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Read the attached article. After reading the article discuss the importance of employer branding and how it can
help in the recruitment and selection of people. Additionally, think of an organization you believe has a positive
employer brand. In your post name the organization and state why you think this organization has a positive
employer brand.
INTERVIEW: Libby Sartain, SPHR, CCP
by Sharlyn Lauby
When you talk about leaders in the human resources profession, tops on the list is Libby Sartain. She is best known
in the HR world for her roles as Chief Human Resources Officer for Southwest Airlines and Yahoo! Inc. where she
developed the employment brand strategies that helped grow the business. Both Yahoo and Southwest were listed on
the Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for during her tenure.
Oh, and let me just add one more thing. Libby is a former board chair for the Society for Human Resource
Management. She’s the real deal – business savvy, HR smart, and volunteer leader.
I had the pleasure of meeting Libby several years ago, when we both worked in the airline industry. She’s always
impressed me with smarts and her willingness to share her knowledge. So I was delighted when she accepted my
interview invite.
1) Your blog, Brand for Talent, focuses on the employer brand. How can we help our organizations understand that
branding today isn’t the same as branding ten years ago?
More than a decade ago, Marketers began to realize that branding was a lot more than slogans, taglines, and selling
products. A few companies had risen above advertising to realize that their brand had a lot more to do with what
they stood for than what they sold. Legendary brands connected customers to a “big idea”. And the connection made
wasn’t just functional, but also emotional.
Over the last decade, as social media became mainstream, marketers realized that they could no longer control brand
messaging. In fact, they realized that you were only as good as each and every worker, supplier, or partner who had
anything to do with delivering the brand promise at each point of interaction with a customer.
So, branding moved from the outside-in to the inside-out. The best brands made sure that everyone who delivered the
brand promise at every touch point understood the brand promise and their role in delivering it. In these
companies; Marketing, HR, and Corp Comm attached at the hip to work with business operations to ensure a branded
experience inside and out.
The concept of employer branding isn’t just about messaging to your workers. It is about creating both an emotional
and functional connection between the brand and the worker. It is about making an internal brand promise to an
organization’s most important customer, the workers. Mark Schumann and I define it as “how a business builds and
packages its identity, origins and values, and what it promises to deliver to emotionally connect employees so that
they, in turn, deliver what the business promises to customers.”
HR in many ways is the new marketing. So we need to help our organizations understand how to move beyond employee
engagement to creating brand ambassadors at every level.
2) You’ve worked at some of the most iconic brands of our time – Mary Kay Cosmetics, Southwest Airlines and Yahoo!.
Can you share with readers your philosophy regarding the role human resources plays in the company?
The primary role for HR is to ensure that the business succeeds by having the right workforce in the right places
at the right time. There is so much more involved including strategic workforce planning and talent management, the
right rewards and recognition, flexibility to add and delete workers according to business requirements. And,
ensuring a culture that inspires and leads to a higher performance than the competition.
Mary Kay, Southwest and Yahoo understood the importance of an inspired workforce in the very early days. They
connected workers to the customers and drove higher levels of performance by focusing on workers’ values
individually and collectively. I was very lucky to be part of delivering innovative HR programming that helped
foster high growth in these companies while maintaining our unique workplace cultures for which we became well-
known.
3) As a human resources professional, I’m always interested to know if I worked for you what would you expect from
me?
Before I ever hired you I would want to make sure that there was a good match between your values and the
organization’s values, whether or not you would fit in. I expect you to be about the business first, and to
understand and enjoy the business we are in. I would want you to know your stuff…whether an area of HR
specialization or a broad generalist background. I would want to see your education and background demonstrating
your commitment to HR. Bringing in and fostering top talent would have to be a top priority even if your role
wasn’t directly related to hiring or retention. I expect you to be customer service driven with workers as the
number one customer. I expect you to appreciate the magnitude of your role in HR, with a sense of duty for the
responsibility entrusted in you. I expect you to be solutions oriented and would give extra credit for innovative
ideas.
4) Here at HR Bartender, we do serious work but try not to take ourselves too seriously. So my last question is
what’s your favorite drink (adult or not)?
I admit, I am a wino. I like most reds and whites (no white zin or sweet wines) with Pinot as my favorite grape.
It’s no wonder with her proven success in talent management that Libby was named one of the Top 100 Influencers by
John Sumser’s Two Color Hat and Human Resources Executive named her one of the 25 most powerful women in HR.
You can read more about Libby’s philosophies and commentary on HR and branding at her blog and in her books. She’s
the co-author of HR from the Heart: Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great
Business, Brand from the Inside: Eight Essentials to Connect Your Employees to Your Business, and Brand for Talent:
Eight Essentials to Make Your Talent As Famous As Your Brand. She’s also active on Twitter, so be sure to follow
her there.
INTERVIEW: Libby Sartain, SPHR, CCP
by Sharlyn Lauby
When you talk about leaders in the human resources profession, tops on the list is Libby Sartain. She is best known
in the HR world for her roles as Chief Human Resources Officer for Southwest Airlines and Yahoo! Inc. where she
developed the employment brand strategies that helped grow the business. Both Yahoo and Southwest were listed on
the Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for during her tenure.
Oh, and let me just add one more thing. Libby is a former board chair for the Society for Human Resource
Management. She’s the real deal – business savvy, HR smart, and volunteer leader.
I had the pleasure of meeting Libby several years ago, when we both worked in the airline industry. She’s always
impressed me with smarts and her willingness to share her knowledge. So I was delighted when she accepted my
interview invite.
1) Your blog, Brand for Talent, focuses on the employer brand. How can we help our organizations understand that
branding today isn’t the same as branding ten years ago?
More than a decade ago, Marketers began to realize that branding was a lot more than slogans, taglines, and selling
products. A few companies had risen above advertising to realize that their brand had a lot more to do with what
they stood for than what they sold. Legendary brands connected customers to a “big idea”. And the connection made
wasn’t just functional, but also emotional.
Over the last decade, as social media became mainstream, marketers realized that they could no longer control brand
messaging. In fact, they realized that you were only as good as each and every worker, supplier, or partner who had
anything to do with delivering the brand promise at each point of interaction with a customer.
So, branding moved from the outside-in to the inside-out. The best brands made sure that everyone who delivered the
brand promise at every touch point understood the brand promise and their role in delivering it. In these
companies; Marketing, HR, and Corp Comm attached at the hip to work with business operations to ensure a branded
experience inside and out.
The concept of employer branding isn’t just about messaging to your workers. It is about creating both an emotional
and functional connection between the brand and the worker. It is about making an internal brand promise to an
organization’s most important customer, the workers. Mark Schumann and I define it as “how a business builds and
packages its identity, origins and values, and what it promises to deliver to emotionally connect employees so that
they, in turn, deliver what the business promises to customers.”
HR in many ways is the new marketing. So we need to help our organizations understand how to move beyond employee
engagement to creating brand ambassadors at every level.
2) You’ve worked at some of the most iconic brands of our time – Mary Kay Cosmetics, Southwest Airlines and Yahoo!.
Can you share with readers your philosophy regarding the role human resources plays in the company?
The primary role for HR is to ensure that the business succeeds by having the right workforce in the right places
at the right time. There is so much more involved including strategic workforce planning and talent management, the
right rewards and recognition, flexibility to add and delete workers according to business requirements. And,
ensuring a culture that inspires and leads to a higher performance than the competition.
Mary Kay, Southwest and Yahoo understood the importance of an inspired workforce in the very early days. They
connected workers to the customers and drove higher levels of performance by focusing on workers’ values
individually and collectively. I was very lucky to be part of delivering innovative HR programming that helped
foster high growth in these companies while maintaining our unique workplace cultures for which we became well-
known.
3) As a human resources professional, I’m always interested to know if I worked for you what would you expect from
me?
Before I ever hired you I would want to make sure that there was a good match between your values and the
organization’s values, whether or not you would fit in. I expect you to be about the business first, and to
understand and enjoy the business we are in. I would want you to know your stuff…whether an area of HR
specialization or a broad generalist background. I would want to see your education and background demonstrating
your commitment to HR. Bringing in and fostering top talent would have to be a top priority even if your role
wasn’t directly related to hiring or retention. I expect you to be customer service driven with workers as the
number one customer. I expect you to appreciate the magnitude of your role in HR, with a sense of duty for the
responsibility entrusted in you. I expect you to be solutions oriented and would give extra credit for innovative
ideas.
4) Here at HR Bartender, we do serious work but try not to take ourselves too seriously. So my last question is
what’s your favorite drink (adult or not)?
I admit, I am a wino. I like most reds and whites (no white zin or sweet wines) with Pinot as my favorite grape.
It’s no wonder with her proven success in talent management that Libby was named one of the Top 100 Influencers by
John Sumser’s Two Color Hat and Human Resources Executive named her one of the 25 most powerful women in HR.
You can read more about Libby’s philosophies and commentary on HR and branding at her blog and in her books. She’s
the co-author of HR from the Heart: Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great
Business, Brand from the Inside: Eight Essentials to Connect Your Employees to Your Business, and Brand for Talent:
Eight Essentials to Make Your Talent As Famous As Your Brand. She’s also active on Twitter, so be sure to follow
her there.
