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    Employer Brand at a Booming E-Commerce Company

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    This pet care brand is building an exceptional culture while growing rapidly, thanks in part to its successful employer brand strategy. And though stay-at-home orders certainly played a role in Chewy’s success, it isn’t just the convenience of online shopping that’s driving its transformation.
    Its employer brand is helmed by Senior Employer Brand Manager Kara Hendrick, who has played a crucial role in helping Chewy keep pace with a season of rapid growth.
    Internal Champions
    The employer brand function at Chewy grew out of the company’s goal to raise awareness of the growing number of diverse roles it needed to fill. Chewy’s HR department was one of its first champions, which kickstarted company-wide enthusiastic support for Hendrick’s work.
    Hendrick knows that finding these internal champions is key to employer brand success, and she prioritizes building relationships with stakeholders in PR, talent management, branding, and social. These relationships are especially beneficial for employer brand projects with vast scope but limited resources; they help Hendrick avoid getting too “in the weeds.”
    Culture Investment
    This attention to the personal pervades Chewy’s culture beyond its customer service strategy. Team members aren’t “employees” but “Chewtopians,” and Chewy’s operating principles include statements like “Act like an owner.”
    When lockdown restrictions forced Chewy’s corporate offices and customer service centers into home offices, the company’s talent management and employee experience teams met with its CHRO and CEO to revisit and recommit to its values.
    No One-Size-Fits-All Strategy
    Chewy recruits for corporate customer service, tech, and fulfillment center roles, all while maintaining a unified message and navigating each talent segment’s unique challenges. Hiring for a diverse array of roles, Hendrick has learned, demands diverse strategies.
    “What attracts a software engineer in Boston isn’t the same as what attracts an operations manager in Dayton, Ohio,” she observes. Designing an employer brand strategy that will be successful for all these markets demands careful listening.
    This fact hit home in Hendrick’s early days at Chewy when she met with the Head of Fulfillment Center Recruiting. After listening to Hendrick present her grand plans for targeting fulfillment center candidates, he asked, “Have you ever visited a Chewy fulfillment center?” Hendrick admitted she hadn’t yet. But after her first visit, “It all made sense.”

    To follow Kara Hendrick’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For help gathering the right data and developing strategies to make real change at your company, get in touch.
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      How to Let Employees Generate Your Employer Brand Content

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      Employee-generated content may not be as strategically crafted as something straight from your marketing department. Its messaging may be more candid than what your company usually posts to LinkedIn.
      But these markers of authenticity are exactly what make employee-generated content (EGC) such an effective advertising tool, and they’re also what makes it so impactful for your employer branding.
      This couldn’t be more true at PetSmart, a pet supply company that offers candidates an employee experience unlike many others—how many places let you cuddle with kittens on-the-job? By showcasing the uniqueness of a career at PetSmart through employee-generated content, the company has attracted better candidates, along with a host of other benefits.
      Here’s what other brands (even those of the puppy-less variety) stand to gain with EGC.
      1. Employee-Generated Content Builds Unity
      Employer brand leaders might assume that the DIY nature of employee-generated content leads to a less unified social feed or inconsistent brand voice. However, PetSmart’s Manager of Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing, Dani Kaufman, sees a different story.
      2. EGC Attracts the Best Fits
      Kaufman’s team tracks common metrics like application conversions, hires, and retention to gauge the health of its employer brand. Higher applicant volume, however, isn’t a high-priority figure.
      Employee-generated content has been instrumental in attracting those best-fit candidates. After infusing PetSmart’s social timelines with more employee stories, Kaufman says, “People are able to see themselves in the role and make a more personal connection.” The employer brand team’s next project is a Careers website update, due to launch at the end of 2020, that foregrounds even more of those personal testimonies.
      3. Employee Stories Make Your Brand Unique
      Kaufman has observed that the things that make a career at PetSmart unlike a role anywhere else are the very things that attract their best hires. Walking dogs, caring for young animals, and assisting first-time pet parents are part of the job, but the employer brand team knows to frame these as strengths: “You can work at a place that you love. You can love the job, and you can also love the environment,” Kaufman says.
      4. EGC Keeps You Curious
      Kaufman strives to answer “Why here?” through PetSmart’s employer branding, and nowhere are the answers to that “why” on clearer display than in employee storytelling. Staying attuned to the culture in this way keeps Kaufman curious, an attitude she says is essential to successful employer brand leadership.
      Embracing EGC has helped PetSmart fine-tune its employer brand and attract candidates that share the company’s passion for animals, and the ripple effects have been obvious to Kaufman: “It brings our culture to life!”

      To follow Dani Kaufman’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For more strategies and data-driven insights that you can act on to improve your company, get in touch.

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