") with community outreach content and ties into the consumer brand ("world's best wireless service"). It says work for the leader, because we have the best people and the best technology. Interestingly, Sprint has an ad a few pages later, but it's exclusively for its consumer wireless phone service.

The second ad, for Starbucks, is much more of a consumer ad with an embedded employer brand message. The headline, "It's not just what you're buying - it's what you're buying into," applies that concept to many aspects of Starbucks, from the beans it buys to the farmers it supports to the staff it employs and insures:

...the little extra you pay for our coffee lets us hire and train people who know the difference between a macchiato and a cappuccino. Our people are valuable. So, in return for their dedication, we offer full healthcare coverage to everyone who works at least 20 hours a week. We continue to do this, even in hard times, because it's the right thing to do.

To me, this one is a tougher sell to the job seeker, although I like the copy. It says work here - we'll take care of you; we put the extra dollars back into our people.

Now we all know that it's each of our experiences with VZW and Starbucks that will influence and decide what we think of these companies. And it's the real work experience that will determine their employer brands. But I like these efforts - you don't see a lot of employer brand advertising in major magazines - tucked between ads for watches and banks and hotels.

When Your Favorite Brands Re-brand

I was in the dairy aisle when I knew something was wrong. Looking farther down the aisle, where I normally would see my favorite Tropicana orange juice (lots of pulp plus calcium), I instead saw a wall of unfamiliar OJ. Tropicana had re-branded, and I was lost.

That was dramatic yet real - after years and years of the same familiar packaging, Tropicana changed its product design, a change that made differentiating its varieties and flavors almost impossible. I originally thought the criticism was silly, but Tropicana then added visual keys to the shelves in supermarkets to help customers find their favorite OJ (and to not accidentally buy tangerine-orange, which I almost did many times).

The good news in this case is that Tropicana listened to customers and decided to revert to the old packaging! I think all the analysis in the blogosphere was both impressive and cut to the heart of the real problem - it's not that we love the old packaging, the new designs were just too similar and confusing. I'll be happy to have back the same old color-coded cartons.

Another recent case of a favorite brand re-branding is Pepsi, which moved from its lively blue and silver design to a dark blue (almost purple) packaging with a now-distorted version of the iconic Pepsi brand mark. While the similarity of color at least allows me to still find the product, this change is boring and really subdues the packaging. I would have much rather seen a retro look with the classic Pepsi mark untouched, rather than it being degraded this way based on popular trends.

(Ahem, Tropicana is a Pepsi brand and both projects were done by Arnell, NYC.)

Nokia Employees Stick with Mobiles

From the "eat your own cooking" department, this week I had a call with a client contact at Nokia. After scouring our CRM and her e-mails for her "office" phone number, I realized I only had her mobile number. With a small sense of panic I made the call, only to quickly conclude, "it's Nokia, dummy!" The client confirmed that employees there (US corporate office in White Plains, NY) do not have desk phones, and thus exclusively use their mobiles for work. The client said she never misses a call and prefers to have just the one phone number. I think this is great internal brand support - I wonder if other cell phone makers, and even the wireless service providers, do the same thing?

Rallying Customers Around a Brand

Last month I received an e-mail from the president of smart USA announcing its new social network for smart car owners. Smart USA Insider runs on the Ning platform and is a great way to support smart owners and connect fellow brand enthusiasts. I actually found the idea to be a bit of a no-brainer and wondered why more companies - especially those with such a fanatic user base - aren't doing the same thing. So I decided to wait a month to see how the network grew - maybe it wouldn't catch on?

It's now a little over a month since I received that e-mail, and smart USA Insider has more than 7,600 members and almost 3,500 user photos. Like the car, the smart social network seems to have caught on. And the Ning platform is perfect for rallying owners in this type of fanatic network - blog posts talk about receiving delivery dates from smart (there currently is a waiting list for the petite car), getting the call that a new owner's smart has arrived, road trips and the resulting miles per gallon (often 40+) and more. The Events tool helps owners gather one another in person for meet-ups (with some great resulting pictures), and the Forum allows owners to interact, answer questions and provide advice like how to properly acknowledge other smart owners on the road.

Smart USA also has a goldmine of data here - many smart owners also are sharing the problems they are having with their cars, such as check engine lights going on, wheel dust and dealers acting improperly. For a young vehicle and brand (in the US anyway), this information - if mined properly - should be incredibly helpful for smart. It looks like the site has moderators, but another step could be to have smart representatives answer questions and concerns (right now it looks like owners only).

I'm not an owner myself, but after hanging out on the site for a while, it's hard to not get caught up in the excitement around the brand and the interaction among the owners.

A Reason Not to Use AOL Mail to Send Out Your Resume

Today I received a resume via e-mail for one of the openings at my company. At the bottom of the well-written e-mail cover letter was the following footer message tagged on by AOL (which owns TMZ):

The Famous, the Infamous, the Lame - in your browser.

Get the TMZ Toolbar Now!

A word of advice to job seekers - use Gmail or spend $50 for the year to get e-mail at your own domain. It's worth the time and/or investment to make a good first impression.

Netflix Hears You - and Actually Replies!

I don't even use Netflix profiles, but today's e-mail to customers is the right way to handle user feedback:

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Jason,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Always better to ask users before a change like this, but Netflix handled it well.