“Bootylicous” is now in the dictionary and means “attractive/sexy”. The term “crunk” means “very excited and full of energy”. Although not the everyday vernacular of recruiting and HR professionals, both of these terms describe HOW you should be doing your talent brand.

In a recent LinkedIn white paper, a talent brand is defined as “the highly social, totally public version of your employer brand that incorporates what talent thinks, feels and shares about your company as a place to work. Another way to say it is “everything your company does from a recruiting perspective is being watched and discussed in social media”.

Will every brand be sexy? It really depends on your definition of sexy. People are attracted to different kinds of artwork, literature, architectures and preferences that they find sexy. Companies must build a bootylicious and crunk talent brand, but have to keep it real. Below are a few keys to keep in mind while building your talent brand:

• Tell the truth! If your company’s claim to fame is longevity and “safe”, there are people who will find it sexy. Everyone doesn’t want a Google environment.
• Market Perception. Be aware of what current and past employees are saying about working for you. It’s best to find out while they are still employed through; surveys, lunch & learns etc…not by cruising over to Glassdoor.com and learning the hard way.
• Turn to the dark side; meaning go to the blogs, chat rooms and uncontrolled sites where people discuss your brand. It is one thing to have your employees complete a survey before the holidays and totally another to read the blog of an ex employee.
• Strategy: know where you want to be and create a scorecard with milestones to drive the actions required for building the right talent brand.
• Measure: similar to strategy, brands must measure their success, identify shortcomings and push towards the goal.
• Buy-In is required from the highest level in the organization….if they don’t support the efforts, it will fail or best case seem fake.
• Do something: at minimum, don’t pretend that talent branding is just a new term or a fad. Socialization and sharing of all information is here to stay and the workplace is usually in the everyone’s top 3 things to discuss.
• Influence the message; whether you participate or not, people are talking about your brand and if you MUST encourage ambassadors within your organization to speak. Long gone are the days of building a singular website with all the data the company desires, messaging now belongs to the masses!

Now go throw on the best pair of bootylicious Monday morning HR suit pants you can find and get your talent brand CRUNK! YEAHHHHHHH!