At a recent Talent Brand Breakfast - hosted by LinkedIn strategists Tabitha Eade and Cara Barone - we invited a panel of experts from GoDaddy, Pandora, and New Relic to share their employer branding goals, challenges, successes, and learnings with their peers.
Pandora, GoDaddy, and New Relic are three fantastic companies—growing and hiring the best talent around. They also, not coincidentally, all have distinct talent brands and great insights to share.
GoDaddy: Rebranding for women in tech
GoDaddy is a well-known company, but not always for the things they wanted to be known for.
When Andrew Carges joined GoDaddy as its VP of Global Talent Acquisition, it took him all of 3 seconds to understand why GoDaddy was struggling to recruit women. Let’s just say, the hiring goal was inhibited by previous brand advertisements that exclusively targeted a male audience.
Today, GoDaddy emphasizes diversity and has emerged as a vocal leader for gender equality in tech. This past April, GoDaddy made the Anita Borg Institute’s list of Top Companies for Women Technologists, which evaluated technology companies on their representation of women at all levels and year-over-year trends in recruitment and promotion of women in the workforce.
One of GoDaddy’s most unique aspects of its employer brand is its distinct and hilarious voice, which comes across on social media. Here are a few recent examples from Twitter:
The tweet above cleverly references the trending hashtag “it was never a dress” campaign (see below for reference).
I want to follow @GoDaddy for laughs, and I’m not even in the job market.
Pandora: Bringing a passion for music to their talent brand
Pandora is a fast-growing company where employees share a genuine passion for music of all kinds. After all, Pandora was founded by Tim Westergren, an award-winning composer and musician of 20+ years. Marta Riggins, Director of Employee Experience and Marketing, is at the heart of sharing this unique culture with top talent.
Marta and her team showcase music as a core tenant of Pandora’s employer brand. On Pandora’s YouTube channel, anyone can check out “Pandora Whiteboard Sessions,” in which employees gather at their office whiteboard to hear live, intimate performances from artists across music and comedy. Miguel, Mat Kearney, Ian Karmel, and Shiny Toy Guns are just a few of the many Whiteboard special guests.
And because employees are any company’s best brand advocates, Marta and her team created the hashtag #PandoraLife for employees to share company experiences.
New Relic: Partnering with marketing to spread nerd culture
New Relic started out as an engineering-driven company, and has exploded its hiring into marketing and sales. Sound familiar? Lots of technology companies start this way, and the ones that succeed know how to expand their talent appeal to attract the creative types (something New Relic achieved without sacrificing its proud “nerd culture”).
Today, New Relic has a robust marketing team that, as Brian Harmsen, Director of Global Talent Acquisition shared, partners with talent acquisition to bring its #DataNerd culture to life in every facet of the talent journey - from the job description to the onboarding experience. Why? Because a nerdy culture is something to be very proud of. Here are a few examples:
On day one of the new gig, the below Dublin employee was already prepared to look the part of a #DataNerd, complete with a knuckle tattoo graphic proudly displaying Nerd Life on one of his laptops.
New Relic’s nerd culture permeates across all seniority levels, yet these nerd intern t-shirts set the bar high.
Below, Employees are reppin’ #DataNerd pride while outside the office. this picture is great because the most authentic talent brands don’t just engage and celebrate employees from 9-5.
So, what makes your talent brand one-of a-kind? Tweet us @HireOnLinkedIn to share!
To receive blog posts like this one straight in your inbox, subscribe to the blog newsletter.
*Image from GoDaddy
Topics: Employer brand
Related articles