Our Director of Client Services, Jill Shabelman, was invited to join Bryan Chaney on The Talent Brand podcast to discuss storytelling for talent brand. This episode is an engaging discussion between two employer brand leaders. But, it’s also a master class in recruitment marketing content creation! 

Jill and Bryan dive deeply into effectively facilitating team member interviews and the best ways to create content remotely. They also get into the employee engagement benefits of content creation, and how to activate a content library. Plus, Jill shares her career journey from four years as a corporate employer brand practitioner to heading up the client services practice at Stories. 

Here are some of the major takeaways and a smattering of the wealth of expert guidance shared in the podcast.

Creating content is a major employee engagement tool 

Jill emphasizes and explains the impact of involving team members in the creation of recruitment marketing content. Employees often feel honored to participate and excited to share the content themselves, and she gives examples of the reach of employees’ own sharing of content. Jill reminds employer brand practitioners to not lose sight of the internal, employee engagement piece of talent brand. 

Leave space in an interview for stories to organically emerge 

Pro tip: When you think the interview is complete, ask your storyteller if there’s any other story they would like to share. And then wait, leaving some silence. Don’t be surprised if that’s when the best stories are told. 

Storytellers are comfortable on-camera when sharing virtually from their own locations 

The Stories project team has found in conducting our Virtual Story Sessions that storytellers are often immediately at ease in virtual interviews. Jill shared that when communicating from their own homes or distributed locations, storytellers are even more forthcoming with their stories. Which leads us to the next insight… 

Employees really want to share stories of work culture in the era of covid 

Storytellers have a lot to say about how their workplaces have changed, and how their employers have shown up for them, in the pandemic. In fact, Jill shares, storytellers are brimming over with stories, resulting in longer interviews. Bryan and Jill break down why these stories are essential to a company’s employer brand. 

Good quality audio and video honors the story  

When storytellers are provided with the ability to have their words captured through high-quality video and audio tech and practices, their confidence rises. They share more freely when they feel good about how they look and sound. Jill gives three key tips at the interview’s end on how talent brand practitioners can help their storytellers, capture the best quality content, and honor the stories. 

Give a listen here!