Sang-Kyun ("Sanny") Park, Global Expert for Employer Branding and Talent Attraction at KWS, is one of them. He's spent the past 18 months building a voice on LinkedIn, and it’s more than just sharing a post or two on LinkedIn.This conversation is about what it takes for employer branding to be recognised as central to how organisations attract and retain talent — not a side function.

Sanny didn't wait for a strategy before he started posting; he picked topics he had an opinion on and worked out what resonated by watching the numbers. That habit of sharing expertise, done consistently, is what raises the profile of employer branding as an industry and gives individuals more of a voice inside their own organisations.

About Sanny: Sanny moved into employer branding after a career in classic FMCG brand marketing, and now leads employer brand and talent attraction globally at KWS, one of the world's leading plant breeding companies. His weekly LinkedIn videos have grown into a company-wide social media advocates programme.What you'll hear:

- Why raising individual profiles on LinkedIn also raises the profile of employer branding as an industry

- Why Sanny started posting before he had a content strategy — and why that wasn't a mistake

- The personal reason he pushed himself in front of the camera after years working behind it

- How one post about "job hugging" hit 3 million impressions, and what he learned from it

- Why leading by example is the fastest way to get employees creating content

- How KWS built a social media advocates pilot from Sanny's own experiment

Find Sanny: www.linkedin.com/in/sang-kyun-park-kws

Find Chris: www.linkedin.com/in/chrislch

This year I went to find out what’s on the minds of TA and EB people right now — and, more importantly, what they’re doing about it — so I could share it here.

Here’s how the day unfolded, plus my own takes along the way.

Doing AI vs Doing AI properly — compliance

Before I’d even got through the gates, I bumped into a few people I know and had the kind of catch-up where you spend the first few minutes trying to work out when you last saw each other. I asked one of them, someone who talks to senior people leaders every day, what crops up the most in conversations.

Their answer, unprompted: AI — but specifically AI compliance. They told me about someone who was asked to AI themselves, and their own team, out of a job. And another situation where a CEO decided to “pick up AI” alongside people leadership and everything else — needless to say, it became a big addition to their to-do list, and it came with unexpected challenges.

AI is moving from just talking about it to actually doing something about it. There’s doing AI, and then there’s doing AI properly. Get the compliance piece wrong, and it can create more problems than it solves. And don’t expect AI to be a silver bullet - like with anything, for it work well you need to put the time and effort into it.

Talent Acquisition and AI in 2026

This year I wanted to spend more time at the talks than wandering the stands and chatting in the field — although I did plenty of that too. My first stop was Hung Lee (Recruiting Brainfood) on the Inspire Stage, taking us through what we need to know about TA and AI in 2026.

Hung covered a lot of ground, but here were some of my takeaways:

The pyramid is becoming a diamond. The traditional org shape — a big base of employees, fewer managers, fewer leaders still — is shifting. With fewer people doing the delivery work, and AI doing the heavy lifting underneath - that changes what the remaining humans need to be capable of. If you’re going to have fewer people around AI, those people — managers and leaders included — need to understand both AI and people properly. There’s no room left for a leader who only understands one half of that equation.

Everyone’s data is training data now. Hung shared a photo of a woman in India filming herself doing everyday tasks — chopping a mango, iPhone strapped to her head — paid specifically so that footage can be fed into AI models. Wow. What happens to the people doing that kind of task-based work once the model has learned what it needs from them?

Recruiting is starting to look like executive search. Individual hires matter more because AI multiplies what one person can now produce, and recruiting capacity is shrinking because more of the process can be automated. That should free recruiters up for the genuinely human parts — mapping the market, building relationships with hiring managers, succession planning — rather than replacing them.

“TA Plus” and proximity to value. If the transactional tasks get automated, the job becomes about adding value beyond the task: real relationships with the business, real understanding of what it’s trying to achieve, not just working from the brief a hiring manager hands you. My comparison: it’s like a football agent who can tell you exactly what value their player has delivered for the club, not just that they filled a squad slot.

The future of early careers: the missing middle?

Next up was a panel on early careers hiring — “The Missing Middle: Why cutting early careers today creates tomorrow’s talent crisis.”

The argument: AI is now capable of doing a lot of the entry-level tasks that used to be how people learned the ropes, which makes it tempting for organisations to cut early careers hiring significantly, or altogether. But that just pushes the problem further down the line. Early careers talent brings the fresh thinking, the comfort with new technology, the innovation a business needs to keep evolving.

When your senior leaders are thinking short-term, ask them what will the impact on the business be in two to five years’ time? Will leaving a hole of talent in the middle of the business make them more, or less, competitive?

Something else from the panel was a great piece of advice wrapped up in a story - an intern who, within weeks of starting, built something that generated $100,000 for the business. That kind of story moves people far more than a slide of data ever will — exactly the kind of proof point employer brand teams should be capturing and telling, not sitting on.

ROI matters, of course — but storytelling and relationship-building are what actually position the importance and impact of early careers talent internally.

Working in employer branding in-house? You’re the orchestrator, not the owner

Over on the EVP stage, James Ellis and Audra Knight brought some big energy about employer branding in-house. Treat employer brand as a business tool, not a TA tool or an internal engagement nice-to-have — if you can use it to solve an actual business problem, you become far more relevant in the room.

There was a brutal little exercise thrown out to the audience: use ChatGPT to look at your website and ask it to pull out the key messages. Now do the same for your competitors and see the difference. The results will likely tell you that differentiation is lacking more than it should be in employer branding.

There was a comforting message for EBers. Often, employer branding comes down to one person or a small team. As an employer brand person, you don’t have the authority to tell the whole business what its story is — you’re the orchestrator, not the owner. This really resonated with me - the job is surfacing the knowledge and experience that’s already sitting inside teams and giving it a shape. That’s also, not coincidentally, exactly the point I keep making about content: it’s not a bolt-on to a business strategy, it’s the front end of it.

Culture and EVP: the Mars bar analogy

“Insight to Impact with Great Place to Work: Building an Authentic EVP Rooted in Culture Data,” with Claire Knights (Chief Growth Officer, Great Place to Work) and Vicki Saunders (Founding Director, The EVP Consultancy), was a really interesting session on the foundations of authentic EVPs.

It was interesting to see that Great Place to Work doesn’t just see themselves as an accreditation body handing out badges — it’s a data company.

And the analogy Vicki used is that of a Mars bar: the ingredients, the bar itself, the wrapper, the tasting, and the reviews. You can have the glossiest wrapper in the industry, but if there’s no substance in the bar, people find out fast — and increasingly, so does AI. In a world where LLMs are shaping how candidates form opinions about employers, generic marketing language with no proof points behind it just won’t land.

Interrogate your data, find your proof points, and look at the long-term pattern rather than a single good year. That’s what makes an EVP true rather than a campaign — and the payoff has multiple benefits. Internally, people believe it because they can see it’s real, which kills cynicism. Externally, the wrong people self-select out before they apply, and the right people arrive with fewer surprises when they join.

Conversations between the talks

The conversations flowed from the tents to in between the agenda, and here are some of the things we talked about in the July sunshine.

On the agency model. A properly interesting conversation about whether agencies still need to be the size they used to be, or whether a leaner model — bringing in the right specialist at the right moment — is actually the better way to work now. AI and monetisation: If AI makes things quicker does that mean agencies should charge less? Yes, and no - it depends. But AI in the hands of someone who doesn’t know a specialism produces something generic, but AI in the hands of someone who really knows their craft produces something sharper. That’s a big case for partners with real knowledge working alongside in-house teams.

On the science of storytelling. A great conversation about understanding how people actually react to content, rather than just what they say they think about it — looking at the physical, almost instinctive response to a piece of video versus the polite feedback you get when you ask someone’s opinion of it afterwards. It’s a good reminder that there’s real craft and science behind storytelling that works. Even when plenty of it can be done in-house, it’s worth investing in content production experts, while also building your in-house capability - both help each other.

On employee-generated video. A conversation about the real barrier many in-house teams face with video — it’s rarely desire, it’s headspace, resource, time and capability. In-house teams who decide to “do video” often only realise what it actually takes once they start doing it themselves. That’s important for internal learning, and it shows that software which helps employees generate their own content really helps — but so does having the bandwidth to manage the process. Using partners in the right way can make all the difference.

On hiring for storytelling. I chatted to a global brand who’d hired for a senior storytelling role a few months back — and what’s interesting is that the role sits in comms, not TA. So it’s not just a TA thing — storytelling is something that covers multiple touch points in a business, and therefore brings value in multiple places. Building the business case is about looking at the true strategic impact and ROI to the business. Companies are full of stories, so it’s genuinely great to see it being taken seriously, and I hope more follow suit. I’ll be picking this up in a future podcast episode.

TA as a strategic partner? Amazon shows how it’s done

Amazon took the Inspire Stage to talk about moving TA from vacancy filler to strategic business partner — it’s great to see this shift actually happening, and it’s not just conference talk. The question they left the audience with was a great mic-drop moment: If your business removed the TA function entirely, what would it lose beyond the ability to hire?

If you’re struggling to answer that, it’s worth taking a proper look at how TA can genuinely help the business.

It was great to see a panel of people actually making this happen — especially from a company like Amazon.

The answer keeps coming back to the same place: have a deep understanding of what the business actually needs, and build relationships with stakeholders across it. You can’t just ask TA questions — you have to ask business questions.

AI is smart, humans are genius

This session took aim at the traditional recruitment processes as ways to spot the people who are actually going to help a business grow through thinking differently and dealing with unknowns. As AI takes over the more “logical” parts of the process there’s a danger of making things too logical. Tom Stevenson - Founder & CEO at Pynea made the case for assessing people against a future problem instead of asking questions with a clean, Google-able or LLM-able answer. Open-ended questions are harder to fake and harder for AI to answer generically on someone’s behalf — which gives you a good read on how someone thinks.

My take: Hung and Tom’s point about CVs — that they capture a record of achievement but not the trait or mindset behind it — connects straight back to content. If you’re creating opinion-led, story-led content that genuinely shows what it’s like to work somewhere and who succeeds there, you’re doing some of that assessment work before a candidate even applies. People self-select in — or, just as usefully, self-select out.

Closing out at the EVP stage

The last session of the day? I went back to the EVP tent. A hot field, music getting louder outside, drinks flowing, and a speaker who said she was nervous but didn’t show it once she got going.

Nicola Plenderleith - Head of Talent Acquisition at Leyton - was great. She gave practical, take-it-away-and-do-it-Monday advice, and her core point was simple: your EVP isn’t the polished version you’ve built, it’s whether that promise actually shows up at every touchpoint someone experiences — from the first conversation with a hiring manager, to whether your career site would still be recognisably you with the logo covered up, to the rejection emails you send out. Go back and reread your own rejection emails. Do they sound like boilerplate, or do they sound like you? That was a genuinely good way to close the day.

The Lean Guide to Employer Content

I’d brought a few copies of my recently published book: The Lean Guide to Employer Content along with me for the day, and it was great getting it into people’s hands and talking about the why and what of it. The response was a valuable reaffirmation for writing the book.

If you’re in talent acquisition or employer branding and want a framework to build self-sustainable content creation in-house then you can find out more here.

Why I love going to events like RecFest

The big takeaway for me is that it’s worth going to events like this.

It’s a rare chance to meet multiple people in one place, and to take your team along so they can learn from others too. And it’s just as important to have some good conversations and a few drinks in the sun — it might not feel like work, but stepping back and actually enjoying yourself is exactly what sends you back to work with energy and focus.

If you see me at an event, pop over and say hi.

Chris

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

This article covers the things we talked about. Watch the episode above, or listen to it below.

The agency landscape has changed a lot across mine and Nick’s careers. Recruitment advertising agencies that used to book media and fill it with creative evolved into something more. Websites, brochures, events, social media, employee comms… and employer branding.

Then over the last decade we saw employer brand emerge as agency projects, new specialist agencies, and in-house job titles.

So with the rise of in-house specialists and them working with other in-house teams, there’s a commercial question from the bosses who hold the purse strings - do you need an agency at all?

But the question isn’t whether to use an agency. It’s what they’re actually there to do — and when.

Because the thing agencies do really well, the thing that’s hard to replicate inside an organisation, is creativity. Not creativity as a vague concept — but the kind that comes from working across dozens of organisations, sectors and challenges. From having different reference points in the room. From seeing the same problem play out in ten different ways and knowing what actually works.

And that’s not just “words, pictures and pixels” creativity. It’s problem solving creativity.

The opportunity is agencies bringing that creativity at the right time, alongside in-house teams who have their own deep knowledge of the organisation. Not taking over. Not just delivering a brief and walking away. But coming in when it matters, adding the thing that’s genuinely hard to build internally, and leaving something better behind.

That sounds like a true partnership, right?

The knowledge transfer opportunity

One of the things Nick and I talked about is how much value sits in the movement of knowledge — in both directions.

People who’ve worked agency-side before moving in-house are often great hires for an organisation. They’ve seen the same problems play out across multiple organisations, built instincts from a breadth of experience, and can transfer that to a team quickly.

But there’s an opportunity for agencies too. Rather than the traditional model — take the brief, go away, come back with the work — what if agencies embedded alongside in-house teams, filled in the gaps, amplified what was already happening, and left the team genuinely better than they found it?

That’s a different kind of engagement. Smaller maybe, but higher impact [and value]. And it keeps the relationship going — because you’re building capability rather than creating dependency.

Look at the RADs six or seven years ago. The usual suspects. Now there’s a much wider range — smaller agencies, boutique outfits, even in-house teams entering their own work. That diversity is healthy. It pushes innovation, it pushes the bigger agencies to think differently, and it creates better work across the board.

And when agencies shed people — as has been happening — you get independent consultants and small groups doing things differently. Faster to mobilise, lower overhead, able to bolt into a team for a sprint and step back out. That model is growing because it meets a real need [and one of the reasons I set up my business].

What next?

The future of employer branding agencies isn’t smaller or larger. It’s different, more targeted, and more about knowing when to come in and what to bring — rather than owning the whole thing.

What’s going to be happening in five years is being worked out right now. In new agency shapes, in how knowledge moves between organisations, in conversations like the one I had with Nick. That feels like an exciting place to be.

If you know someone who would find this topic helpful then please do pass it on to them.

And if you want to talk about how I can help you with my fractional content marketing capabilities then I’d be happy to talk.

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Founder, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

The Culture Profit Podcast focuses on something that really resonates with me: that workplace culture is not just an internal “people topic”, but something that can directly influence business performance.

Strong cultures shape better products, better customer experiences, and ultimately stronger commercial outcomes.

So I was super happy to get an invite on to their podcast recently. The more we can connect culture with cash, the better.

Here are some of the themes from the episode:

Why culture needs to be seen, not just described

Many organisations invest time defining their values, their mission, and their Employer Value Proposition. But when people outside the organisation encounter that messaging, it can feel abstract.

Statements like “we value collaboration” or “our people are our greatest asset” are common, but they rarely tell you what it actually feels like to work somewhere.

Content changes that.

When employees talk about the work they do, the problems they solve, and the impact they have, culture stops being a slogan and starts becoming something tangible. A short video conversation, a podcast discussion, or a behind-the-scenes story can reveal far more about an organisation than really polished piece of copy on a careers page.

That’s why I’m so interested in helping organisations capture these stories.

Employees are the most credible storytellers

One of the themes we discussed in the episode is the importance of letting employees speak for themselves.

Too often employer branding content tries to sound like marketing. But audiences - especially candidates - are increasingly good at recognising polished messaging.

What they respond to instead is authenticity.

* An apprentice explaining how they faced the world of work for the first time.

* A nurse describing the moments they see the real impact of their work, despite the challenges.

* A graduate talking about what culture looks like in their day to day.

These kinds of conversations create content that is informative, credible and often genuinely inspiring. They allow people outside the organisation to understand the purpose behind the work, not just the job description.

The important thing is to create the environment that helps them bring their authentic self to the screen or mic. Here’s a clip about how I do that.

From storytelling to business value

When organisations consistently share thoughtful, useful content about the work happening inside their teams, several things start to happen.

First, they build trust with potential candidates. People considering a role gain a much clearer picture of the environment they might be joining.

Second, the organisation develops a reputation for expertise and openness. The same content that attracts candidates can also resonate with customers, partners and industry peers.

And third, employees themselves often feel a stronger sense of pride and ownership when their work is shared and recognised publicly.

In other words, workplace culture content doesn’t just support hiring - it contributes to brand, reputation and commercial success.

A practical way to start

One of the points I always emphasise is that organisations don’t need a large production budget to start creating this kind of content. The most important ingredient is curiosity.

Start by recording conversations with people who are doing interesting work inside the organisation. Ask them about the challenges they’re tackling, the expertise they’ve developed, and the moments that made them proud.

Those conversations can become podcast episodes, short videos, articles or social clips.

Over time, these stories build a body of content that reveals what the organisation actually does and why it matters.

It also means you can build internal confidence, proof of concept and business cases for higher production content that sits alongside this.

Watch or listen to the full conversation

If you’re interested in employer branding, organisational culture, or the role content can play in connecting the two, I hope you enjoy the conversation.

You can watch the full episode here:

Thanks again to Matt and Crista for inviting me. It was a great opportunity to chat about how organisations can move beyond describing culture - and start showing it through the stories of the people who create it every day.

Check out their podcast here.

✅ Maintain consistent employer branding across teams or regions

✅ Balance global guidelines with local flexibility

✅ Build processes that help teams collaborate

✅ Use technology and platforms to scale employer branding

✅ Prove the value of employer branding to the wider business

✅ Build internal communities that drive adoption and momentumThe key lesson: Scaling employer branding is about aligning people, processes and technology across the organisation.

Listen to the episode here.This episode is part of a series supported by Cliquify - the Employer Branding Operating System for organisations - featuring conversations with in-house practitioners about how employer branding really works inside organisations.

Find out more about Cliquify here.

🗓️ The next episode in this 4-part series sees me chatting with another in-house practitioner, so be sure to subscribe to get it direct to your inbox.

Whether you work in a global company or a growing organisation with several departments, employer branding quickly becomes complex.

In this episode, Chris Le’cand-Harwood speaks with Jane Mehringer, Global Head of Talent Attraction at ABB, about how organisations bring employer branding together across teams, stakeholders and locations.

While ABB operates globally, the challenges Jane describes are familiar to any organisation trying to coordinate employer branding across different parts of the business.

This conversation explores how to:

- Align multiple stakeholders and departments

- Maintain consistent employer branding across teams or regions

- Balance global guidelines with local flexibility

- Build processes that help teams collaborate

- Use technology and platforms to scale employer branding

- Prove the value of employer branding to the wider business

- Build internal communities that drive adoption and momentum

The key lesson:

Scaling employer branding is about aligning people, processes and technology across the organisation.

This episode is part of a series supported by Cliquify - the Employer Branding Operating System for organisations - featuring conversations with in-house practitioners about how employer branding really works inside organisations.

Find out more about Cliquify here: https://www.cliquify.me/

Subscribe to the Employer Content Marketing Newsletter here: https://www.employercontent.marketing/

Connect with Jane here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janemehringer/

Another tool. Another trend. Another thing we’re supposed to care about.

But when it comes to employer branding and talent attraction, AI isn’t a gimmick. It’s solving a problem teams have struggled with for years.

I was discussing this recently with Erik Rivas, alongside my fellow Employer Content Club co-host Chris Murdoch, and one idea stood out:

AI isn’t about creating fake stories or replacing human voices.

It’s about extending the life of real ones.

The old way of using employee video

For a long time, the process looked something like this:

You’d record great employee interviews. You’d publish the videos. You’d slice them into clips. You’d post them on socials and add them to a careers site.

Valuable? Yes. Exhaustive? Also yes.

Once that content was “used”, it largely stayed where it was. Revisiting it months later meant manually rewatching footage, pulling quotes, or starting again with new filming.

What AI changes

Now those same videos can be treated as something more powerful: searchable, reusable data.

The words employees say — their experiences, motivations, doubts, and advice — can be revisited and reshaped for different purposes over time.

AI allows teams to:

* Turn employee interviews into blogs, social posts, and campaign messaging

* Reframe existing content around new hiring priorities or challenges

* Answer candidate questions using real employee language, not corporate copy

You’re not inventing anything new.

You’re unlocking what you’ve already invested in.

A simple but powerful example

Erik shared a great example from his work at Police Now.

“Why should I join Police Now?”

That question might be asked by:

* A graduate

* A career changer

* A former teacher

* Someone five years into a different profession

The question is the same, but the context isn’t.

With AI, teams can surface stories from people who’ve actually made those transitions and answer the question in a way that feels relevant to each audience — using the same core bank of employee content.

Not personalised one-to-one. But intelligently relevant at scale.

What this means for employer branding

Employer branding isn’t like selling a product.Candidates can’t return a career move.

They can’t undo a cultural mismatch.

They’re making a high-stakes decision, often over a long period of time.

That means brands need to:

* Show up consistently

* Earn attention repeatedly

* Stay front of mind long before someone applies

The problem? Most budgets and teams can’t support constant new content creation.

AI doesn’t fix that by making content fake or automated.

It fixes it by helping teams:

* Do more with what they already have

* Stay visible without burning out employees or budgets

* Keep authenticity at the centre, not polish

The real opportunity

Used well, AI doesn’t dilute employer brand content.

It amplifies it. Real voices. More relevance. More consistency.

And finally, a way to meet the volume the world demands — without losing the humanity that makes employer branding work in the first place.

That’s not something to roll your eyes at. Exciting times.

Erik shared how they do this in practice using Vouch — a platform that helps teams capture employee video stories and then reuse and resurface them intelligently over time.

In the world of employer branding, we can fall into the trap of polishing the truth until it shines like a commercial.

But after 20+ years in workplace content, I’ve learned a fundamental truth: Advertising sells, but content builds trust.

When candidates or employees are considering your organisation, they don’t want sales messages. They want real stories, opinions, and experiences from the people actually doing the work.

The Shift from “Corporate Gloss” to Authentic Reality

One of the most common challenges organisations face today is the desire for authentic stories coupled with an uncertainty of how to get them. Employer branding practitioners often tell me, “We want real employee voices, but we’re not sure how to capture them without it feeling forced or scripted”.

This is where the distinction between “marketing” and “content” becomes crucial. Traditional marketing relies on corporate slogans; strategic content relies on giving talented people a platform to build their reputation and the reputation of their organisation.

My approach sits right in the middle of culture and content. Whether I am directing documentaries with psychiatrists and nurses or producing a podcast series on the sports fields of the Royal Air Force, the goal is always the same: to harness workplace culture to drive recruitment and build thought leadership without the gloss.

Strategy Before You Hit “Record”

It is tempting to jump straight into high-production solutions. However, effective employer content requires us to be strategic partners who figure out what to make and why before we ever turn on a camera.

This means challenging the brief. It means separating “wants” from “needs”. Sometimes, the answer isn’t a massive 12-month campaign. I believe in momentum over perfection. I would rather pilot something quickly, learn from it, and iterate than spend months planning the perfect piece of content that never ships.

For example, I once helped a client repurpose and serialise content from a film shoot that wasn’t delivering its full value. By applying a strategic lens, we turned a handful of videos into a whole suite of content that lasted months.

Solving the “Bandwidth” Problem

Even when the strategy is sound, execution is often the bottleneck. “We need to scale our content, but we’re stretched”.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this. Sometimes the answer is bringing in an independent producer to take the project end-to-end—assembling the crew and handling everything from strategy to delivery. Other times, the sustainable answer is building your internal capability through coaching and workshops, or having a partner embed with your team as an extra pair of hands.

A Privilege to Serve the Industry

My career has taken me from the NHS to working with brands like Hilton, Schroders, and Cygnet, winning 11 awards over the last five years. But my work isn’t just for organisations; it’s for the industry.

Through the Employer Content Marketing podcast and my work with the Employer Content Club, I try to facilitate discussions that help us all make better workplaces. Using content to make people happier and motivated to do their best work is a genuine privilege.

If you are tired of corporate sales slogans and want to start turning your culture into magnetic content, let’s focus on the stories that matter. Because sales messages can’t truly build the trust your employer brand needs—but content can.

Have a great week!

Chris

And after conversations with practitioners like Ally Brown from VCA Animal Hospitals and Erik Rivas from Police Now, and a night out at the Recruitment Marketing Awards, I got into the studio with Chris just before Christmas.

We met up in London to record the final episode in our “Co-Created” Series. And it felt like the perfect way to wrap up this series.

Throughout Co-Created, we’ve explored how organisations of all sizes can build sustainable content operations. We’ve lifted the bonnet on real content engines, discovered what actually works with limited budgets, looked at award-winning work, and learned how practitioners are feeling about the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Episode 5 wraps the series up with a practical framework to help you co-create content with your employees.

Why these five pillars will help

If you’re a solo practitioner or part of a small EB team then the five pillars are here for you.

This is not a theoretical model, but five practical pillars built from real conversations with people doing this work every day [and based on our own experiences working in employer content marketing].

What we cover in the episode

Without giving too much away (because I really want you to watch or listen to get the most value from this!), here’s what we explore:

The mindset shift that unlocks creativity - It’s not about having more time, it’s about creating the right conditions for ideas to flow. I share my “Airplane Mode” approach and why stepping away from your desk might be the most productive thing you do all week.

Getting buy-in from busy people - Your colleagues are swamped. So how do you get them excited about creating content? We explore the “what’s in it for them” angle and why visibility might be the superpower your employees need in 2026.

The agile sprint approach - Can you really create meaningful content in four weeks? We break down how WhatsApp groups, voice notes, and co-creation can transform your content operation without fancy tech or big budgets.

Experience vs efficiency - As AI makes everything faster, we make the case for why doubling down on experience (not just efficiency) will be your competitive advantage in 2026.

The truth about creating content in 2026

The organisations succeeding with employee content aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets.

They’re the ones who’ve figured out how to create space for thinking differently, how to start small and iterate, and how to make their employees genuine partners in the content creation process.

They’re also the ones who understand that in a world drowning in AI-generated content and vanity metrics, authentic human experience cuts through like nothing else.

Watch or listen now

Whether you’re just starting to build an employer content function or you’re looking to level up your existing operation, these five pillars will give you a roadmap for the next 12 months.

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the episode here:

Join us for what’s next

This might be the finale of the Co-Created series, but it’s just the beginning for Employer Content Club.

We’re planning events for 2026, and we want you to be part of the conversation. Whether you’re a solo practitioner figuring it out as you go, or part of a team looking to do this more strategically, there’s a place for you in this community.

👉 Join Employer Content Club at employercontent.club

You’ll get early access to upcoming events, connect with other practitioners navigating the same challenges, and help shape how we build this community together.

And if you haven’t watched the previous episodes in the series, head over to the Employer Content Club website to catch up on all the conversations.

A huge thanks to Vouch

Their support has allowed us to have these important conversations about the operational side of content creation - the stuff that often gets overlooked at events and in communities.

If you’re looking for a frictionless way to capture employee-generated content at scale, Vouch is worth checking out. They’ve been brilliant partners throughout this series.

Check them out here.

What’s your biggest challenge with employee content creation? Drop a comment below or email me at chris@contentmarketingpod.com - I’d love to hear from you.

Chris

🎙️In this special studio session, me and Chris Murdoch wrap up the series by revealing the five essential pillars for creating authentic employee content over the next 12 months.

Whether you're a solo practitioner or part of a small EB team working with tight budgets, this episode gives you a practical framework to transform your content creation approach.

Throughout the Co-Created series, we've explored how organisations like VCA Animal Hospitals and Police Now are building sustainable content operations by co-creating WITH employees, not just creating content ABOUT them. This finale brings together all those learnings into five actionable pillars you can start implementing immediately.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction & Series Recap

03:15 - Pillar 1: Creating Space to Think Differently

12:40 - Pillar 2: Budget - Doing Better with Less

24:18 - Pillar 3: What's In It For Them?

35:22 - Pillar 4: The Agile 4-Week Sprint

45:10 - Pillar 5: Experience Over Efficiency

Discover why the iterative approach beats the big-budget campaign, how to incentivise employee participation authentically, and why doubling down on experience (not just efficiency) will be your competitive advantage in 2026.

🔗 Join Employer Content Club:Sign up at to access all episodes and connect with other EB practitioners building co-created content strategies. https://www.employercontent.club/co-created

📧 Connect with the Employer Content Club hosts:Chris Le'cand-Harwood - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislch/Chris Murdoch - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismurdoch/

About the Co-Created Series:

A series exploring how to build authentic content WITH employees, not just about them.

Hosted by Chris Le'cand-Harwood (Content Marketing Pod) and Chris Murdoch (Voyse), co-founders of Employer Content Club.https://www.employercontent.club/co-created Series partner:

This series is proudly created in partnership with Vouch - the tool that makes employee content creation frictionless. https://vouchfor.com/

While it would be great to be able to go on multiple film shoots, the real world doesn’t always have the budget for that. So employee generated content is the answer.

As part of the Employer Content Club series that I’m hosting with Chris Murdoch [host of the Employer Bland podcast], we chatted with Erik Rivas from Police Now.

Here’s a segment of that conversation.

Erik explains that while high-quality videos are important for specific campaigns, they can be time-consuming and expensive to produce. In contrast, employee generated content can be produced quickly and at a lower cost, allowing the organisation to respond to changing recruitment needs promptly.

Watch or listen to the episode here

Join Employer Content Club

If you’re building an employee-generated content function in-house, this episode gives you the practical playbook.

Get access to the next episode in this series (including bonus content about AI) by joining Employer Content Club.

Become a founding member and help shape how we build this community. You’ll get early access to upcoming events we’re planning and be part of the conversation from the start.

👉 Sign up at employercontent.club

About the Co-Created Series

How to build authentic content WITH employees, not just about them.

Hosted by Chris Le’cand-Harwood (Content Marketing Pod) and Chris Murdoch (Voyse), co-founders of Employer Content Club.

Proudly created in partnership with Vouch - the tool that makes employee content creation frictionless.

Connect with Erik on LinkedIn

What’s your biggest challenge with balancing high-production and employee-generated content? Drop a comment below or email me at chris@contentmarketingpod.com - I’d love to hear from you.

Chris

We spent the morning in a London studio filming the final episode of our “Co-Created” series about how to build authentic content with your employees.

In just one hour, we grabbed loads of valuable conversation, walking through a five-point framework for in-house teams who want to accelerate their content strategy and create work that moves the needle on talent attraction and engagement.

Then we hosted a mini Employer Content Club meetup over lunch with Claire de Souza, Ben Phillips, Rich Gordon and Andy Mallinson. A few hours catching up on the market, sharing stories, but more importantly, just connecting with good people doing this work.

That’s what this is really about.

The Co-Created Series: What We’ve Covered

Episodes so far have covered award-winning work, the challenges facing the industry, and conversations with in-house practitioners about how they’re co-creating content with employees. Real people, real challenges, practical solutions.

Episode 5 (dropping soon) brings it all together with a five-point framework. This one is especially valuable if you’re looking for a systematic approach to employee content that you can actually implement.

We Want You to Be Part of This

Here’s what we’re asking: join us.

We’re building Employer Content Club for in-house employer branders and content practitioners - people working solo or in small teams, figuring this out as they go. They’re exactly who this community is for.

Here’s how to get involved

Check out the Co-Created series - Episodes are available now with practical frameworks and insights from practitioners doing this work. Episode 5 drops either just before or after New Years.

Sign up at Employer Content Club - Get notifications when new episodes drop and be the first to hear about upcoming events.

Join us for events in 2025 - We’re planning both online and in-person gatherings. More details coming soon, but these will be real opportunities to connect, share challenges, and learn from each other.

The community is growing. Yyesterday’s meetup reminded us that there are so many talented people doing this work who would benefit from connecting with each other. That’s what we’re building here.

We’d love you to be part of it.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

-----

P.S. If you know someone in-house doing employer brand content work who would benefit from this community, please share this with them. The more diverse voices we have, the better we’ll all become.

She explains how AI helps her:

* Work faster and smarter when she’s doing employer‑branding content alone

* Scale her output without increasing headcount or costs

* Unlock creativity and consistency that would be hard to sustain manually

If you build content to attract talent or engage employees — and you’re juggling it on your own — that mindset could be a game-changer.

If you’re building an employee-generated content function in-house, this gives you a practical playbook.

What This Means for Employer Branders

In the business world, employer branding is still in its infancy - employer brand job titles and teams have only been around since the early-mid noughties. So teams tend to be solo or small - this has held the profession back. Enter AI and its potential to be a huge enabler, if used in the right way.

✅ Stretch your bandwidth

As a one-person team, you often wear multiple hats: content producer, strategist, storyteller, recruiter liaison. AI lets you stretch your bandwidth — it doesn’t replace your judgement or heart, but amplifies your ability to deliver.

✅ Quality at scale

Consistent talent attraction and employee engagement content demands frequency and quality. AI helps maintain that rhythm, even when resources are tight.

✅ Fresh thinking, different outcomes

With AI handling time‑heavy tasks, you free up mental space to think bigger: crafting narratives, aligning content with EVP, experimenting with tone and format.

Want to watch the full conversation with Ally Brown?

Or listen to the episode here.

This is part of the Employer Content Club: Join us.

👥 Join Employer Content Club and get the next episode in this series: Become a founding member and help shape how we build this community. You’ll get early access to upcoming events we’re planning and be part of the conversation from the start.

👉 Sign up at https://www.employercontent.club/co-created

Co-Created Series – How to build authentic content WITH employees, not just about them. Hosted by me, Chris Le’cand-Harwood, and Chris Murdoch, co-hosts of Employer Content Club.

This episode is created in partnership with Vouch, the tool Ally uses to make employee content creation frictionless.

Thanks for passing by. Hope this helps.

Chris

www.linkedin.com/in/chrislch/

Ally Brown, who leads employer brand at VCA (1,000+ veterinary hospitals across the US and Canada), reveals the strategies and tactics she uses to get busy veterinary professionals creating compelling content - even when they're seeing pets all day.

This is your inside look at making employee-generated content actually work.In this episode, you'll learn:

• The creative brief approach that treats employees as collaborators, not just subjects

• How to make the ask so employees feel special (and actually say yes)

• How to generate lots of content formats from a one-day photoshoot

• Working around the biggest challenge: time constraints with deskless workers

• Why starting with student creators built the perfect foundation

• Using AI to craft better questions without losing authenticity

Real examples include an 81-year-old veterinary technician sharing career wisdom, rescue stories from house fires, and hyper-targeted video job ads for struggling markets.

If you're building an employee-generated content function in-house, this episode gives you the practical playbook.

👥 Join Employer Content Club and get the next episode in this series [including bonus content about AI]:

Become a founding member and help shape how we build this community.

You'll get early access to upcoming events we're planning and be part of the conversation from the start.

👉 Sign up at https://www.employercontent.club/co-created---Co-Created Series – How to build authentic content WITH employees, not just about them.

Hosted by Chris Le’cand-Harwood (Content Marketing Pod) and Chris Murdoch (Voyse), co-hosts of Employer Content Club.

Proudly created in partnership with Vouch (the tool Ally uses to make employee content creation frictionless). https://vouchfor.com

Subscribe to Employer Content Marketing for more episodes

Employer Content Club took a look recently.

As part of the latest episode in our series “Co-Created: How to build authentic content with your employees,” I chatted with Chris Murdoch about BP’s “We’re Making BP Work for Women” campaign.

They won the Grand Prix award - the best of the best on the night.

It was just one of the winners we talked about on our latest Employer Content Club episode.

Taking a closer look

I didn’t judge BP’s category, but they won a few awards. So afterwards I went to the Recruitment Marketing Awards website to take a proper look at what they’d done.

Yes, it had the usual elements - talking heads, nice stories, b-roll cutaways. The kind of production you’d expect from a major campaign.

But what really caught my eye was something called “Walls of Talent.”

Walls of Talent

Picture this: Artists in the streets of India painting murals.

An artful tribute to women who inspire us every day.

But here’s what made it different - they’re not talking about BP’s policies or benefits. They’re talking about grandparents, mothers, daughters, families.

Real tributes. Real stories. Brilliant.

The result? Something powerful was created. And application numbers soared.

Lovely piece of work.

When you move beyond corporate messaging and tap into genuine human stories - stories that celebrate the people who inspire us - you create something that resonates.

📺 Watch the full episode here

🎧 Or listen to the full episode here:

Note: While I attended and discussed the Recruitment Marketing Awards in this article, this content is not affiliated with or sponsored by the Recruitment Marketing Awards or anyone connected to this award-winning.

Join Employer Content Club

Want more insights like this? Find out more about Employer Content Club and become a founding member: https://www.employercontent.club/co-created

So when I went to the Recruitment Marketing Awards a few weeks ago, I kept an eye out for award winners in certain categories.

One category that particularly caught my attention was the Employer Brand award.

This was won by Currys, in partnership with Tonic.

Here’s a segment from Episode 2 of our Co-Created series - a little dive into the award-winning work. Me and Chris took a look at the winning listings and the content itself, and shared our thoughts based on what we saw.

Watch the video for our deep dive

And here are my key takeaways for you:

The Authenticity Problem

I had a conversation with someone who was at World Employer Branding Day who said something that resonated: when you over-gloss employee content, you kill its authenticity.

Currys seems to have figured this out. Their approach leans into TikTok trends, office banter, and the kind of workplace moments that feel genuine because they are genuine.

The production quality isn’t the point - the people are.

Why This Matters for Co-Create

If you’ve been following our Co-Create series (and if you haven’t, welcome - you’re in the right place), you know we’re exploring how to build authentic content with your employees, not just about them.

The Currys campaign is a great case study for this philosophy:

They built infrastructure, not just content. Creating a centralised platform with a consistent cadence takes serious coordination. It’s not just “hey, post something to TikTok when you feel like it.” It’s strategic, but it doesn’t feel forced.

They trusted their people. Staff were encouraged to participate. That level of trust - and the training and support that goes with it - is what separates real co-creation from tokenistic employee spotlights.

A Quick Note About Our Series Partner - Vouch

We’re capturing insights like these throughout our Co-Created series, and we’re doing it using Vouch - the video-first AI content platform that makes it easy to collect and share authentic employee stories.

It’s fitting, really. We’re exploring how to co-create content with employees, and Vouch is helping us gather voices from practitioners throughout the season. If you’re curious about how to collect authentic stories at scale without the production headaches, check them out here.

What You Can Steal From This

You don’t need to be Currys to apply these lessons:

Start with listening. Before you create a single piece of content, talk to your people. What do they want to say? What are they proud of? What would they actually post?

Build the infrastructure. One-off employee features won’t cut it. You need a system that makes it easy and appealing for people to contribute regularly.

Coordinate without controlling. Yes, you need guidelines. Yes, you need some level of quality control. But if it feels like a corporate communications exercise, you’ve already lost.

Watch & Listen to the Full Episode

Want to hear the complete conversation? Me and Chris talk about other RMA winners in Episode 2 of our Co-Created series. And we talk about the challenges and opportunities facing the world of TA, EB and recruitment marketing.

Watch the full episode here

Listen to the full episode here:

About the Co-Create Series

This article is part of Co-Create: How to Build Authentic Content with Your Employees, an ongoing series where Chris Murdoch and I explore the world of employee-generated content.

We’re talking to organisations at different stages of their journey, learning what works (and what doesn’t), and building a community of practitioners who believe there’s a better way to do employer content.

Want to find out more about Employer Content Club?

Join Employer Content Club

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to co-creating content with your employees? Drop a comment below - I’d love to hear from you.

Note: While I attended and discuss the Recruitment Marketing Awards in this article, this content is not affiliated with or sponsored by the Recruitment Marketing Awards or anyone connected to this award-winning.

That’s why Episode 2 of the Employer Content Club’s Co-Created series takes you behind the scenes of the Recruitment Marketing Awards — where creativity meets strategy, and employer brand work gets the spotlight it deserves.

Why This Episode Matters

This autumn, I’m running a new series called Co-Created: How to Build Authentic Content with Your Employees — alongside my fellow Employer Content Club Co-Host, Chris Murdoch (who’s also Co-Founder of Voyse).

Our goal is simple: to help in-house employer branding and talent acquisition teams understand what’s working, what’s not, and how to create content that actually connects with people.

And to do that, we need to stay close to the action — which is what the Recruitment Marketing Awards are all about.

Why the RMAs Are So Valuable

The evening was packed: budgets, AI adoption, team structures, capturing authentic employee stories…But the real value of events like the RMAs is that they show us what good looks like.

When you’re trying to build an employer content strategy on limited resources, seeing award-winning work isn’t just nice inspiration — it’s a masterclass in what’s possible.It fuels ideas, raises standards, and gives your team the confidence to push creative boundaries.

(Note: While we attended and discuss the RMAs in this episode, this content is not affiliated with or sponsored by the Recruitment Marketing Awards.)

The Work That Caught Our Eye

There were plenty of strong entries — but we focused on three categories in particular:

* Video (Under £15k Budget) — an emotive story that punched way above its weight.

* Employer Brand — an EVP built around genuine employee content, powered by TikTok.

* Grand Prix Winner — a campaign that proved how storytelling can genuinely move people to action.

We won’t spoil the details here — you’ll need to watch or listen to hear how each campaign nailed authenticity, employee involvement, and strategic impact.

But trust us: there’s inspiration that will help your next project.

Key Themes from the Night

Beyond the winners, a few big themes kept coming up in conversations:

* Agility & budget – the real challenge isn’t always money; it’s time and decision-making under uncertainty.

* AI as an enabler – the conversation has shifted from “Should we use it?” to “How do we use it well?” — especially for small teams doing big things.

* Redefining authenticity – it doesn’t always come from where you expect. Sometimes, the most genuine stories come from the edges of your organisation, not the centre.

These are ideas we’ll keep exploring throughout the Co-Create series.

Watch Episode 2 on YouTube:

Listen on Spotify

Join the Co-Created Series

This episode is part of our Co-Created series running this autumn. We’re meeting with employer branding professionals and organisations who are co-creating content with their employees, capturing the practical insights that matter.

Become a founding member of Employer Content Club

Join Here

As a founding member, you’ll get:

* Every episode in the Co-Created series, direct to your inbox

* Opportunities to contribute your own thoughts and expertise

* Notifications about upcoming Employer Content Club events we’re organising over the next few months

* A chance to shape what this community becomes

This series is about practical knowledge from people doing the work. If you’re building employer content strategy in-house, this is for you.

Co-Created is brought to you by Employer Content Club and supported by Vouch - a platform that makes it easy to capture, repurpose and share authentic employee stories through video.

Watch the full episode to see what we learned at the RMAs and how it applies to your employer content strategy.

Fresh from a night of celebrating great work, rubbing shoulders with the EB community, and yes, a decent-sized dance floor, we dive into the conversations that matter.

We cover the real challenges facing the industry right now, explore the role of co-creating authentic content with employees, and deep dive into some of the award-winning work that's pushing boundaries.

From intimate MS Teams calls to big production moments, we discuss what it really takes to capture authenticity at scale.

Note: While we attended and discuss the Recruitment Marketing Awards in this episode, this content is not affiliated with or sponsored by the Recruitment Marketing Awards.

About Co-Created

Co-Created is a podcast and vlog series from Employer Content Club, supported by Vouch. Hosted by myself and Chris Murdoch, we're exploring how EB and TA teams can capture authentic workplace culture with their employees—proving you don't need huge budgets to create content that resonates. Shot entirely on iPhones and mics, we're keeping it real.

About Employer Content Club

Employer Content Club is a community for employer branding and talent acquisition professionals who want to create authentic content with their employees. We share practical insights, host events, and connect in-house practitioners who are doing the work.

Become a Founding Member

We're looking for founding members to join Employer Content Club!

Sign up to contribute your opinions and experience during this series, and be the first to know about upcoming Employer Content Club events: https://www.employercontent.club/co-created

Supported by VouchThis series is supported by Vouch, a platform that makes it easy to capture and share authentic employee stories through video. ➡️ https://vouchfor.com

The vlog above gives you a taste of the night - the celebrating together, the challenges and the opportunities facing the industry. And the role of employees in co-creating authentic content.

Episode 2 of our series, “Co-Create: How to build authentic content with your employees” is landing this Friday.

I sit down with my Employer Content Club co-founder, Chris Murdoch, for a retrospective episode.

Find out more about our Co-Create Series here.

[Sign Up to Become a Founding Member]

This series is supported by Vouch - the video-first AI content platform we’re using to collect stories from employer brand professionals.

P.S. Know someone who’d love this series? Forward this their way - the more voices we have, the stronger our community becomes.

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Co-host, Employer Content Club

Host, Employer Content Marketing

Employer Content Club is back!

Over the coming weeks, we’re excited about doing a series “Co-Created: How to Build Authentic Content with Your Employees.”

This isn’t just another series about employer branding theory. It’s about the real and rewarding process of creating content with your people - not just about them.

About Employer Content Club

If you’ve ever wished for a space where employer content isn’t an afterthought - Employer Content Club is it.

Employer Content Club is for people leading in-house content functions or creating content in-house for their organisations.

It’s a space to learn, connect, and elevate the employer content function together - one story, one case study, one meetup at a time.

Together with Chris Murdoch (Co-Founder of Voyse), we’re building a space where you can share honest insights and learn from peers and subject matter experts.

What’s in our “Co-Created” Series?

📍 Episode 1 [available now]: This is a series preview that talks about the challenges we see in-house employer branders and content creation teams having based on the conversations we’ve had this year. And what’s coming up in the series.

Episodes 3 & 4 is with in-house teams for a practical view into the why, what and how of co-creation with employees.

Episode 5 is a look at key themes from the series and, most importantly, the strategies and tactics that can be implemented.

Are we using a film crew and a studio for this series? Nope - we’re embracing more agile ways through remote online recordings and iPhone filming.

Plus: Throughout the series, we’ll be gathering thoughts from employer branding practitioners on the ground - real voices facing the same challenges you are.

Watch Episode 1 & Become a Founding Member

Ready to dive into the full first episode?

Episode 1 is available to watch now.

[Listen to Episode 1 Here]

Want access to the rest of the series as episodes drop? Become a founding member of Employer Content Club and you’ll get:

✅ All episodes from this series delivered straight to you

✅ Notifications about how to get involved and share your story

✅ Early invites to upcoming events

✅ A community of professionals who genuinely understand what you’re going through

[Sign Up to Become a Founding Member]

This series is supported by Vouch - the video-first AI content platform we’re using to collect stories from employer brand professionals

Thanks

Chris

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Co-host, Employer Content Club

Host, Employer Content Marketing

P.S. Know someone who’d love this series? Forward this their way - the more voices we have, the stronger our community becomes.

I asked him to give me a quick AI checklist: three key questions EB leaders should answer before adding AI tools to their stack.

1. Governance

AI experimentation is important - but it has to align with your organization’s stance on AI.

The first question to ask: Am I sharing any sensitive information with this AI model that could put my company at risk?

2. Differentiation

The danger of AI is “employer blanding.” If every company is feeding the same open models, how will you stand out?

Ask yourself: Will this tool actually differentiate our brand, or will it just make us sound like everyone else?

3. ROI

Experimentation can be fun, but time is a finite resource.

The third question: Are the hours I’m spending with this AI tool delivering ROI - or could that time be better spent elsewhere?

AI won’t replace employer branding. But it is reshaping the way EB leaders make decisions, measure ROI, and show value to the business.

If you’re looking for a starting point, this checklist is a good filter to separate hype from real impact.

📺 Watch the full episode about AI & Employer Branding here 👇🏻

🎧 Listen to the episode here👇🏻

🤖 And get Your Free Employer Brand Intelligence Report here [worth $3,000]

Check out the video above for everything, but here’s what I gathered from my conversations and conference notes.

LinkedIn Actually Works (Who Knew?)

A few minutes after walking in, I bumped into people I’d been chatting with on LinkedIn. We just picked up where we left off online.

It’s pretty simple - if you share your ideas and build real connections online, events like this become ten times better. Your online stuff isn’t separate from meeting people face-to-face. It makes everything work smoother.

The AI Thing Everyone’s Missing

Once again, AI was everywhere. But the more AI does works for us, the more we can’t forget the importance of the human touch.

Companies are figuring out how to use AI to do the boring stuff while keeping the cool moments that make people actually want to work there. It’s not about replacing humans. It’s about making room for the human stuff that really matters.

What an Olympic Swimmer Taught HR People

Mark Foster (he’s won loads of medals in swimming) dropped two big truths:

Get the right people around you. You can’t be awesome on your own. You need people who push you to do better than you thought possible. This works for building teams and growing yourself.

Failing isn’t actually failing. When stuff goes wrong, grab what you learned and figure out what’s next. Mark says failure is just finding out what to do differently. Works for people and companies.

AI & Humans - A Relationship With Great Potential

This isn’t about picking between humans or AI. It’s about using both smartly - let AI handle the repetitive stuff so humans can focus on the things that actually matter to people.

The best part of the day? Being around people who are trying to solve real problems and making each other better at it.

What do you think about all this? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

That’s why I wanted to share something a little different with you today.

Alongside my work at Content Marketing Pod, I’ve been building Engage Care Talent with Rowan Marriott. And as part of that journey, we decided to film a documentary series — a way of showing not just what we’re doing, but why we’re doing it.

Episode 2 – The Run takes you behind the scenes in a very literal way: Rowan and I went for an early morning run ahead of a planning session. It gave us a chance to talk about resilience, endurance, and why running a business (and tackling something as complex as the care talent crisis) is often less about big leaps and more about putting one foot in front of the other.

For me, producing this was more than just another piece of content. It was a reminder of why I love the documentary format — it lets you share the story behind the story.

And it was also a chance for me to let people see a bit more of what drives me personally.

I thought it was worth sharing here. Because at the heart of it, this is what content is about: opening up, showing your motivations, and letting people connect with the humans behind the work.

👉 And that’s the link back to employer content marketing: the best employer brands are built when organisations are confident enough to share the behind the scenes — the values, the challenges, the motivations of the people doing the work. That’s what resonates.

That’s what attracts and engages talent.

🎬 WATCH THE REST OF THE DOCUMENTARY HERE 🎬

In this episode, Chris sits down with Amit Parmar, CEO of Cliquify (with 20+ years in TA and EB leadership), to explore:

• How employer branding is evolving in 2025

• The real challenges practitioners face behind the scenes

• Why leadership buy-in is still the #1 barrier

• How to prove ROI with the right data and strategy

• A free tool to calculate your employer brand ROI today

👉 Grab your free Employer Brand ROI Calculator here: https://bit.ly/3VjG25C👉

Subscribe for more insights on employer branding, talent strategy, and tools to elevate your impact https://www.employercontent.marketing/

Watch/listen to the next episode about Employer Branding & AI https://open.spotify.com/episode/0AyuZRyKYwUfLRnBryi6zI?si=iQDveJ9pTKaTxDTo0MzD-A

In my latest podcast episode, I sat down with Mike Bradshaw, VP of Talent at Pinpoint, who's spent 15 years in HR and TA - from Apple to being the first TA / People Leader at multiple startups.

What makes this conversation valuable for both TA professionals and employer branders is Mike's insight into how candidate experience has become the ultimate test of your employer brand promise.

His perspective is particularly valuable - he's lived on both sides: as a practitioner buying and implementing recruiting tools, and now as someone who’s part of a business that’s helping organisations solve these exact challenges.

But more importantly, he understands that in 2025, your employer brand is only as strong as your candidate experience - and your candidate experience is what actually wins talent.

This episode was both sobering and hopeful.

Sobering because the challenges facing TA teams in 2025 are genuinely tough. Hopeful because there are real, actionable strategies that work - even when you're doing more with less.

The Perfect Storm Hitting Recruiting Right Now

Mike painted a picture that many of you will recognise: "TA leaders in 2025 are navigating one of the toughest landscapes that I've probably ever seen."

Here's what's creating this perfect storm:

Volume is through the roof. Applications per recruiter are way up, partly due to mass layoffs, partly due to how easy it is now to mass-apply to jobs. But a lot of these applications aren't actually relevant, creating more work that doesn't help anyone.

Resources are way down. Teams are leaner, budgets are cut, and recruiting is often the first place leadership decides to scale back. Some see it as a temporary pause; others are betting that AI will just handle recruiting in the future.

Top candidates are harder to move. In 2021-22, people could job hop for a 25% raise overnight. That's not happening anymore. Secure talent are staying put, which means your EVP, job descriptions, and communication through the process have to be absolutely top-notch.

AI is both helping and complicating things. AI-inflated resumes can make it harder to distill what's relevant. Everyone's getting more messages from more sources, so cutting through the noise is harder than ever.

The Candidate Experience Paradox

Just when candidate experience matters more than ever, it's often the first thing that suffers when teams get stretched thin.

"Every TA leader I talk to cares about candidate experience, but when their rec load is doubled and they've lost half their team, it's the first thing that suffers."

And yet, candidate experience is often what wins the day. Mike told me about countless times Pinpoint has won candidates who had better offers financially, simply because of the experience they had throughout the process.

What Works: Have Non-Negotiables

Despite all these challenges, Mike shared some approaches that really work, regardless of constraints:

Transparency from day one. This means clear job descriptions, honest requirements, open salary ranges, and a realistic picture of what the process will take. Every job description at Pinpoint tells candidates how many steps there are, who they'll meet, and what assignments might be involved.

Communication over silence. Most bad candidate experiences aren't about rejection - they're about silence. If someone applies, acknowledge it. If they're moving forward, tell them what's next. If they're not, close the loop quickly.

Interview hygiene matters. This includes basics like reading the candidate's resume beforehand, knowing how to pronounce their name, and setting a clear agenda. Mike's team always starts interviews by outlining the structure: "This is 30 minutes. I'm going to talk for 15, ask you questions for 15, then you'll have 12 minutes for your questions."

Pay candidates for their time. If you're asking someone to complete an assignment or project, pay them. It's baseline respect and signals how you treat employees once they're inside the company.

The Role of Technology: Getting it Right

Having been both a buyer and now someone who’s in a business that’s helping others implement solutions, Mike has seen how tools can either solve real problems or make them worse.

His advice?

Don't grab shiny tools without a clear strategy. When you're already stretched thin, taking on tool evaluation, demos, and change management without knowing exactly what problem you're solving often just creates more problems.

The tools that actually help are the ones that reduce friction - both for recruiters and for candidates. That might mean better integration between your sourcing and your ATS, or it might mean having a career site that doesn't require months of development work to set up.

Employer Branding: Actions Louder Than Words

One insight that particularly resonated with me was Mike's view on employer branding.

Yes, it's about selling your organisation - but it's equally about disqualifying the wrong people upfront.

Pinpoint includes a section in their job descriptions called "the fine print, but way more exciting" that honestly outlines what's hard about each role.

It's not about being self-deprecating; it's about being honest so the right people get excited and the wrong people self-select out.

This connects to something fundamental: your employer brand isn't just your marketing materials. It's every interaction candidates have with your organisation.

If you say you're "fast-paced" but candidates wait weeks to hear back after interviews, you've broken trust before someone even starts.

The Bottom Line

"There really is ultimately no excuse for bad candidate experience. It is a really deeply personal and vulnerable thing that people are doing when they go to apply for jobs."

Job searching - especially when you're unemployed or looking for stability for your family - is deeply personal. We have the ability to make it less painful and more human, even when we're stretched thin.

The fundamentals haven't changed: transparency, clear communication, structured processes, and treating people with respect.

What has changed is that these fundamentals are now the competitive advantage.

Watch the full conversation above, or listen on your preferred podcast platform. What resonated most with you? Hit reply and let me know - I read every response.

Listen or Watch here too.

P.S. If you found this valuable, share it with a colleague who might benefit. The best way to support this newsletter is to help it reach the people who need it most.

About Pinpoint:

Not your average ATS. From planning to onboarding, Pinpoint brings every part of the hiring process - and every stakeholder - into one place, so you can move faster, stay in control, and make smarter decisions

Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsmikebradshaw/ Learn more about Pinpoint: https://www.pinpointhq.com/

Need help with producing content that enhances your candidate experience? Let’s talk.

In my latest podcast episode, I sat down with Mike Bradshaw, VP of Talent at Pinpoint, who's spent 15 years in HR and TA - from Apple to being the first Head of People at multiple startups.

What makes this conversation essential for both TA professionals and employer branders is Mike's insight into how candidate experience has become the ultimate test of your employer brand promise.

His perspective is particularly valuable because he's lived on both sides: as a practitioner buying and implementing recruiting tools, and now as someone at a company thats helping organisations solve these exact challenges.

But more importantly, he understands that in 2025, your employer brand is only as strong as your candidate experience - and your candidate experience really helps wins talent.

What came out of our conversation was both sobering and hopeful. Sobering because the challenges facing TA teams in 2025 are genuinely tough. Hopeful because there are real, actionable strategies that work - even when you're doing more with less.

What You'll Learn:

✅ Why TA leaders are being squeezed harder than ever (and what's driving it)

✅ The hidden costs of poor candidate experience on your bottom line

✅ How to build employer branding that disqualifies the wrong candidates

✅ Tactical SLAs and interview hygiene that actually work

✅ Why transparency beats "selling" every time

✅ The one thing that wins candidates over better financial offers

About Mike Bradshaw:

VP of Talent at Pinpoint with 15+ years in HR/TA. Former Apple talent support, startup veteran, and practitioner-turned-vendor who's seen both sides of the hiring equation.

About Pinpoint:

ATS platform designed for complex hiring scenarios - handling everything from graduate programs to senior leadership searches across multiple geographies and role types.

🔔 Subscribe for more real talk on talent acquisition, employer branding, and candidate experience https://www.employercontent.marketing/

Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsmikebradshaw/

Learn about Pinpoint: https://bit.ly/4mLcrhx

Host Chris Le'cand-Harwood: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislch/

This has become a really helpful approach throughout my career, especially since running my own business.Here's my routine: I'll start work in different environments - sometimes the comfortable sofa with my iPad out, books spread around, big cup of tea.The change immediately shifts my mindset and gets me in a creative flow.But the real game-changer? I make it a habit of stepping completely away and take walks outside in nature.Because your brain never really stops working. While I'm walking, my subconscious is still working away.And when I get back to my workspace I see things differently.That's when my best ideas often happen.For in-house teams creating employer branding content, you have something special: genuine insider access to your culture.The challenge? Developing your creative capabilities to make the most of it.Here's what you can do about it:✅ Switch up your workspace (try the couch, dining table, even the floor)✅ Step completely away - take that walk, especially in nature✅ Trust the process - breakthrough ideas come when you stop forcing them✅ Return with intention - capture those insights that bubble upYour next breakthrough idea is away from your workspace.What's your go-to method for getting into that creative flow?

I’m doing more content like this each week so if you subscribe you’ll get them in your inbox.

Looking to give your content strategy a boost? I’d love to chat.

Looking to create content that gets nominations and award wins?

I’d love to chat.

Welcome to a special episode that combines the podcasts, Employer Content Marketing with Chris Le'cand-Harwood and Employer Bland with Chris Murdoch. Welcome to Employer Content Club, where we help people in the employer content creation profession through conversations online and in-person. Our first event in London was supported by Vouch, so we just had to get them on for an episode.We sit down with Gary Zurnamer, CEO and Co-founder of Vouch, to explore how organizations can leverage employee voices to help drive their recruitment and employer branding efforts.Key Topics Covered:• Why employee-generated content drives better hiring outcomes• How to overcome the biggest barriers to employee participation• The role of AI in content creation (without losing authenticity)• Strategic frameworks for implementing successful programs• Real-world case studies from global organizations• Actionable tips for starting your employee content journeyMain Takeaways:✅ Content pillars must align with hiring initiatives✅ Remove ALL friction from the recording process✅ Start with internal advocates and scale gradually✅ Use AI for ideation and organization, not content replacement✅ Focus on business outcomes, not just engagement metricsAbout Our Guest:Gary Zurnamer is the CEO and co-founder of Vouch, a global platform helping organizations create and share authentic employee-generated content. Vouch works with major brands including Dunelm, Warner Bros. Discovery, Flutter and GoDaddy to transform their talent attraction strategies.Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction and guest background04:45 - The business case for employee content10:30 - Overcoming employee participation challenges16:45 - Real-world success stories and impact22:30 - AI's role in content strategy28:15 - Implementation roadmap and best practices34:20 - Key takeaways and final thoughtsFind Out More About Vouchhttps://vouchfor.com/Connect with Gary:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyzurnamer/Subscribe for more employer branding and talent acquisition insights!#EmployeeBranding #TalentAcquisition #EmployeeContent #HRTech #RecruitmentMarketing #EmployerBrand #VideoContent #HRStrategy #TalentAttraction #workplaceculture

Employers say: "We need people who can do X, Y, and Z."

Young people think: "But what on earth do I actually want to DO?"

This is the challenge we tackled with our RAF content series with Not Going To Uni - and it's why authentic employer content matters more than ever.

In this clip from an awards deep-dive in my recent episode of Employer Content Marketing, I'm explaining how we moved beyond "come and work for us" messaging to genuinely help people discover their career potential.

The key insight?

People can smell formulaic content from a mile away. We all eventually figure out the format and spot the cynical production tricks.

But when content feels real? That's when you create something that actually helps rather than just recruits.

Three things that made our RAF series feel authentic:

✅ Real employee contributions - not scripted responses

✅ Genuine curiosity - exploring what people learn about themselves

✅ No hidden agenda - helping first, recruiting second

The result? Content that people trust because it doesn't feel like traditional recruitment marketing.

Watch the clip at the top.And watch or listen to the full episode here.

Looking to create content that truly helps and inspires? I’d love to chat.

Looking to create content that gets nominations and award wins? I’d love to chat.

Chris and Roger have both been judges at multiple awards and have been involved in more submissions than they can remember over their careers.

And they've had nominations and won some awards recently.

So they got together to lift the lid on what it takes to produce nomination and award worthy work.In this episode, Chris sits down with Roger Cayless from Leap Create to dissect their award-winning DE&I campaign with CGI.And then Roger interviews Chris about award-winning work with Not Going To Uni and the RAF. Along with several nominations, these campaigns featured across multiple awards such as the Recruitment Marketing Awards, the RAD Awards, and the Lens Awards.

What You'll Discover:

✅ How CGI's innovative "internal voices" campaign tackled diversity & inclusion differently

✅ The psychology behind using a Peep Show-style first-person perspective

✅ Why Not Going Uni's RAF podcast series evolved beyond traditional formats

✅ The strategy behind taking conversations from studios to sports venues for a more immersive experience

✅ Key insights from judges on what makes content award-worthy

Featured Campaigns🎯 CGI's D&I Campaign - Using internal monologue to showcase authentic inclusion

🎯 Find Your Force Podcast Series - RAF early careers recruitment content that helps people discover career potential through sport

Awards Mentioned

- Recruitment Marketing Awards

- RADs

- Lens Awards

Key Takeaways for Employer Content Creators

1. Avoid the obvious approach - don't just film people talking about their jobs

2. Build genuine trust with clients to execute bold creative ideas

3. Create "campaignable" concepts that can scale across multiple stories

4. Focus on clarity in your award entries and let passion show through

5. Use real employees, not actors, for authentic storytelling

Connect with the Guests:Roger Cayless - Leap Createhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/rogercayless/

Chris Le'cand-Harwood - Employer Content Marketing

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislch/

Subscribe to the Employer Content Marketing Newsletter for content direct to your inbox: https://www.employercontent.marketing/

That's the interview question Rory Sutherland says you should be asking every candidate. His RecFest keynote was packed full of contrarian thinking that can change the way TA influences organisations.

The 20% Rule in Nature and Recruitment

Rory shared a splendid bee analogy:

20% of bees completely ignore the waggle dance that tells them exactly where to find pollen. They just "piss off at random" instead.

This seems wasteful until you realise that without these random bees, the hive gets trapped and starves. The compliant bees can't adapt to change, can't grow beyond existing resources, and most importantly – they can't get lucky.

The random bees aren't just gathering (making sure they don't starve). They're hunting (trying to get lucky).

This discovery is crucial to their survival. And is packed full of lessons for organisations wanting to adapt and thrive.

The Asda vs. TK Maxx Framework

Rory then shared a retail analogy that perfectly captures two fundamentally different approaches:

Asda shopping is thin-tailed: You know what you want, get it efficiently, and celebrate the 3.7% saving. Finance people love this – it's predictable, measurable, safe.

TK Maxx shopping is fat-tailed: You go in like a magpie with no specific agenda. You're treasure hunting, not shopping.

Rory's friends who say "I went to TK Maxx but couldn't find what I wanted" fundamentally don't understand fat-tailed behaviour. You don't go to TK Maxx with a shopping list.

Explore vs. Exploit in Recruitment

This maps directly to how we hire:

EXPLOIT (Your 80% - The Asda Approach):

* Thin-tailed, predictable outcomes

* Simple cost-benefit analysis

* One role, one perfect candidate

* Efficiency and minimal "waste"

EXPLORE (Your 20% - The TK Maxx Approach):

* Fat-tailed outcomes where 5% of successes pay for all the rest

* High uncertainty, breakthrough potential

* Hiring for the person, finding the role later

* Most experiments fail, but the wins are massive

Exploit is simple energy accounting. Explore is like the film industry – a few epic results pay for everything else.

The AI Amplification Reality

How you think about recruitment determines how you'll use AI.

Fat-tailed thinking: You'll use AI to amplify brilliance and execute breakthrough ideas faster than ever.

Thin-tailed thinking: You'll just make mediocrity slightly more common and slightly better.

The TK Maxx Test in Practice

So if someone says they went to TK Maxx and couldn't find what they wanted, they're mission-direct Asda shoppers who don't understand explore behaviour.

But if they light up talking about finding Versace sunglasses for £37.25, or how they go in "like a magpie" never knowing what treasure they'll discover – these are your explorers.

The Perception Shift

Rory's final insight: It's much easier to change perception than it is to change reality.

We don't need to revolutionise recruitment. We need to change how we perceive it. Stop seeing explore behaviour as wasteful. Start seeing it as essential for survival.

Most of us have become so good at Asda shopping that we've forgotten how to treasure hunt. We've optimised for the 80% and forgotten about the 20% that prevents us from starving.

**Filmed at RecFest 2025. Full credit to Rory Sutherland for the original keynote.**

The film industry might just hold the answer to achieving true strategic productivity through creative flow.

I recently chatted with Steven Puri, founder of The Sukha Company, whose unique journey from IBM engineer to Academy Award winner to tech entrepreneur revealed powerful insights about productivity and creativity working together.

The Productivity-Creativity Connection

At its core, productivity isn't about doing more - it's about creating the conditions for meaningful, strategic work. Steven's experience shows that true productivity comes from accessing your creative flow state.

His app helps solve two critical productivity barriers:

* The Cold Start Problem: Eliminating that 30-minute procrastination period before meaningful work begins

* The Distraction Spiral: Preventing interruptions that derail deep work and strategic thinking

Hollywood's Productivity Secrets

The film industry has mastered productivity in creative environments through:

* Intentional Environments - Like Emmerich and Devlin writing Independence Day in a specific villa that unlocked their creative productivity

* The "Other Thing" Principle - Engaging your executive brain with simple tasks frees your mind for breakthrough ideas

* Structured Collaboration - Film's 100-year process of remote, hybrid, and in-person work phases maximises productivity at each stage

Practical Productivity Tips

Apply these film-inspired techniques to your work:

Protect Deep Work Time - Steven's company has a 9 AM to noon no-meeting rule

Create Dedicated Spaces - Associate specific environments with productive, creative work

Limit Focus to Three Priorities - People complete 77% more when they see just three tasks

Embrace Productive Distractions - Strategic breakthrough ideas often come when your mind is partially occupied

As Steven explains: "It's the difference between reaching 3 PM feeling accomplished versus 6 PM asking 'where did the day go?'"

I really enjoyed this chat with Steven.

Watch or listen to the full episode here

Try out The Sukha Company with a 7-day free trial, and discover more productivity insights on the latest episode of Employer Content Marketing.

I share insights from my talk on employer content creation and feature conversations with other speakers on topics such as AI, employee advocacy, and strategy activation.

Learn how companies are evolving their employer branding approaches to attract and retain talent, the importance of employee advocacy, and even some grounded advice on integrating AI into your workflow.

There are also discussions on wellbeing, corporate strategy, and the balance between high production and zero-budget content.

It's a packed day filled with knowledge sharing, practical tips, and a glimpse into the future of employer branding.

Stick around till the end for my reflections and a look forward to enjoying some local cuisine!

I’ll be doing more posts about how to find your creative flow, so keep an eye out for the next one!

I returned with some valuable tips to help you create engaging employer content for your target audience.

Check out the video above.

The landscape has transformed since my first visit in 2022, with YouTubers and social media creators now flooding into the podcast space.

In 2022, discussions centred primarily on how broadcasters, media companies, and brands could use podcasts (mainly audio) to expand their reach.

By 2023, several YouTubers appeared on the agenda, discussing how they'd embraced podcasting - while creating something beyond traditional podcasts in the process.

Now in 2025, the event might as well be called The Podcast & Creator Show.

Video dominates both the exhibition stands and stages, with YouTubers, social media agencies, and production companies demonstrating how video has become the new standard in podcasting.

I loved hearing from prominent creators and had conversations with BBC and the team behind Steven Bartlett's famous Diary of a CEO.

Their techniques really resonate with me, and you can apply them to enhance your employer content creation.

It's the first conference from the wonderful team [Claire de Souza and Alex Her] who founded The EB Space.

I was invited to capture some of the conversations at the conference with my fellow podcaster Chris Murdoch - host of the Employer Bland podcast].

Resilience, Diversity, Inclusion, AI, EB career advice, EB Therapy, EVP vs NoEVP debate...

There was plenty going on!Here's some of the behind the scenes, on stage conversations and off stage chats throughout the day.

Looking forward to the next one!

Subscribe to my newsletter

https://www.employercontent.marketing/

So I created Employer Content Club with fellow podcast host, Chris Murdoch [Employer Bland podcast].

And we had our very first Employer Content Club event today!

It's a community for employer content creators.

It’s a place to share experiences, offer advice.

It’s even a bit of therapy!

Here’s my overview of a great morning in East London!

More content about this will follow, so subscribe if you want updates [and future events!].

I was talking about my upcoming guide to in-house employer content creation - subscribe for when it lands next month!https://www.employercontent.marketing/

There’s a thriving community of people passionate about employer branding in Romania.

Some organisations are just starting out and some are already well down the road.Either way there was plenty to take from a day in Bucharest.

Check out my vlog for the highlights.

And I got to chat with some of my fellow speakers during the day, so subscribe for episodes when they land in the coming

weeks.

https://www.employercontent.marketing/

It’s great to see more and more regions fly the employer branding flag.

Long may that continue!

I was talking about my upcoming guide to in-house employer content creation - subscribe for when it lands next month!

There’s a thriving community of people passionate about employer branding in Romania. Some organisations are just starting out and some are already well down the road.

Either way there was plenty to take from a day in Bucharest.

Check out my vlog for the highlights.

And I got to chat with some of my fellow speakers during the day, so subscribe for episodes when they land in the coming weeks.

It’s great to see more and more regions fly the employer branding flag.

Long may that continue!

EB Uncut - the Unconference is happening at King's Cross on Wednesday 7th May.

We're taking our podcasts to this new event created by founders of The EB Space - Claire de Souza and Alex Her.

We'll be vox popping throughout the day to capture the key conversations and get people've opinions and advice along the way.

EB Uncut isn't your typical conference.

You won't get death by PowerPoint here. No keynote talks. Just a series of panel discussions that will frame things for some key topics throughout the day.

It's a must attend event for employer branders.

And we're super happy to get involved.

Want to find out more and attend?

Get your ticket here https://theebspace.com/eb-uncut-unconference

It’s self help group for anyone who creates employer content to attract and retain talent.Why?Because creating employer content is a big part of employer branding, talent acquisition, and much more!So it’s time to have a place to talk about it.And we’ve got our first event coming soon!

🗓️Tuesday 20th May at 10am📍Second Home, Spitafields, 68 Hanbury Street, East London E1 5JLWe’re joined by our wonderful panelists:🤩Andy Mallinson (Head of EMEA at Vouch)🤩Charu Malhotra (Global Talent Attraction & Employer Branding Leader)🤩Samantha De Alba & Nayon Ogunlana (Schroders Early Careers Team)🎟️ Get your free ticket here.

BOOK NOW

I’m really looking forward to seeing you there!

Thanks

Chris

AI has a role to play - not as a replacement but as a co-pilot.

So, in this episode I share my experiment with Google Notebook LM: An AI research and writing assistant.

I've given them content about my business and podcast and turned it into a podcast episode.

This is the first episode of Employer Content Marketing that's brought to you by two AI hosts [let's call them Pia and Ben!].

As someone who helps organisations create employer content, I wanted to show you a simple way AI can support your content creation - while also giving you a better understanding of what my business actually does (because yes, I'm more than just a podcast host! 😊).

The result isn't perfect, but it's a fascinating look at what's possible with AI as a support tool.

Have a listen and see how you might be able to use similar approaches in your own organisation.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Founder of the Employer Content Marketing podcast and Founder of Content Marketing Pod Ltd.

Too often they are places where information and communication goes to die.

In this episode, I chat with Ben Leach - Consulting Director and Co-Founder of Information EXP.

We dive into the true potential of intranets.

Ben discusses his extensive experience with SharePoint and intranet projects, highlighting the pivotal role an intranet can play in organisational communication, employee engagement, and overall productivity when implemented effectively.

The discussion also covers best practices for creating successful intranets, including clear purpose, strategic content management, and the importance of authentic engagement from leadership.

We also address common pitfalls and provide practical advice for companies looking to revamp or build their intranet to ensure it truly serves its intended purpose.

You can get the episode on YouTube [or subscribe for episodes direct to your inbox] here: https://www.employercontent.marketing/

We chatted to Victor Rubin again to cover this important topic.

Getting it right will ultimately help grow the influence of employer branding and elevate its business importance.

Meet Rozana Green, Diversity Outreach Lead at the BBC, whose journey through some iconic shows - from Radio 1 to Comic Relief - brings a fresh perspective to employee storytelling.

With 16 years crafting compelling stories at the BBC, including work on Asian Network, 1Extra and The Food Programme, Rozana knows how to capture authentic moments that resonate.

Now, she's applying these skills to how the BBC tell their employee stories.

In this value-packed episode, you'll discover:

✅ Production techniques that elevate your employee content

✅ The secret to getting natural performances from camera-shy employees

✅ How to capture authentic workplace stories (even on a budget)

✅ Tips for adapting broadcast quality approaches to employer content

Rozana's background in production at the BBC meant I just had to get her on for an episode of Employer Content Marketing.

Listen to the episode here.

Thanks

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Founder of the Employer Content Marketing podcast and Founder of Content Marketing Pod Ltd.

✅ Production techniques that elevate your employee content

✅ The secret to getting natural performances from camera-shy employees

✅ How to capture authentic workplace stories (even on a budget)

✅ Tips for adapting broadcast quality approaches to employer content

Rozana's background in production at the BBC meant I just had to get her on for an episode of Employer Content Marketing.

Find more episodes and subscribe for future drops: https://www.employercontent.marketing/

Check out the work we discussed in this episode:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GzyLzlHKzMhttps://youtu.be/Sk46YM9Met0

We chatted to Victor Rubin again to cover this important topic.

Getting it right will ultimately help grow the influence of employer branding and elevate its business importance.

I asked Matthew McGrath the question at the Empple Employer Branding Festival.

This is why I set up my business Content Marketing Pod Ltd.

And it’s why I do partnerships with organisations like Not Going To Uni and their client - the Royal Air Force.

Find Your Force was created as a strapline for the RAF’s recruitment years ago. But what if it was more than the masthead of a national ad campaign?

That’s where the Find Your Force podcast came in!

Season 1 was a chance to pilot our strategy with audio only episodes. Season 2 saw us set up a studio on an RAF base for a vidcast.

Season 3 took it up a whole other level as we took kit and crew to the boxing ring, football pitch, rugby pitch, swimming pool, gym and e-sports room!

Find Your Force Season 3 was all about sport and how it can help you find your career potential.

Having a solid content strategy meant we had editorial clarity and a clear brief for the crew, the host and our guests. And we had a great balance between providing guidance to our guests while having a fun and flexible shoot. It put them at ease in front of the camera and were absolute naturals!

It won gongs at the Recruitment Marketing Awards and the Lens Awards, and got shortlisted twice at the RADs. And it helped the RAF attract even more quality candidates via the Not Going To Uni website.

We packed in a whole lot of filming with some great sports people over three days across two RAF bases. The weather was terrible but we powered through and had a great time!

And the most important thing?

We gave a group of people at the RAF a platform to say why they love sport, share their stories and give advice to anyone starting out in their career.

Because everyone has career potential, they just need help finding it.

Here are some of the episode trailers.

Want to watch the full episodes from Season 3? Check out the playlist by clicking on the image below.

It was an absolute pleasure being part of the crew at Not Going To Uni. Using our combined skills to help the next generation of talent is a real privilege.

Want to chat about this project more? I’d be happy to chat about it.

Thanks

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Founder of the Employer Content Marketing podcast and Founder of Content Marketing Pod Ltd.

So we went behind the scenes of a production I was involved in as Director and Producer.

Cygnet recruit across various roles in mental health and social care, particularly nurses. It’s not easy when demand for talent outstrips the supply of talent.

It’s competitive out there!

So we produced a “Passion for Nursing” Series with the wonderful nurses of Cygnet [in partnership with the most excellent team at AudienceLink - shout out to my partner in content Jonathan Farber too!].

The series included a short nursing documentary and podcast episodes at a mental health care hospital in London.

Here’s segment of a conversation I had with Ben Hopewell [Head of Resourcing at Cygnet] and Rowan Marriott [Founder of AudienceLink and my fellow Co-Founder of Engage Car Talent].

And here’s the trailer and full episode of the nursing documentary.

Want to get more behind the scenes? Get in touch and I’m happy to chat about.

Steve shares his passion for transforming everyday processes into extraordinary experiences that benefit both businesses and their people.

It's at the very core of employer brand.

Because when you get your employee experience right, you have a truly authentic employer brand.

Discover how organisations can create more engaging, memorable experiences for both customers and employees, packed with practical examples and inspiring insights.

Find out more about Steve’s podcast here.

Got any great examples of employee experience design? Let me know! :)

It's a growing specialism that should be a core business function.

But how do you get build influence and get buy in from others parts of an organisation, especially senior leaders?

In this short episode of Employer Content Marketing, I chat with Claire de Souza and Alex Her - founders of the employer branding community, The EB Space.

Great to chat with Alex and Claire in the studio. Thanks!

Steve shares his passion for transforming everyday processes into extraordinary experiences that benefit both businesses and their people.

And it's at the very core of employer brand.

Because when you get your employee experience right, you have a truly authentic employer brand.

Discover how organisations can create more engaging, memorable experiences for both customers and employees, packed with practical examples and inspiring insights.

Get more episodes direct to your inbox here: www.employercontent.marketing

It was great to chat with Chris Murdoch about this on my Christmas Special of Employer Content Marketing.

AI is such a popular topic that we had to spend some extra time on it for a bonus piece for you.

It's been quite the year in Employer Branding! And it's that time of year where we can reflect, rest and get ready for another 12 months of moving the sector forward.

In this Christmas Special, I join forces with another podcast host to give you a Santa's Sack full of advice based on the conversations we've had throughout the year.

Chris Murdoch is host of the awesome Employer Bland podcast. And we get festive with Christmas jumpers and tinsel while helping you take some time out and look forward to next year.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
03:18 Navigating AI in Employer Branding
08:48 Leveraging AI for Research and Insights
13:44 Creating an Always-On Employer Brand
19:10 Authentic Storytelling and Employee Engagement
26:01 Attracting and Retaining Talent
30:59 Scalability in Employer Branding
36:06 Personal Branding on LinkedIn
42:18 Leveraging Employee Advocacy
47:40 Building community and events for Employer Branders

Get Employer Content Marketing episodes direct to your inbox: https://www.employercontent.marketing/

And find out more about Employer Bland here https://www.employerbland.com/podcast/

The popular belief?

That it can help you create content!

It's true…but is that where the true superpower of AI sits?

I chatted with Benjamin Kesler at the Empple Festival to find an answer.

This was part of a longer conversation. And you can find that here:

I was invited to the podcast zone, sponsored by Yandex, at the Empple Employer Branding Festival in Belgrade this October.

In this episode recorded at the Empple Employer Branding Festival in Belgrade, we dive into the world of employer branding content with Benjamin Kesler.

We explore his philosophy that great employer branding content production relies on creation AND distribution.

Whether you're new to employer branding or looking to enhance your content strategy, this episode delivers practical insights for creating authentic content that truly resonates with your target audience.

Thanks Empple! It's always a pleasure being with your community in Belgrade!

You can watch or listen to the episode on Spotify too.

While you’re here:🎁 I’ve built a scorecard to help you assess your employer content. In under 60 seconds you’ll get a score and some tips about taking the next step in your content. It’s called the Employer Content Marketing Scorecard. Find out more here ⏬

🚨THE EMPLOYER CONTENT MARKETING SCORECARD🚨

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

ChrisHost and Producer + Founder of Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

I was invited to the podcast zone, sponsored by Yandex, at the Empple Employer Branding Festival in Belgrade this October.

In this episode recorded at the Empple Employer Branding Festival in Belgrade, we dive into the world of employer branding content with Benjamin Kesler.

We explore his philosophy that great employer branding content production relies on creation AND distribution.

Whether you're new to employer branding or looking to enhance your content strategy, this episode delivers practical insights for creating authentic content that truly resonates with your target audience.

I went to The EB Meet Up at Soho House in London to discuss.

The wonderful team at Leap Create organised a great session.

Bring on the next one!

We explore the importance of authenticity, the challenges of scaling, and practical strategies for turning your workforce into genuine brand advocates. 

Whether you’re in a small business or a global company, this conversation offers valuable insights you won’t want to miss.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19SqlCkQb8GQTTintGCRGeOgR1Mg9esln/view?usp=drive_link

Matt Webster posted the answer on LinkedIn and I just had to get him on Employer Content Marketing to talk about it. 

Matt is a successful online marketer based in Rio de Janeiro. He shares his secrets to success through engaging LinkedIn content. 

Packed with hands-on tips, Episode 111 is perfect for anyone needing a nudge and confidence to start putting themselves out there.

It’s a powerful tool that can be used to revolutionise employer branding, humanise organisations and attract top talent. How? By capturing authentic employee moments that forge an emotional connection.

In Episode 110, I’m joined with actor, writer, voice-over artist (and old school friend!), Des Yankson. We chatted about Des’ experience in the film & TV industry, the elements that make a great story, and how organisations can take inspiration from traditional film and TV to elevate their employer branding content.

Subscribe to get more episode drops, news and events https://www.theengagingemployer.com

Joe Pulizzi is one of the world’s top content marketing authorities. He founded Content Marketing Institute and left it as a multi-million dollar business that helps organisations leverage the superpower that is content marketing. 

He’s the bestselling author of seven books including Content Inc. and Epic Content Marketing. 

And most recently he founded The Tilt and the content entrepreneur event Creator Economy Expo (CEX).

Subscribe to get more episode drops, news and events https://www.theengagingemployer.com

While some elements benefit from the in-house model, it’s important to consider where agencies can bring real value.

So, how can organisations build an in-house model that’s profitable, while solving the right problems?

We’ve been catching up with David Angus recently to discuss all things business strategy, and in Episode 108, we delve deeper into the switch from agency to in-house, the power of fractional CMOs, and how agencies can proposition themselves in an ever-changing business landscape.

Dave is Chief Strategy Officer of Curated and an experienced marketer so he’s able to bring some real-life experience and insight.

Subscribe to get more episode drops, news and events: https://www.theengagingemployer.com

Strategy is a term that all businesses use, but many can be misinterpreted.

In Episode 107, I chat with Dave Angus about the misinterpretations of strategy, the in-house model, and how agencies can add value to clients looking to drive their strategy forward in the most effective way.

Dave is Chief Strategy Officer of Curated and an experienced marketer so he’s the right person to talk to when it comes to unravelling everything about the topic.

Subscribe to get more episode drops, news and events https://www.theengagingemployer.com

So how can employers embrace this superpower?

In Episode 106, I chat with Matt Phelan about the tools and elements that organisations can embrace to help their employees thrive.

Matt is co-founder of The Happiness Index, author, business advisor and keynote speaker, so knows a thing or two when it comes to driving successful organisations!

Subscribe to get more episode drops, news and events https://www.theengagingemployer.com

This was a feeling that Chris Murdoch - Founder of Voyse - had and it's what inspired him to set up his own podcast: Employer Bland.

Chris is Co-Founder of Voyse.io - a recruitment marketing SaaS platform - joins the podcast for Episode 97.

We talk about why he created the Employer Bland podcast, the symptoms of blandness and how to cure it.

Sign up to The Engaging Employer Newsletter:
https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

And check out Chris' business here: https://www.voyse.io/ and The Employer Bland Podcast here:https://blog.voyse.io/podcast/

Sign up to The Engaging Employer Newsletter for episodes, curated content, and events in your inbox: https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

But it's becoming a critical part of business. And it's contributing to the bottom line of businesses.

Moreover, with the impact of AI and Web3 technologies, the importance of employee experience is magnified!

That's why it's great to have Josh Drean on Episode 93. Josh is the Co-founder & Director of Employee Experience at The Work3 Institute, an AI + Work Advisor at the Harvard Innovation Labs, and Co-author of Employment is Dead (Harvard Business Review Press, 2024).

Subscribe to this channel for more episode drops.

And don't forget to sign up for The Engaging Employer Newsletter to receive episodes, events, and news directly in your inbox: https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

And find out more about Josh Drean here https://work3.me/joshdrean/

#employeeengagement #employeeexperience #futureofwork #employerbrand #employers #organisationalbehaviour

Mary, who was previously the Director and Editor-in-Chief at Future Talent Group (formerly Changeboard), now runs her own business, Applewick Creative.

We cover topics such as the impact of Brexit and COVID-19 on the workplace, as well as the implications of a rapidly evolving technology landscape.

Thanks for listening/watching.

Sign up for episodes, audio, events and curated content here:
⁠https://www.theengagingemployer.com/⁠

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Founder of The Employer Content Studio Ltd and Content Marketing Pod Ltd

Not Going To Uni has the solution, and it involves producing quality content at scale. Providing content that helps Gen Z make informed career choices is important, but doing so at scale is even more critical.

In Episode 90, we speak with Conor Cotton (Managing Director of NGTU) and Tyler Hamblin (Head of Production at NGTU) about how they transformed a well-known job board by building an in-house content production studio.

They'll share how they've helped their clients produce quality content at scale, with a particular focus on the Royal Air Force.

It’s a real joy to work with Conor and Tyler and the rest of the team at NGTU and they’re always a great chat with plenty to share.

Sign up for episodes, audio, events and curated content here:
https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

In my chat with Matt Clerkin, we explore his journey from working for a software company to becoming a creative director for iconic brands and sports stars.

His new career includes working with Anthony Joshua, Lionel Messi, Mo Salah, Liverpool, Manchester City, and Manchester United, among others, and he shares his zig-zag into creativity.

Matt discusses his journey and how he transitioned from the software world of Applicant Tracking Systems to becoming a creative director at COPA90 - a global football media brand endorsed by the world's biggest brands, platforms, and creators.

Thanks for watching and listening. And subscribe if you want episodes, and more, dropped into your inbox https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

In this episode, I chat with Taylor Setterfield, Marketing & Strategy Manager at LEAP Create, about the crucial role of paid social media in attracting the right talent for employers.

Sign up for episode drops, curated content, and events at https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

According to recent studies, Gen Z represents the largest generation in the workforce and is expected to make up 36% of the global workforce by 2025. But how do you appeal to this new generation of employees? Conor and Stefanie will share their insights on the values and priorities of Gen Z, how they differ from previous generations, and what employers can do to stand out.

Join us as we dive into the topic of how employers can attract and hire Gen Z talent. Whether you're a small business owner or a manager at a large corporation, this episode is for you.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Sign up to my newsletter - The Engaging Employer - for episode drops, YouTube videos, curated content and events.

https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Director - Strategy & Production Lead

Content Marketing Pod Ltd & The Employer Content Studio Ltd

www.employercontent.studio

www.contentmarketingpod.com

My guest is Robert Patin - the Managing Partner and Founder of Creative Agency Success and a two-time international best-selling author.

With experience in finance and over a decade working with creative agencies, Robert shares his expertise in guiding clients to manifest their dream businesses into reality.

He believes in the foundational principle that simplicity is best, and through his partnership with clients, he helps them achieve their goals and reach new heights of success.

Find out more about Robert, his business, and his books here https://thankyou.creativeagencysuccess.com/employercontent

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Get episodes, videos, events, and curated content direct to your inbox here: https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

Chris Le'cand-Harwood
Director - Strategy & Production Lead
Content Marketing Pod Ltd & The Employer Content Studio Ltd

From marketing to recruitment, people have been flocking to chat with the chatbot to see what the fuss is all about...

Is it a threat to our jobs?

What are the implications for the volume and quality of content being produced by brands?

And how can AI help not hinder?

I cover this, and more with Andy Lambert.

Andy works for Adobe and Adobe bought his company ContentCal - a content scheduling and insights app, just over 12 months ago. So he knows a thing or two about this very hot topic!

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Get episodes, videos, events, and curated content direct to your inbox here: https://www.theengagingemployer.com/

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Director - Strategy & Production Lead

Content Marketing Pod Ltd & The Employer Content Studio Ltd

How do you get employees to share your employer branding content?
Guidelines? Toolkits? Branded assets?
IMO you need to do more to encourage them to share anything with their own networks...
Here's my take on it - what do you think?

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Chris

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead

The Employer Content Studio

www.employercontent.studio

Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

I'm trying out some super short episodes amongst the longer chat episodes, so let me know what you think of the shorter format.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Chris

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead

The Employer Content Studio

www.employercontent.studio

Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

This is another super shot episode to get you thinking.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Chris

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead

The Employer Content Studio

www.employercontent.studio

Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

I chatted with Conor Cotton - Managing Director at Not Going To Uni - to find the answers.

Conor's company is a job board, social media agency, and content production studio all wrapped into one. And it gives him access to lots of people who are taking their first steps into the world of work.

So we asked some questions in one of his WhatsApp Groups and got some raw and uncut answers...

What do you think? We'd love to hear about your experiences and views on this topic.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Founder - Strategy & Production Lead

Content Marketing Pod Ltd & The Employer Content Studio

This super short episode is just to get you thinking about the role journalism can play in your employer branding. There's more to come on this over the following weeks keep your eyes and ears open for these.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Chris

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead

The Employer Content Studio

www.employercontent.studio

Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

This is another super snacky episode for you! I'm trying out these over the next few months so let me know what you think! :)

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Chris

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead

The Employer Content Studio

www.employercontent.studio

Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

This is the first episode featuring my new content strategy and production service for the employer brand and employer marketing world. It's great to see the logo featured for this episode!

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Strategy & Production Lead

Content Marketing Pod Ltd & The Employer Content Studio Ltd

"If it's a sh*t place to work, your employer branding is a lie."   

Max was a fellow speaker at this brilliant conference and it was such a great talk that I just had to get him on an episode. 

We discussed the relationship between employee experience and employer branding... 

So, what do you do if your organisation has an employee engagement issue? 

The answer is critically important for developing a successful employer brand.   

Here's more about Max's role as Chief Joy Officer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXjjZhCU_jA&t=479s

Thanks for the chat, Max, and thank you all for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

www.employercontent.studio

In this episode 72, I’m joined by Laura Dunne, the Head of Marketing at Not Going To Uni. As someone in the early stage of her marketing career, Laura is in a great position to share her experiences and offer valuable advice to anyone looking to break into the industry.

Not Going To Uni is a platform that helps young people find their first job after school or college, making Laura's insights particularly relevant for those just starting out.

So this episode is packed with useful tips and strategies that you can apply to your career search.

Here are some episode links mentioned in the chat:

A story of breaking challenges down:

https://bit.ly/3Y9Jb6F

Laura’s marketing life on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/lauraatwork_/

Nervous about networking? The Marketing Meet Up is a relaxed environment for this!

https://themarketingmeetup.com/ 

Laura on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauradunnee/

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

I chat with Nikola Kalinovic, Co-Founder of BrandSprint in episode 71 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod.  

We explore the misconceptions surrounding branding and design and uncover the true meaning of these critical components for your business.   

From understanding the difference between logos and brands to recognizing the importance of a true brand identity, we'll show you the real impact of effective branding and design.   

Discover the key elements of a successful brand strategy and learn how to make design work for your business.   

Thanks for watching.   

Chris Le'cand-Harwood 

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod 

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd 

https://www.contentmarketingpod.com/ 

***SIGN UP TO MY NEWSLETTER** 

https://www.employercontentmarketingpod.com/

The Employer Marketing Perspective is a new regular slot in the podcast that looks at great working in the employer and consumer spaces.

First up is Josh Tumbridge, Commercial Director at Crunch Digital Media as he shares three of his favourite campaigns from the last 12 months. We cover a load of things in just 31 minutes...

🧐 Hot takes on the recruitment market and what organisations need to do about it

📦 DHL and their on-point content to help recruit drivers with TikTok

🔒 WhatsApp creating content worthy of the digital display in Piccadilly Circus

🍔 Just Eat using influencers in the right way to create memorable content

...and watch until the end to hear some epic renditions of some iconic songs by DHL drivers on TikTok!

Yes, only one of these examples is in the employer space but we don't evolve if we navel gaze!

In this episode, we talk about YouTubers but I go into more detail about this in Episodes 68 & 69 

**Sponsor Shout Out - Casual**

Big up to Nick Francis and his team at Casual for being the first sponsor of the pod.

Casual are video production specialists who have created 1,000s of films in the employer brand space. So I'm delighted they're my video specialist sponsor for the next two months https://www.casualfilms.com/

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host & Producer of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

And, most importantly, Nick talks about what brands can learn from these successes and apply them to their own content in 2023, and beyond.  

Casual have produced 1,000s of videos in the employer and consumer marketing spaces for over 15 years, so Nick is well placed to talk about this important topic.  

This is a must-watch for employer brand/marketing of talent acquisition teams.   

Links of content mentioned in this episode: 

✅ Mr Beast https://www.youtube.com/user/mrbeast6000

✅ NBA - Hoop Cities https://youtu.be/r_EUkDJnGkM

✅ Drive to Survive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eokeG5lVAWY 

And here's Nick on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickfrancisfilm/

🔮⚙️Future Content Trends Workshop - TBC February 2023 ⚙️🔮 Nick will be running an online workshop to give you some practical actions to help you leverage these trends - SIGN UP to the newsletter and I'll send you an invite when the date is confirmed https://www.employercontentmarketingpod.com/

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.   

Chris Le'cand-Harwood Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod 

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd 

This is the topic of Episode 68 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod. And it's a must-watch/listen for employer brand/marketing of talent acquisition teams.  

I chat with Nick Francis - Co-Founder of Casual - about future content trends and what they mean for businesses and their brands.   

A brand's content is as important as anything else in your business, and Nick will tell you why. And how to leverage key content trends for your business.  

✅ Brands as broadcasters 

✅ The creator economy 

✅ Producing content that people love 

✅ Content as an investment, not a cost  

Casual have produced 1,000s of videos in the employer and consumer marketing spaces for over 15 years, so Nick is well placed to talk about this important topic.   

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.   

Chris Le'cand-Harwood Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod 

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

I was a little bit nervous...I'd wanted to have a marketing podcast for at least 5 years and now was the time to finally do it. I knew I had plenty to share but part of you always wonders if anyone will care to listen.  

But I hit record and just started talking...and have loved every one of the 66 episodes I've published since.   

I'm now lucky enough to have over 50,000 streams and...I've got my first sponsor 🥳️  

SIGN UP TO MY NEWSLETTER FOR AUDIO, VIDEO & EVENTS IN YOUR INBOX 

https://www.employercontentmarketingpod.com/  

Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.   

Chris Le'cand-Harwood Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod 

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd 

I did a watch along of England's World Cup opener against Iran with Sean Hagger yesterday.   

Sean is a leadership consultant and we chat about the transformation of the England team from Euros flops in 2016 to World Cup Semi-Finalists and European Championships Finalists - all in the space of 5 years.   

What's the key to this success? The strength and depth in talent...? Yes, for sure. But it's also down to Gareth Southgate's leadership.   

We talk about leadership and the fortunes of the England football team over the decades and what Gareth Southgate has done to lead the change in Brand England.

Thanks for listening. Sign up to my newsletter for latest episodes direct to your inbox www.employercontentmarketingpod.com

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

This is certainly the opinion of Mariano Aragunde, Digital Leader for Recruitment Marketing at IBM. He used to be a big fan of LinkedIn, and so did the IT community that he's an active member of. But, for them, it's changed, and not for the better. 

And I tend to agree. LinkedIn is at its best when it's producing content that's truly adding value to the community.

Thanks for listening. Sign up to my newsletter for latest episodes direct to your inbox www.employercontentmarketingpod.com

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

Mariano is involved in a big IT community in Argentina that boasts tens of thousands of members who are highly active on platforms from Discord to in-person conferences. So he's a great person to chat with for sure. 

The word community is well-used in the world of marketing. Social media has provided a great opportunity to build communities and brands stake claim to the word all too often - But are they nothing more than a means of distributing sales messages? And are talent communities just glorified destinations for job alerts?

There's no doubt that communities are full of potential in marketing, but what does it take to build a true community?

We talk about what community is, and isn't. And what a thriving community looks like. 

Sign up for my new newsletter to get access to audio, video, and events https://www.employercontentmarketingpod.com/

Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

For every idea that wins, several don't see the light of day. Do they just end up in The Ideas Graveyard?  

In this episode I chat with Pete Rice, Director of A Different Kind of Animal Ltd, and an Associate Creative Consultant who has been an Executive Creative Director, and Head of Brand. He's forged his creative career in ad land for 30 years, so he's well placed to talk about pitching, creativity and The Ideas Graveyard. 

We cover a range of topics:

- The pitch process...is it broken? Is there a better way?

- Agency <> Clients - finding the right partnerships.

- How to be a great client. 

- Does any idea truly die, or does it become something else? 

- How do you create ideas that hit the mark? 

- Three routes or one...?

- Creating ideas at scale to find the one that works.

- Balancing creative theory with applied creative.

Thanks for the chat, Pete!

And thanks for listening. 

Let's transform employer marketing together - share and learn - sign up to my newsletter https://www.employercontentmarketingdrop.com/

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director - Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

Priti has worked in the world of recruitment for over 15 years and she was recently Recruitment Marketing & Employer Brand Strategy at Publicis Sapient. And she's passionate about the importance of empathy!

Empathy is the key to the next evolution of the employer branding, so this is a chat worth listening in on. 

Thanks.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director + Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

Sign up to The Drop for updates on episodes, insights and events: https://www.employercontentmarketingdrop.com/

Only 21% of employees are engaged with their work - that means $8 trillion in lost productivity [Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2022] - so more needs to be done. Attracting and retaining the right talent is THE number 1 challenge facing organistions. And we're lucky to work in a space that can really play its part!

Subscribe to The Employer Content Marketing Drop and you'll get podcast episodes, articles, online chats, and events from the world of Employer Content Marketing.

https://www.employercontentmarketingdrop.com/

Why this newsletter? 

Content marketing transforms employer marketing, and I want it to be adopted by as many organisations as possible. But it can't just be through the work I do with my clients! It's got to be through the experiences, advice, and opinions shared on the Employer Content Marketing Pod. Better together, and all that!

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director, Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

In this episode I chat with Raf Hamaizia, Mental Health Campaigner & Group Expert By Experience Lead at Cygnet Health Care.

Raf and his team work with service users to help influence the care they're given. And it's their Music 2 Empower Series that stands out as an example of how co-producing projects lead to great content and engaged humans. 

We chat about the value in co-production and what projects like Music 2 Empower mean for mental health and social care service provision, and hiring the right people.

Watch the video podcast here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUqEm7J0vIzutw8I4s52Bvg

Here's the full Music 2 Empower video we talk about. Filmed at Cygnet Hospital Woking featuring David and Levi: https://youtu.be/ng95O8ydWQI

https://youtu.be/ng95O8ydWQI

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood 

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director + Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

If only more people knew how business-critical employer branding is. Finding, and retaining, the right talent is the number 1 challenge facing organisation. Without the right people, you just don’t have a successful business. 

But this isn’t reflected in employer branding and employer marketing budgets. It’s serious business without a serious influence in the boardroom.

This is the chat with Barbara Zych, Founder of EBnavi: an all-in-one platform to assess, benchmark, and develop employer brands.

Data is too often seen as an afterthought and too focused on tactics. Get data right and employer branding functions become a business-critical function with the budget to boot!

We cover a range of topics in this episode:

✅ Data starts earlier than you may think

✅ Adapting teams to a data mindset over time

✅ The time to hire metric mistake

✅ Connecting data and collaboration between departments

✅ The irrational fear of data

✅ Your Data Checklist

Find out more about EBnavi here https://ebnavi.com/ 

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director + Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

In Episode 55 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod, I chat with Jord Muckley. Jord has been in social media since his days at Coventry University and Aston University. He’s been a head of social at a TikTok agency and he’s recently joined the social media team at Moonpig. And with Pride Month happening last month, he has a lot to say about how brands should get involved in LGBTQ+ campaigning.

We provide some insights and tips about how to keep your marketing meaningful and relevant in a world dominated by social media. And we talk about how brands can avoid Rainbow-Washing with truly meaningful actions. We also get a first-hand view into the entertainment extravaganza that is the Eurovision Song Contest.

Here are the highlights:

• Social media’s impact on how Gen Z express themselves.


• The Age of TikTok and the impact on search behaviours


• How social media has given people a voice and means of self-expression.


• What makes for great content on social media.


• The importance of co-producing content with your audiences


• How to avoid Rainbow-Washing


• Which brands are doing LGBTQ+ campaigning the right way


• How brands can solve their authenticity problem


• What was it like being at the Eurovision Song Contest

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director + Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

And it’s HAM the Illustrator who joins me on the pod and gets his explainer boots on. He talks about his experience with big brands like Nike + the awesome opportunities available with Web3 🙌🏻

We cover a range of things in this episode:

✅ creativity through collaboration

✅ community backed content 

✅ storytelling 

✅ the future of learning, employability, and work 

⬇️🎧 Listen to the full episode via the link in the comments (and to get future episodes!)

Links discussed in the episode:

https://www.hundo.xyz/

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director + Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

This was a point of view shared on stage at The Youth Marketing Strategy Summit in East London back in June. And I just had to get the person who gave this talk on to the pod!

I chat with Simon Lucey, Founder & Managing Director of Hype Collective - a student marketing agency who work with some big brands in the consumer and employer marketing space.

In this episode we chat about how working with students as content creators has meant their clients spend less but get great results.

We cover a number of things in our chat:

• Using students as your content creators


• Reducing your reliance on high-end production content


• The power of experimentation


• Getting rid of that fear of failure


• The benefit of small production teams


• How to work with students to create content


• Partnerships that work

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director + Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

This is one of the reasons I started this podcast - employer content marketing has a role to play but so does leadership. If you have an engagement problem you've got a leadership problem. 

So I just had to get Sean Hagger in for a chat about leadership. Sean is a leadership consultant and an associate at Legitimate Leadership with experience in the Pharmaceuticals & Sustainability Tech arenas. 

Sean talks about the connection between leadership and employee engagement and how leadership can be more part of the solution than the issue. 

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director + Strategy & Production Lead at Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

Data privacy concerns are forcing platforms to restrict targeting capabilities in advertising. Brands will certainly feel the impact. And that’s on top of keeping up to date with the many platform changes and tactics at marketers disposal.

But not to worry, Joshua Tumbridge - Head of Client Services at Crunch Digital Media - is the perfect guest to help us unpack this for you.

We cover a whole host of things in this episode:

• Is there a crisis in digital media? And is behavioural and demographic targeting dead?


• Long term strategy trumps short term tactics


• The latest views about TikTok and what employer brands can gain from the most popular platform on the planet


• The importance of having the right content to earn attention in a world of distraction


• Content marketing and having a Customer Relationship Management strategy to generated and nurture leads


• Building first party data in your marketing

Thanks for the chat Josh!

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director x Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

Welcome to my first video podcast and the first episode shot in a studio. Good times for the podcast!

I chat with Conor Cotton, Managing Director of Not Going To Uni, about why it's important for a leader of a business to have a vlog. And he chats about his sources of inspiration and how he finds the time to deliver a vlog every month. 

It's great to see Conor's journey as an MD - vlogging is not something many leaders are prepared to do, especially in the early careers space, so he's definitely making his mark.

If you can't watch the video on your podcast player then you can watch it here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8QJFkXqC4HE  

Thanks for listening/watching.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director and Strategy & Production Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

I chat with With David Angus, Chief Strategy Officer at Curated Digital , about his experience in developing a consultancy offering in an agency.

Business’s ability to adapt is as important now more than ever - especially in the world of marketing where agencies need to constantly add value and differentiate from their competitors. So having a consultative approach and offering is a big conversation worth having.

David and I chat about the challenges and opportunities he's experienced and why a consultative approach is important for many businesses. 

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director of the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

You get over 25,000 followers on LinkedIn in a matter of months. And 100,000 followers on TikTok.

Rob Mayhew is a stand-up comedian who has also been in the agency world for 20 years. His comedy sketches about agency life have taken TikTok and LinkedIn by storm. He really is The Comedy King of LinkedIn right now.

From the trials and tribulations of pitching...to office culture...and everything in between, Rob’s videos reach thousands of people every single day.

In episode 47 you get to listen in on how Rob manages to light up LinkedIn for so many people. And how it’s become an effective marketing platform for him.

If you like what you hear then share, subscribe and leave a review. Your support really does mean a lot.

And here's Rob's TikTok of comedy sketch gold www.tiktok.com/@mrrobertmayhew

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketing.pod.com 

In episode 46 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod, I chat with Jasper Marriott - dancer, actor, teacher, long-distance runner, and magician.

Jasper has loads of experience on the stage that we can all learn from to help us develop our creative confidence. It’s all about having a magic mindset.

We cover a whole range of topics:

• having confidence in yourself


• adaption and innovation


• not having all of the answers


• disagreeing effectively


• forgetting your fear of failure

We also talk about what you can learn from two classic Disney films and long-distance running.

Jasper even does a magic trick at the end of the episode to blow my mind.

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

In episode 44, let’s look to the future by looking at today. We’re chatting Artificial Intelligence. What does Artificial Intelligence mean for marketers and, in particular, how we produce content?

I chat with Andy Lambert, Director of Growth at ContentCal, a software provider that helps marketers plan, schedule, and analyse their content. https://www.contentcal.com/

They're working on an Artificial Intelligence product at the moment, so when I saw Andy's post about this on LinkedIn I just had to get him on the pod.

We talk about what Artificial Intelligence actually looks like for marketers. And what it practically means for how organisations create marketing content. Is AI the doomsday for a range of marketing roles, or does it mean we can create better content? You'll also hear some time-saving tips you can use today!

We cover this all in this episode.

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

In this episode I chat with Raaj Govintharajah, Founder and CEO of The Martec, an AI-powered, employee-generated content platform.

Employee Generated Content has picked up in popularity with employers, especially since the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. So I just had to chat with Raaj to help make you an EGC pro in 2022.

How can organisations overcome the challenges of creating Employee Generated Content? What role does Employee Generated Content software play in the employer marketing tech stack? And why is it so important to take an editorial approach to content strategy and production?

We cover this and more in this episode.

Customer success stories https://www.themartec.com/customer-stories

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com

In episode 42 I chat with Rowan Marriott, Head of Resourcing at Cygnet Health Care about the why, what and how of employer content marketing.

I’ve been working with Rowan for over a year and a half now and we’ve produced over 200 pieces of content in that time.

We talk about the Talent Pool Content Series that has helped Cygnet Health Care and generated extremely cost effective results.

And it recently won us the Content Marketing category at the Recruitment Marketing Awards

We cover a whole range of topics, such as:

• The challenges facing Cygnet Health Care


• The Spray And Pray Problem


• How to get buy in from stakeholders


• How you can get your employees excited through content


• The importance of serialising content


• Repurpose. Pilot. Test. Scale.

Here’s links to some of the content we discussed:

Why We Care: The Nursing Career Podcast https://careers.cygnethealth.co.uk/podcasts/

Life Changing Stories Videos (Support Workers] https://join.cygnethealth.co.uk/care/

Health Career Guide [Online Event] https://thehealthcareersguidelive.springpod.co.uk/

Opinion Chat Series [Doctors & Consultants] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLysVVcVKy2sycW5MQ7aSF9NZCHhousZG

Opinion Chat Series [Nursing Leadership Team] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLysVVcVKy2uYatZAnj_4nhEMRjv17_n9

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

A few weeks ago I saw one of Mariano’s articles on LinkedIn. It was titled: “Most emails and newsletters for candidates suck.”

His article went on to tell the story of how they’ve got their content right for their candidates.

So I had to get him on the podcast.

We talk about how they create newsletters for candidates that go far beyond just advertising their job opportunities. We cover what it really means to think about the audience and how having a journalistic approach to content changes everything. And what kind of environment encourages his team to do new things. 

Mariano has plenty of advice to share.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Mariano’s LinkedIn article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/finally-good-talent-marketing-newsletter-mariano-aragunde/

One of Mariano’s favourite pieces of content from IBM “Meet Mombo” https://youtu.be/QcDa8rdz_ds

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

In this episode, I chat with James Ellis. James is the author of "Talent Chooses You: Hire Better with Employer Branding". And he's a self-confessed employer brand nerd.

While reading his book a particular chapter made me want to get James onto the pod. Narcissistic brands are an issue in marketing and gets in the way of great marketing.

We talk about the common mistakes brands make in their quest for attention and sales or hires, and what brands can do to be more focused on the people they want to engage with.

Here are just some of the things we cover in this episode:

• How employer marketing has wrongly copied consumer marketing techniques.


• Passive job seekers? Are the best talent even looking for job ads?


• Your competition isn’t your competitors, it’s life


• Your audience isn’t found, it’s created.


• Employees aren’t cost centres, they’re value generators.


• Be more human in employer branding and build true relationships through your marketing.


• What can brands do to be less narcissistic?

Here is Jame’s book:

http://talentchoosesyou.com/

And here’s the Crazy Eddie commercial from the USA that James talks about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml6S2yiuSWE

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le’cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod

www.contentmarketingpod.com

I was invited to the EB Stars Conference in September 2021 to talk about employer content marketing and how it can transform employer brands. Joined by two of my clients, Rowan Marriott [Head of Resourcing at Cygnet Health Care] and Conor Cotton [Managing Director at Not Going To Uni], this was a chance to talk about the why of employer content marketing and, in particular, the how. 

We talk about the challenges they face and how they've used employer content marketing. And we talk through the work we did and the results they've achieved. We finish off with a 6-step process to help you turn the dial more towards employer content marketing. 

There are some points of the conversation where you may want to see the supporting visuals. So here's the video of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTx4ZkUcA94 

This content is also part of a whole range of training content on the Employer Branding Stars Academy [coming soon!]  

Thanks to the awesome team at EB Navi and the EB Insitute for inviting me and for organising an epic online conference of 50+ sessions in just one day!

https://ebnavi.com/ 

https://ebinstitute.com/

https://employerbrandingstars.pl/

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

Episode 38 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod is a podcast within a podcast. I've helped tell the Campkins Cameras story - one that started in Cambridge in 1800.

Just a 30-minute chat in a coffee shop resulted in a mini-podcast episode, an article, and a series of audiogram ads that were run across Facebook and Instagram.

An example of the work can be found here.

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

Miles is a University of Liverpool student who works for Fanbytes [a social media and influencer marketing agency who help brands engage with Gen Z]. He also manages the popular University of Liverpool Student Meme Page on Instagram.

So he’s well placed to give you a view into the world of Gen Z during a second summer affected by COVID.

We talk about what content students have been creating and sharing and how brands can engage with them on Instagram and TikTok.

Links to content mentioned in this episode:

University of Liverpool Student Meme Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/uniofliverpoolmemepage/?hl=en 

University of Liverpool Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/livuni/?hl=en 

ACCA (Associated of Certified Certified Accountants) case study: https://fanbytes.co.uk/case-studies-old/acca-x-fanbytes/ 

University of Liverpool TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@liverpooluni?lang=en

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

This is based on extensive research produced by Neil Harrison of NH237 Consulting, in partnership with WDAD Communications.

They recently tapped into the views and experiences of talent acquisition and employer branding teams across the UK.

The opportunities for the employer branding profession have never been greater, but it faces challenges.

We dip into the key findings of the report with Neil and also Mike Jefferies, owner of WDAD Communications.

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead of the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

I chat with Matthew Phelan, Co-Founder of the Happiness Index. Matt and the team have built an established employee experience software platform for humans. Think employee engagement surveys taken the to the next level.

So, what if you could use the most up-to-date sentiment of your employees in your employer marketing content? We chat about this and more on this episode.

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

LinkedIn is changing: formats, tactics, and behaviours. But some don't like this change and believe in a certain type of "professional" content on LinkedIn. 

In episode 34 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod I chat with Dan Knowlton who is Co-Founder of Knowlton Marketing. 

Dan and his brother also create stand-out content on LinkedIn that uses entertainment to help them generate lots of new business. Dan is certainly one of the relatively few people on LinkedIn you'd class as a content creator. 

We talk about why content on LinkedIn is changing and what it takes to be a content creator on LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn is going the way of other social platforms and it's time to embrace this change. 

Links to some of Dan's videos mentioned in this episode

Every Marketing Meeting Ever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZn3ecm0dvU

Let's Do This Live https://vimeo.com/543154455

And their Business Anchors Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/business-anchors/id1497329226 

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

Take a look around you and you’ll see brands taking content marketing seriously. Tesco, Waitrose, easyJet, British Airways, the BBC, Land Rover, and Levi's….they’re all doing it.

And did you know the Michelin Guide, and their coveted stars, is a classic piece of content marketing to help sell tires?

We chat about it all today in episode 33 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod.

And who better to join me than Rob John from the Content Marketing Association. The CMA is the industry association for marketing, publishing, advertising, and social agencies. And Rob is the CMAs Managing Director.

We talk about what content marketing is, why brands should use it, and what content marketing looks like.

Links mentioned in the chat:

Case studies: https://the-cma.com/case-studies/

CMA Learning Webinars: https://the-cma.com/cma-learning/

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod 

& Director of the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

This is the crux of the chat in this episode of the Employer Content Marketing Pod.

I chat with Danny Heath, founder of YourGamePlan, a digital learning platform that helps students make the best decision about their future when they leave school.

We share opinions, approaches, and tactics that will help you help your future employees take the right first step in their careers.

Let’s get on with the chat.

Links of case studies mentioned:

https://www.lloydsbankinggrouptalent.com/early-careers-hub/feel-good-fest/

https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/careers/local/accenture-live

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

Steven is Talent Attraction, Marketing and Experience Lead at HSBC and we talk about examples of organisations creating content worthy of talent communities, how you can nurture your talent communities into hires, and what the ROI of well-run talent communities looks like. 

Here's Part 1 if you've not listened to it https://bit.ly/3dv7OFZ

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

www.contentmarketingpod.com 

In this episode, we have the next installment of my chat with Steven Brand - Talent Attraction, Marketing & Experience Lead at HSBC. We talk talent communities: What should they be, and what can you do to make them your #1 marketing channel? At the moment there's too much treating talent communities as job alert spamtime and not enough as a channel that deserves crafted and curated content. What content would you create if you help and inspire your audience first and sell second? It’s a question that can change your approach to talent communities. 

This is part 1 of 2, with episode 31 being about who are doing talent communities well...

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Director & Strategy Lead of the Content Marketing Pod Ltd

It was great catching up with Steven. We were meant to talk about the role of talent communities in employer and recruitment marketing but our Green Room chat was completely different. So I’ve made it an episode in its own right. We chat about taking an agile approach to content in your employer and recruitment marketing.

We chat about why it's better to be agile and how you can be more agile. And what that means for investment in your marketing budgets. 

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Director & Strategy Lead, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

I’ve had Nick on the pod before to talk about his book - The New Fire, Harness the Power of Video for your business. 

We flick through the book again, this time on the chapter - How to write a winning brief.

Nick and his team have been involved in producing over 10,000 videos for businesses, so he’s well placed to give you the key ingredients for creating a great brief for any videos you have in the pipeline. 

If you want to check out Nick's book in more detail, pop over to his website https://www.newfirebook.com/

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Director & Strategy Lead, Content Marketing Pod Ltd

https://www.contentmarketingpod.com/

In this episode I want to share something I’ve been working on with the awesome team at Cygnet Healthcare and Springpod. 

Why We Care is the nursing career podcast powered by the people of Cygnet Healthcare. Season 1 is full of stories, opinions and advice to help nurses. 

I led on the strategy, creative, and design and was the podcast producer. I worked with Cygnet Health Care, their content partners, and Springpod.

And I’ve loved working on it. 

We created this podcast to help and inspire nurses with advice, insights into working practices, and stories from staff, service users, and patients.

We called it Why We Care because caring for others is at the heart of nursing. It truly is a life changing career. 

This is employer content marketing in action for sure. And is real proof behind the Life Changing Careers employer brand. This is why do I what I do.

Have a look and a listen here.

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Founder & Strategy Lead at the Content Marketing Pod 

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Entain is one of the world’s largest sports-betting and gaming groups, operating both online and in the retail sector. The Group employs a workforce of more than 24,000, in 20 offices across five continents.

Rich leads the employer brand at Entain. Rich and his team are responsible for employer brand content across their employer marketing channels and work closely to employee engagement. 

We chat about what it's like managing an employer brand during a pandemic and also during a global rebrand from GVC to Entain. We talk about how they ensure they live the employer brand through actions, not just marketing messages. And we look at what content plans are in-store at Entain in 2021. 

Rich has been busy in the 12+ months he's been at Entain. Amongst all of the content he and the team have produced, what puts a smile on Rich's face? It's this video that shows what the people of Entain did during the pandemic. Here you go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eTtFkbtjPk 

Thanks for listening. 

Chris

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

www.lch.social 

I used to work with Matt at Havas People when he worked in the ATS world. His move into a creative role has been inspiring and he's worked with some big brands in the years since his career reboot. 

He's worked with Manchester United and, most recently, with Anthony Joshua the Heavyweight Champion of the World. I couldn't resist getting him on the Employer Content Marketing Pod to talk about that experience working with AJ and how Matt approached it for his client, Under Armour. I also talk to him about a stories project in the growing category of mindfulness apps. 

We talk about how you need to approach and plan content that helps convince people to spend their valuable time with your brand. 

Links to the content discussed in this episode

Under Armour with Anthony Joshua

https://bit.ly/2VfjaVF 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CIBbzR9ARcn/?igshid=n2i97a80ovan

Headspace: https://bit.ly/3lhFybG

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist

Bob has a vast range of experience in recruitment and higher education. This makes him the perfect chap to chat with about early careers recruitment in a decade that has been kick-started by crisis.

Bob gives us an inside view from both the early careers recruitment and the university market and we talk about a range of topics:

• Challenging the way organisations market to students: go beyond marketing messages with a more human and caring approach


• Not paying lip service to Diversity & Inclusion


• What smart employers are doing in response to the challenges this year


• Does the early careers market have enough experience to move from being transactional to transformative?


• Using your network to navigate the challenges you face


• Is "campus swag" the best way to invest in your future talent?


• Seeking out talent from a diverse range of universities.

Links to content mentioned in the episode:

Accenture LIVE: https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/careers/local/accenture-live

Clifford Chance: https://careers.cliffordchance.com/london/home.html

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

& Content Marketing Strategist

www.lch.social

Veeam is a fast-paced software company and the leader in backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management™. 

So, pace is important in a company like Veeam. We talk about what Ange has been up to at Veeam and the traditional approach to employer branding. 

Is employer branding too slow for the fast-paced, ever-changing, ever-demanding world we live in today?

Given the speed of the tech industry,  the answer was "yes, it certainly can be". 

My chat with Ange talks about her role at Veeam, how they approach business, and if organisations need to take a more agile and iterative approach to employer branding. Get your employer branding work out of the sandbox and into the real world quickly and create content at pace. And don't be afraid to try something new. 

What do you think?

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist

www.lch.social 

I used to work with Andrew at Havas People in London before he moved to Australia to continue his work in the world of employer branding and employer/recruitment marketing. 

It was great catching up and getting his view on what the world of employer branding is like in Australia, what he learnt from his stint in the consumer branding world and what he'd put on the agenda of a talent attraction meeting. 

We talk about the great things employees have done during COVID, taking employer branding and marketing to the next level with content marketing, TikTok and treating candidates like customers. 

Links from content mentioned: 

Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same: https://youtu.be/vM3J9jDoaTA

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist

www.lch.social

This is what we're covering on episode 21 of the Employer Content Marketing Pod. I chat with Ollie Oram, a campaign manager at the Gen Z influencer marketing agency, Fanbytes.

Links discussed in the episode:

Vestiare Collective Case Study: https://fanbytes.co.uk/case-studies/vestiaire-collective-x-fanbytes/

Debut Case Study: https://fanbytes.co.uk/case-studies/debut-x-fanbytes/

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist

www.lch.social

We’ve seen organisations going through radical transformation because of Coronavirus. Pivoting, moving online, working from home and keeping employees motivated.

How can organisations adapt and succeed in a decade kickstarted by crisis? And how can they use internal and external marketing to succeed?

Big questions. That’s why I’m super happy to have Gavin Russell on the chat today. He’s author of the Transformation Timebomb: 150 practical business adaptations for the digital age.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Investors valuing meaning and purpose more than profit and the implications for the brand circle [employer, consumer, and corporate].
  
  


• What does authenticity really mean to stakeholders
  
  


• How recruitment should be more about enabling careers rather than filling vacancies
  
  


• Recruiting talent based on future impact, not past performance
  
  


• How a marketing mindset can add value in recruitment
  
  


• What should you put on your agenda in your next meeting?

Links to things we discussed in this episode:

The Transformation Timebomb by Gavin Russell:

https://www.gavinrussellconnect.com/transformation-timebomb

Who Cares Wins: Why good business is better business, by David Jones:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0273762532/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_Cz2tFbWMACQQF

Fixing The Game, by Roger L Martin:

https://rogerlmartin.com/lets-read/fixing-the-game

What Next are doing on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/lifeatnext/

The Netflix podcast run by employees:

https://jobs.netflix.com/podcast

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Podcast

www.lch.social

So what's it like working at LinkedIn? I chat with Laura Fox, a former employee [who joined in the early days for the business in the UK]. I get an inside view of LinkedIn and we talk about how the platform is so much more than the recruiter license it's often known for.

Please do subscribe and share the pod with your network. Your support really does mean a lot. 

Let's get on with the chat.

Links to things talked about in this episode:

LinkedIn stereotypes video by Knowlton: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6663694666749235200/

Who's creating great content on LinkedIn, IMO: https://www.chrislch.com/post/e9-the-daily-goat-vlog-with-harry-hugo-co-founder-of-the-goat-agency

Laura's a big fan of what Unilever does on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/unilever/

LinkedIn helping out people during the global crisis: https://opportunity.linkedin.com/en-us

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Host of the Employer Content Marketing Pod

Social Media & Content Strategist

www.lch.social

In this episode, I find out with Rob Fryer, Director of Student Life at the University of Leicester. Rob has extensive experience in the early careers market from his time as Head of Student Recruitment at Deloitte and board member of the Institute of Student Employers.

So, what Rob has to say about the student and early careers market is certainly worth listening to.

We chat about how students have been adapting to life in lockdown, what the milkround will look like this Autumn and what recruiters can do to help students prepare for the world of work.

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Consultant

In March, Edelman's Trust Barometer ran a special report in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. This 10-country study found “my employer” was the most trusted institution. This was ahead of NGOs, government, and the media. That's a big responsibility bestowed on employers, so it's particularly important to know how to get this right in the coming months and years ahead.

I chat with Ken Ken, Director at Ceriph, about truth and transparency in the world of employer branding. This conversation takes us far beyond employer branding as we look at what it means, why it matters and two examples of organisations doing it well [Gymshark and Cisco]. We also talk about Airbnb's brilliant handling of mass redundancies and changes on the board at Reddit. 

Links discussed in the episode:

Gymshark

https://careers.gymshark.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Gymshark/posts/3089689251129841

https://twitter.com/noelmack/status/1268268151831224321?s=21

Cisco

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/wearecisco/

https://blogs.cisco.com/lifeatcisco/my-new-job-life-as-a-working-dad

Airbnb

https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-brian-chesky/

Reddit

https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a32788247/serena-williams-alexis-ohanian-reddit/

Andy and I come up with some tips on how to do this. Get employees to look at their life as chapters and themes in a book. You'll then have a collection of employee stories that are the collective power behind your employer brand.

We also talk about Andy's own story that connects him with The Dude in The Big Lebowski. We also talk about Dan Pink's book, Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates people, and Simon Sinek's view on the power of tribes.

Andy helps leaders, founders and people in work transitions craft the next chapter in their lives. Creator of The Whole Story Online Course, he's a qualified coach and psychologist, with background as a creative leader in advertising and employer branding. I worked with him for a few years at Havas People and always enjoy our chats.

Links to things we discussed in this episode:

Andy's Whole Story Online Course: https://www.andrewsewell.com/the-whole-story

Dan Pink's book, Drive: https://www.danpink.com/drive./

Simon Sinek on tribes:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8EVzdCBvoA

Thanks for listening.

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Consultant

www.lch.social

Duncs is an Art Director at Havas People and I've worked with him for a lot of my career. As well as being an amazing creative he has a side hustle called Mad Mods and a Camera. We chat over a few drinks in Enfield about this awesome body of work and the importance of this Alfred Eisenstaedt quote: "It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter."

For someone who doesn't class himself as a photographer, Duncs sure knows what makes a great photo. His approach to photography is all about documenting. Every photo has a story and that's something extremely relevant to employer marketing photography. 

Here's his website: http://madmodsandacamera.com/

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Consultant

www.lch.social

Ollie is the perfect person to talk to about early careers marketing. He set up Springpod Studios which produces content that really does live up to the Springpod mission of helping school leavers, students and graduates enter the world of work prepared and inspired. 

Ollie and the team are a great bunch and I always enjoy our chats. This one finds us talking about what content employers need to create to cut through the noise. We talk about the binge-worthy content that they've been creating [see links below, well worth checking out!]. 

Links discussed in the episode:

Clicking Apply Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6hcwobol7BXOlOKOYirFei

Classroom to Boardroom: https://www.springpod.co.uk/classroom-to-boardroom/

Learn Lounge: https://learn.springpod.co.uk/

Online Open Days: https://www.onlineopendays.com/

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Consultant

www.lch.social

Gen Z are the school kids, school leavers, college students...they are at university and they're entering the workforce. 

TikTok was the world’s second most downloaded app in 2019 and regularly topped the app download charts. Lockdown has resulted in a 23% rise in average viewing time between January and March [Sensor Tower 2020]. And 69% of users are 16-24 [TikTok 2019].

So it's important to talk about both for early career marketing. 

I chat with Shelly Chadha, from Gen Z marketing agency Fanbytes. We cover why TikTok is so popular, what brands are doing on the app and what early career marketers can do with it. 

Link shout outs from the episode:

The Rise Above campaign with the TikTok house, Bytehouse: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52223908 & https://www.tiktok.com/tag/stayhomefeelgood

Our article about TikTok and National Apprenticeship Week on Undercover Recruiter: https://theundercoverrecruiter.com/unlock-the-potential-of-tiktok/

Fanbytes work with ACCA: https://youtu.be/Gr-3DlU9XEo 

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Consultant

www.chrislch.com 

What does this mean for business? In this episode I chat with Nick Francis about his book: The New Fire - Harness the power of video for your business.  We talk about why video is so important, the power of stories and how talent acquisition professionals make the most of video.  

Nick is a communications strategist, author and filmmaker. His company, Casual Films produces over 2,000 films a year for some of the world’s most influential brands. They have worked in 45 countries and had their work translated into 35 languages, winning over 100 awards in the process. From Casual’s first job on the road to Mongolia in a clapped out Mini their spirit of adventure has led them to offices in London, New York, LA, San Francisco and Amsterdam. He previously worked for BBC News and has studied, read, written and presented extensively about video, storytelling, brand building and communication. He is a Founding Director of the Casual Films Academy charity which trains young people in filmmaking through producing videos for charitable causes.

Useful links

We talked about some great storytelling examples from Netfilx: https://www.chrislch.com/post/netflix-do-diversity-stories-naturally

If you want to find out more about Nick's book then pop over to his website: https://www.newfirebook.com/

Thanks for listening. 

Chris Le'cand-Harwood

Social Media & Content Marketing Consultant

www.chrislch.com