Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Welcome everyone. Today, we’re visiting with an Oklahoma native who is leading people first strategies at a nearly 5,000 team fintech company. Matt Palmer is the senior director of employee experience and employer branding at Heartland where he leads key people strategies hire this includes everything from onboarding culture development leadership training Employee Engagement and more so Matt. Thanks for being with us today. And we’d love to hear more about what Heartland does.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to chatting with you guys for a long time and I love your podcasts. So I’m super honored to be here and really looking forward to our conversation just a little bit more about Heartland in addition to being a company that is about 5,000 people spread out all over the United States. We have large offices. We have smaller offices and then of course, we have a lot of remote team members too, who work from their homes or their home offices or they’re living rooms or their kitchen tables. Whatever that looks like or maybe even sometimes I say from their patio, which I’m a little bit jealous about…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, awesome.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): All of our 5000 people are focused on making every day work better for our customers and the way that we do that is through our technology or through our software.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Right and that means we provide Financial technology or software in three key areas of business today. The first one is payments, right? So we have products that help people manage and process payments that could be in a store at a counter or it could be online. So think of all the sort of app purchases that you’re making specifically we help in power people to do that or businesses to do that too. The next thing that we do is point of sale. Think about the specific counter experience, cash drawers and kiosks and scanners and printers and monitors. We do put a sale for two really large segments including some other ones, but I’ll mention retail businesses and then of course restaurants is a big part of what we do and lots of other businesses in that category as well and then the third part of our product offering to our customers.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Is our payroll product right? So We actually call it payroll plus which means we actually do more than just payroll process and payroll though. We have about 50,000 clients that we’re processing payroll for on a weekly basis, but we actually also provide what we call human Capital Management products. So products that help them with Support products that help with time in attendance products that help track candidate flow think of it like an applicant tracking system right these types of things. So that’s what Heartland is doing. That’s what 5,000 of us are doing. We’re doing various things that are important to the customer journey to help make Everyday work better with payment point of sale and payroll, right and it’s a ton of fun and it’s certainly a high growth company with a lot of very passionate people and I love working here and I love what we’re doing. So it’s a little bit about what we’re doing.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I love that and one thing I’d mention is what you’re offering to clients in part, the payroll plus portion you’re helping leaders deliver a better employee experience and that’s what you’re doing at the company. So it’s a little bit bubbling up here,…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah. Yeah,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But I think that’s incredible…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): It’s sort of linked.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): what you guys are doing. tell us a little bit more about the non-corporate Matt.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): That’s Very cool.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What do you like to do?
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah. my gosh, thank you for asking me that I love that. So a little bit about me which I’m really proud of my wife and I actually just celebrated 22 years of marriage last December…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Which I feel really proud of. I can’t believe she’s decided to be with me that long which really speaks to help how great of a person she is. No, I’m kidding a little bit not kidding, right kind that they…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): But I’m really proud of that. We have two children. They’re both teenagers, 15 years old and 17 years old. So in 2020 my son will turn 16. My daughter will turn 18 and we’re starting to really think about this sort of empty death thing right that people talk about What’s It Gonna?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): For children to not be at home. I think when they’re both driving they will really feel that a ton. and that actually takes me to my next thing about me. Which we share this passion actually is because my wife and I found ourselves with a little bit more free time, and we needed to exercise and we’re both competitive we decided to start playing pickleball, right like a lot of people are doing and it’s sort of the thing we get to do together and get good at together and get to know other people doing that thing. And so we like to play. I think the other thing about me is we’re competitive. We like to compete. We like to sort of Link exercise with the competition. So that’s a little bit about my marriage, my children and kind of what I’m doing outside of work. Those are some things. I don’t know.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s the call.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): That sounds not that interesting.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. No,…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): But yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You’re right. We love pickleball too. And if you’re ever out here we ought to play but
Matthew Palmer (Guest): We definitely should play for sure. Yes.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You mentioned that you do some local tournaments and I think that’s just as official as it can be so I mean, I know not one of those that ranks you or…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): something but
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah Yeah Chris, I love that you brought that up it feels very official to me, I take it very seriously and competitively so it’s a lot of fun they’re a lot of fun to be a part of it’s a great sport
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And it’s interesting on just a little side note here on Netflix. There’s the series Breaking points highlighting so much about me or…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Mm-hmm
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): yeah, breakpoint highlighting, the current tennis scene crista’s a big tennis player. I’ve tried to fake it a little bit. I know Matt earlier you said that you have a strong tennis background and it’s definitely interesting to see this cultural dynamic play out between tennis and pickleball. Which is kind of fun and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yes. Yes,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): ends at times right pickleball.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Maybe it’s this sort of hate thing. Yes.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): background and So pickleballs a little bit easier to include whatever skill level and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yes.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): stuff.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): I love that you’re bringing up. In fact, one of the things that I love about it is you can play Pickleball competitively in lots of different ways. It could be fast-paced. It could be hard-hitting but also it can be really slow and methodical and sort of intentional and that’s an amazing way to play the game right…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): which is a lot of fun and when lots of people can play lots of different levels the other thing I love about sport is it creates D right where you get to know people and you get to meet people and they play a little different way, but it’s them and how they play. I think that’s a cool thing about pickleball for sure.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and speaking of community. So you’re over employer branding tell us about what that is and what it is not.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah. Yeah, I love this. I think one of the things that we recognize as an organization.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Is just as important as is to Market to our potential customers, right? We use a lot of different marketing strategies, but for the conversation today, we’ll think about the sort of digital marketing strategies that we’re utilizing. So as important it is to sort of attract and increase awareness for our potential customers in our business. We want to dab the same emphasis for potential candidates and Advocates and people that would want to join our business. And so what my specific role is when I’m doing employer branding work is thinking how can we utilize what it is? Largely digital marketing strategies to help increase the interest of inside people that might say, hey, I think I’d like to be a part of the team at Heartland, right and that involves a lot of different things. But that’s what we’re doing when we think about employer branding. It’s all so increasing the awareness of who we are as an employer, right? So, what do we want people to know?
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Is true about our employer brand just as we would with a brand promise specifically for our customers. have We want to have those things in place with our employer brand strategy so that when people say I work for Heartland, right or I know people work at Heartland, there’s a certain attribute that comes with that right there’s an understanding of what it means to be a part of our team and the work that we’re doing so my job to increase awareness of those attributes, right and then eventually Target the right people at the right time to see if we can get them interested in joining our company and if they don’t want to join our company, they’re an advocate for us, right? They tell others that they might want to join our company at some point. Is that helpful? So that’s certainly a very high level understanding of the way I think about employer branding in the work and we can dive deeper for sure.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I really like that Matt and I were looking at your LinkedIn profile and it shows that you were leading marketing efforts before this. So maybe tell us your opinion of …
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yep.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): where does the line draw between the camera marketing and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): employer marketing or do you feel it’s kind of fluid and there’s some spillover. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that like they work in tandem.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yes. Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Are they independent?
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Is it one operation with some kind of subsets?
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah, I love that question. That’s a really thoughtful question. The way we think about this is I’ll say the same book in different chapters if you will, So one of the things that we talk a lot about and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Sometimes people that are doing employer branding I think can get a little distracted from this particular area if I tell our marketing teammates who are exceptional. They’re amazing. They’re doing incredible things that the brand does not make sense. So I think the first thing for a person that’s gonna focus on employer branding is not to take on this pressure to restate and envision redescribing the brands and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yep.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): the brand is determined by our marketing team. Liberty with me on that and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yep.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): So that matters. So the first thing is, how is our marketing team creating the brand? What’s the story? What’s the narrative that’s important about the brand? Why does it matter to the particular Customer? Because what we’re going to try to do is find people to participate in that story or that narrative so step. Number one. I think people are gonna do employer branding. It does not create this difference or this void between employer branding work and marketing work; it is one book with different chapters. So an example of that if I’m gonna take people if I’m gonna say hey, I would like to increase our candidate flow for our technology teams that are developing point of sale software. Does it make sense to do that?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Is to say I’m hiring. Point of sale. We put that on social channels. We put that on our website, We would do what we call sort of traditional messaging around employment strategy. I’ve come to join my team with those types of things. We actually try to stay away from those types of messages with the exception of a few times a year in some very specific roles. Rather if I’m helping build a technology team for a point of sale business I take the amazing stories that the marketing team is telling about the work we’re doing in point of sale for our customers. I share those stories and say they want to be a part of this vision, want to be a part of this work, want to be a part of solving customer problems these other teams are doing specifically in point of sale and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): problem
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Try to get people to be connected to what we’re doing as a brand and how we’re adding value to our customers and invite people. That story is a little bit. Does it make sense? In the.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah to me that feels you think of Costco or Sam’s Club one of the most effective forms of sampling is hey here taste this, off the shelf food item now. It’s in your mouth and now you’re like, I like that now I’m buying it and I would compare that to what you just described as the traditional. Hey, we’re hiring that’s just having a product sitting on a shelf. Here’s the product. It’s transactional communication. But you know that sampling experience it’s an experiential thing where you’re getting more.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Sensory moment happening and when you’re telling that story you’re especially allowing employees to be part of that storytelling you’re talking about the problems, the solutions, the vision, that’s a digital sampling of sorts. Where now that potential candidate is experiencing a little taste of what it could be like to work at Heartland and now they’re salivating right? They’re like, okay I want to apply and it’s a completely different lead in to that. Application
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah, and they have a sense of what they’re joining. So I think I want to come back to the partnership with marketing because it’s really important to say a few more things. But to your point the example you’re giving is now I get to taste this thing right that I’m about to buy and I know that I like it or I might know that my family likes it over to buy. I think one of the things we’re trying to do with employer brand strategy is be honest about what it means to work here in the work that we’re doing because we want you to come and be passionate about doing the work that we’re doing. Right. So if I remain sort of ambiguous about the job and about the culture
Matthew Palmer (Guest): I think at least this is working for us at this point. I think organizations should have expert focus on things like marketing and on things like employer branding just to ensure that those particular disciplines don’t get lost somewhere in the Nation
Matthew Palmer (Guest): So I partner with our marketing people because they’re prose they’re amazing. They’re incredible. They’re very smart. They are very creative. They’re very connected to technology. They’re awesome. And I benefit from their expertise a lot with those particular things, and I know I’m focused specifically on attracting the right candidate and building Advocacy team with the tools that we have where they’re focused on. We need more customers for all of our products. Does it make sense? So I think it is helpful to have people focus on specific things,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): you
Matthew Palmer (Guest): right, but that builds really strong Partnerships and it’s not sort of the employer brand Team competing against the marketing team. It’s the same book, different chapters, right and that marketing team’s gonna create the brand. My job is to share that brand with other people and invite people into the story.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We live in a world of specialization and it sounds like your marketers are amazing and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You’re great at what you do and that combination can produce really amazing results. I think.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So, another thought I had with what you were saying previously is that draw for people to have meaning for their work. And so…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): mmm
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): what you’re saying about sharing the vision of what your team is doing and what they’re accomplishing people. That’s what people want. I mean they’re there for money, right that employer’s very proposition,…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But they’re also there to make a difference and to find meaning in what they’re doing. so I love
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah. Absolutely.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That so diving a little bit more. Let’s say a company doesn’t have a dedicated employer brand strategy.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): mmm
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So why should they invest in that and having an employer brand and reputation strategy?
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah. Yeah, gosh, that’s a big question Chris for And certainly I am biased because I do this work specifically but I think one of the things that organizations have to start embracing is the value that their team brings and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): the team that they’re building and they have to start recognizing the fact that we actually really need the right people in the right seat. Go in the right direction. Remember all those things we’ve learned right and getting the right people and the right seat to go in the right direction starts with their really amazing candidate Journey specifically Does it make sense? And so a lot of people that come to me and they say Hey, how’s employee effect in the business? What we’ve done is we’re crafting messages and stories in a candidate Journey. That’s uniquely designed to get the right people in the right direction. And so when I go to the organization I say hey, I’m actually contributing to your passion to build the right team doing the right work and go in the right direction rather than we’re gonna take a bunch of people from a lot of different places and backgrounds and experiences. We’re gonna put them in a job and we’re going to hope our Energy Group process worked enough to get the right person. This makes sense.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Employer branding says we’re actually gonna be far more strategic on the front end of that journey and do our part to partner with hiring managers to build the right team to then accelerate the business, So I think that’s a good example of why companies should be thoughtful about what employer brand because it actually can impact the way teams are built and then eventually the work that team actually does to accelerate the business or strengthen the culture. Does that make sense? So I think that’s a key thing that people should care about. And the work we’re doing.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I definitely saw first-hand what can happen when you hire the wrong person. Maybe it’s a person…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): mmm
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): who ends up being toxic and causes other people to leave. Maybe it’s a person who really just isn’t a good fit for the company and the company’s not a good fit for them. And so even all that many put into training them, hiring them and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): getting them ingrained in the company is kind of down the drain, right? And…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I have heard that strategy of interviewing and making your interview process really good that you can weed. Those people that maybe aren’t a good fit for your company, but that seems so much more effective to start that before you even get applications to get the right kind of application and then you’re not weeding out a bunch. That really is not a good fit.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Are you tracking the right people from the beginning? We see that this fluctuates a little bit depending on the time of year because I think it’s actually a little bit, but we see about 1200 to 1500 applications. A week for the positions that we have open instead of our company,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): So it’s a lot of people and there’s actually some more than that, but we think about it like people that are actually going to be in the funnel right 12 to 1500 applications. So that’s a lot of people for our talent acquisition team to think about. How are we gonna talk to all these people? So we’ve got to use a strategy that starts to Target who those people are and get the right people to apply into the funnel because we automatically know we have some work to do to find them right even though they’re in our system and we have tools in place to help do that. But that’s the thing if an organization can say our employer branding strategy is contributing to our retention expenses, right and what that looks like…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You want yep.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Then people start to say. Hey, maybe that’s actually a thing and let’s put a little bit more investment on the front end of this journey rather than dealing with it later.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, and there’s a lot of repercussions that happen from not having this in Krista talking about the toxic employee or the misaligned situation,…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): So it’s a yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yep.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): You don’t have the right person in the right seat on the bus as you’re talking about this and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yep.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Crista was mentioning that example my mind went to sports and how for a college team or NBA or NFL. They have Scouts that go out essentially on the hunt for that right player to fill the right role in the right team. It’s a hunting strategy for the right person in the right bus on the right team but most corporate organizations can’t have that type of an investment for every single role you’re trying to fill and so in my mind employer branding is instead of hunting.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s almost like casting in that it’s more at scale fishing. I guess you could say or
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Becoming a magnet instead of going out for that Target person. That’s going to be the perfect team player. You’re saying hey, here’s what we have come to us. And then you’re attracting the right type of people and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): then you have a system in place to help your internal team decide. Here’s a whole bunch of people that are there raising their hands saying I feel aligned with this company. I’m excited about the problems you’re solving but then it’s your job to help kind of make sure they’re getting in the right seats as they’re saying that they’re interested and so have a two-way thing. It’s helping the candidates find alignment for themselves. And then it’s you helping ensure that the business agrees with that alignment and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yes. Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that they’re coming into the right part of the business.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah, they’re coming into the right. I love Matt that you said helping the cans. I identify for myself. So that’s an important thing that I think is important when we talk about this. I’ll give an example of the way I’m gonna unpack us for a minute. We are a fast-paced culture really fast. We do a lot in a quarter. We do a lot in the month. We pivot a lot and we change. I like to think about our very dynamic, right? Does it make sense? So there is a movement that is one way of doing business for us. It’s important that we have a dynamic culture because of our industry and the way we’re taking products to the Market and what that means for. Our customers don’t make sense.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): But that doesn’t mean that sort of this Dynamic fast-moving thing is important to every business or is important to every person doesn’t make sense. So if we have a candidate experience, that’s appropriately sharing the story of what it is actually like to do the work in our culture achieving the things we’re trying to say and we’re honest about things about our culture. This makes sense. For example, we move fast.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Then that allows us to have a more honest conversation with the candidate to really identify. Hey, are you gonna actually be cool with our fast-moving culture and let’s chat about that. Let’s chat about what that actually means and how you feel about that because at the end of the day not only are we trying to find candidates that fit the company right to help accelerate our business, but it matters to the candidate too because to be fulfilled. We want them to thrive. We want them to wake up and enjoy and want to do the work we’re doing and that doesn’t mean it’s great every day. but I’m looking for people that know what they’re joining because I don’t want them to dread Mondays. Does it make sense? I don’t want that life’s too short.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): So that’s the thing. We’re trying to do employer branding strategies telling the stories and creating amazing candidate experiences that help empower the candidate to go. what this company’s values are actually very similar to my values and I’m in for that. Or they go. Hey, thank you so much. I actually don’t think this is the fit for me and when that happens, I’m like, All right, that’s amazing. And then maybe we can help them get connected somewhere else in our network. But then we do the same for the company right. Our company knows because we’re telling the right story. We’re talking about our culture. It is more likely than not when somebody enters our candidate Journey that they have a proper understanding. They have an authentic understanding of what it means to join our company because there are some unique things about us that matter to being successful. Anyways, I think I’m rambling now, but I’m loving the conversation.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): No, not at all. And yeah, so with Heartland you met you mentioned that a fast-paced culture is kind of the thing and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Mm-hmm
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Does that influence your branding strategy and what other kinds of things do employees say about Heartland that influence what you do in your marketing.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Wow, that’s a big point. I would love to have our marketing people on to help answer that but I think one of the things that Kristen when you ask the question, my mind immediately went to is as it relates to brand and what we’re doing for our customers and kind of who we are is there’s actually a lot of very similar qualities of our customers and our team members, right? So we spend a lot of time.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Understanding our customer. We understand their entrepreneurs and what it means to be an entrepreneur of a startup and a midsize business or a small business or even all the way it needs to be entrepreneurial in a sort of Enterprise business, because people are doing that work too. So one of the things we celebrate a lot here from a brand perspective is entrepreneurs, right and what they mean to our communities what they mean to our cities what they mean to our school certainly what they mean To business and their particular sort of local economy or the work they’re doing but anyways, it’s important right? You guys are entrepreneurs. It’s important. And so we celebrate entrepreneurship and what that means that is a major part of our brand.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Externally right with our marketing strategies, but also it’s a major part internally and that eventually externally to our employer brand strategy but it makes sense because I want to attract people that not only care about entrepreneurs but want to support entrepreneurs that want to partner with entrepreneurs that want to help entrepreneurs running through their business, but I also valued that entrepreneurial spirit and it’s important part of how we work here. Does that make sense? So that’s a link, if I can find people that have some startup experience or some entrepreneurial experience. I’m fantastic, I’m saying what it’s like to be a part of this. So I think that’s how I thought about your question. It’s a similar message for our brand from a marketing perspective is we’re here to help entrepreneurs and in lots of different ways. But also we’re here to attract entrepreneur really minded people to take care of entrepreneurs once again inside the business and
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Say there’s a really clear link, which is a lot of fun.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And the more that you can identify what is unique about your company and the people that already work there and what’s working. The more you can make sure that employer branding strategy reflects. What’s actually happening on the inside?
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right Kristen. I love that you brought that up if we actually have an employer brain strategy. We actually have to have our employees believe it. I just make sense that matters.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): They’re experiencing the way they think about things. They say these things are true about our particular employee Branch strategy and use them to actually form things like, an employee value proposition, a sort of Mantra for our employer brand that needs to come from them. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be true.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I think as we kind of wrap up here one other thought that I had just as you’re saying that the employees really have to believe it. And so does everyone else like they have to see that conversation that showcased a piece of employer branding happening, authentic way because managing expectations is key. whether an element of the benefits is this or…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yep.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): this doesn’t matter as much as
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Communicating it accurately and completely and I think we’re in the reputation management space for employers helping streamline everything from glassports indeed comparably and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Absolutely.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): in her site and that piece right there supports that authentic story because that’s the employee sharing their experience in a public review where everyone can see and so it’s their opinions shaping perceptions. And I think you’re spot on Matt that employees really have to believe it. And so we don’t want to sell, we want to sell what we really are, know what we really are based on what we’re trying to accomplish as a business and understand what the employees believe and…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yep.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): then be authentic to that. Would say in closing before we wrap it up.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Yeah, which two things actually one the work you guys are doing with the reputation of management is actually critical right because how many of us when we’re buying a product or service or going to work for a particular job. We actually asked a friend. We don’t always talk to the people that are selling the thing or offering a job to do it because it matters what other people are saying, so we certainly love the work you guys are doing to help maximize that particular company.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Mutation management is absolutely critical. Especially more places where people are reviewing your work and your company and those types of things. So it’s good app tools to help streamline that thing the last thing I want to say about this is I think one of the things I would tell people they’re gonna do employer branding is believe in what you’re doing, right but be passionate about what you’re doing tell stories about the amazing work that your people are doing. I think that’s the thing too that really sets good employer branding that has a good plan apart from really Dynamic and amazing employer branding. A lot of results are emotional , passionate, like people joining a company for the first time in a particular role or green to move from one job to another. Is it an emotional thing right? It’s a big thing for us.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): And that’s one of the things that we’ve been trying to drive in any of our stories or messages is we want the stories to not be lame. We want them to actually be emotional. We want them. We want them to actually move people because the thing we call work and what we do every day is emotional and it is part of the human experience and it is an opportunity to do lots of different things and we want our stories and our messages to be passionate right to be emotional. So I value a really passionate story more than I do a well built plan sometimes because I like people responding to real stories and real people doing real stuff and talking about how they do it and that’s an important part of the strategy anyways, so if you’re doing employer branding get passionate. Do some big stuff and I promise you you will see your application count go up substantially.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and the right applicants Yeah,…
Matthew Palmer (Guest): In the right applicants, that’s exactly right. Yeah. Thank you.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I love that you believe in what you do and bring that emotion to the work that you’re doing. Such a good way to close our conversations today. Thank you, Matt, and for all who are listening, check out our other episodes and stay tuned for what we have coming next. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Matt.
Matthew Palmer (Guest): Thanks everybody. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.
