One of my key objectives for 2019 is to help my clients, and indeed the industry as a whole be much better at using storytelling for talent acquisition. When we are lost in the noise that surrounds the development of recruiting technology we can tend to forget or sometimes not even realise that is is storytelling that makes recruiting work in everything from creating an EVP to writing a job advert.
My guest this week is Matt Johnson from The Impossible Company. Matt is another advocate of business storytelling and has some great thoughts on how it can be used strategically for talent acquisition.
In the interview we discuss:
• Matt’s own story and his take on business storytelling
• How stories help develop co-operation
• The elements of a great story
• Great examples of storytelling used in talent acquisition
• Story powered onboarding
• The role of technology
Matt also shares his advice on how companies can get started with storytelling or optimize the stories they are already telling.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast is provided by jobyak, the industry’s first recruitment marketing platform designed exclusively for Google for jobs. For the first time in house, recruiters can take advantage of the immense power of Google by posting jobs directly to Google for jobs without the need for job board middlemen. Jobiac’s platform encodes job posts to be read by Google and automatically posts them in just three quick steps. Visit www.jobiac.AI to try it for free today. Just enter the URL of your job post and jobyak will take care of the rest. For a limited time, Recruiting Future podcast listeners can receive 10% off the monthly price when they sign up. Just use the code rfpodcast to claim your discount. The website again www.jobiak AI and jobiak is spelled g O B I A K.
Matt Alder [00:01:20]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 165 of the Recruiting Future podcast. One of my key objectives for 2019 is to help my clients, and also the industry as a whole, be better at using storytelling for talent acquisition. When we’re lost in the noise that surrounds the development of recruiting technology, we can tend to forget, or sometimes not even realize that it’s storytelling that makes recruiting work in everything from creating an EVP to writing a job advertising. My guest this week is Matt Johnson from the Impossible Company. Matt is another huge advocate of business storytelling and has some great thoughts on how it can be used strategically for talent acquisition. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:02:10]:
I’m Matt and welcome to the podcast.
Matt Johnson [00:02:12]:
Hey, thank you very much, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:02:13]:
My absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Matt Johnson [00:02:19]:
Yeah, definitely. So. And I’ll you know, I am a storyteller, so you’ll have to be careful with me running long. It is a story that starts on the banks of the Mississippi river in America. Here, born and raised in a small Iowa town. Originally studied mathematics and philosophy, which makes me an eccentric by definition. Got to a place where those two fields really didn’t resonate with me because they actually almost became too eccentric for me. And so I went on tour with a band that I had been playing in for a number of years, and it was in the back of that van on tour that I actually encountered Story for the first time. And it was really a transformative moment in my life. And I basically what happened is went to a thrift store, read a book called Brighter than a Thousand Suns, which was about the Manhattan Project here in the States. And I really connected with the idea, not of the power of the bomb that they created, which was the most powerful weapon in human history, but actually with the fact that 125,000 people could come together with the sole purpose of, in their mind, saving the world. And what was the story that really fueled that journey? And so as I went forward down this path, I just started to ingest a lot more books about everything from international trade and conflict. But what the common thread that I started throughout it all was actually story. And so at the end of that band, I went back to school at the University of Michigan, got a degree in public policy, and then went to work in the Obama administration in the office of Secretary of Defense. I spent four years there dealing with programs that weren’t really what we call kinetic. So not necessarily war fighter programs, but post conflict situations where we would intervene with a partner who was experiencing some sort of challenge in terms of emerging from conflict. And so these would be states like Libya, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and those sorts of places developed those programs. And again, what was interesting is that can sound like it would be a field that’s totally divorced from story, but it kept nagging at me, the role of story throughout that job. Whether it was us communicating with Congress, us communicating with leaders, or the White House, every time that we wanted to get something done or influence a decision, we found that story was the most powerful way to do that. And so at the end of my time up in the Pentagon, I met and fell in love with a girl from Richmond, Virginia, moved down here, and we got married. And then I had to figure out what am I going to do with myself here, as there is no Pentagon in Richmond. And so I got to a place where I wanted to look at what was the common thread throughout my life. And you can guess what I’m going to say. It was storytelling. And so I went to work at an organizational change agency and really honed some of those storytelling skills. And then recently in the last couple of months, started my own firm called the Impossible Company. And essentially what we do is reconnect organizations with their story. And I’m sure we’ll talk more about what that can actually look like. But that is the story of my life so far.
Matt Alder [00:05:32]:
Fantastic. And that’s a. That’s a great story. So this is kind of my absolute favorite topic at the moment. You know, storytelling and how we can use that in business, but in particular how we can use it in talent. Talent acquisition, employee experience, employer branding, all those kind of things. So perhaps we could start. Could you, could we sort of dig a bit deeper? Could you give us, you know, your take on storytelling, why it’s important and how it can be used by businesses?
Matt Johnson [00:06:03]:
Yeah, and you know, for your listeners here, we’re going to have to go back a number of years. When I say a number of years, I mean really to the beginning of our species. And so we’re talking about 2 million years ago. If you look at our early modern ancestors, we weren’t really that distinguishable from any other primate. So we rested pretty comfortably in the middle of the food chain and we experienced a pretty tough lifestyle. So that there we were basically facing threats of starvation, violence from cave bears, giant kangaroos, you name it. We were really on a day to day basis, just struggling for survival. And so the reason I tell you this is that I will actually say, and this is something that came from Yuval Harari, so any of your listeners who’ve read sapiens or Homo deus will know where this one is going. But essentially 70,000 years ago, some of our early ancestors discovered that if you put food over fire, it actually makes that food easier to chew. And what they didn’t realize is that in the process of doing that, we ingested a lot more nutrients. And those nutrients really unlocked new cognitive capabilities. And the most important of those cognitive capabilities was language. And so if you look at what was the inflection point in human history that led us to rise from those mid level primates to the rulers of the world that we are today, it was actually language. And it’s not just the ability to say words, but it was the ability to create stories. And so this is a pretty important moment because I’ll say, you know, just like Yuval, that story really is the most powerful human invention. And you might ask yourself, well, why is that exactly? And it really has to do with cooperation. And so if you look at all other mammals or species, there are really no others that can cooperate in groups of larger than roughly 50 individuals. And so if you want to drive the sorts of achievements that we have over our lifetimes, whether it’s landing people on the moon, or developing all this wonderful technology, or these amazing buildings and things like that, it takes a lot more than 50 people. And so what story does is it actually creates a narrative that is able to scale cooperation. And so that no longer were we bound by these sort of instinctual upper bounds of non language based communication and cooperation. We could now get to A place where you could have millions, and now even billions of people who align themselves under a central government, which is just like a story, or a central religion, which is just like a story, and get to a place where we’re all acting in unison towards a common end, even though many of us have never communicated with each other. And that’s what story does, is it Scales, cooperation.
Matt Alder [00:08:46]:
Fantastic stuff. And Sapiens is a brilliant book if. If people haven’t read it before, I kind of highly recommend it. So I think that’s kind of a really interesting take on storytelling. And already I think we can see how it’s important and can be used by employers when it comes to recruiting talent. How should organizations sort of craft and tell their story? What elements are there to creating a good story? We can kind of talk about where stories are used a little bit later, but I’m just interested in what makes for a good story. What are the key elements?
Matt Johnson [00:09:29]:
Yeah, absolutely. And so if you look at every great story throughout history, there’s been a couple of good findings on this stuff. So if you think about a guy named Joseph Campbell or even Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer, they both had a hypothesis which has largely been validated, that every great story throughout human history actually has a similar shape. And so it can be a little abstract. And you’ll have to be careful with philosophy majors like me when you start talking about the shapes of stories and things like that. But it really is very practical and intuitive that if you look at the arc of a story, it has a very similar shape. And so it can be hard to describe that over, you know, over audio here, but I think we can do it where if you look at those elements of a story, what they always have as a hero or a central character, that central character is embarking on a journey. And in the course of going on that journey, they’re going to experience some seemingly insurmountable challenge. But through the wonders of their ingenuity or some other external factor, they’re able to overcome those challenges and eventually rise to a place where they were better off than they ever were before. And that story arc of doing okay, hitting challenge, and ending up better than you ever did before really is the shape of almost every great movie or, you know, really book or anything like that. That it falls into this category. It’s. It can be powerful. So then more practically to your question, what can organizations do? Well, if you’re an organization and you think about yourselves in those terms where your employees are those heroes collectively, those employees are Collectively on a journey together, you’ve got something you’re there to do. We are certainly experiencing challenges, whether it’s external disruption or globalization or the pace of technology, things like that. But how are we going to survive and thrive and end up in a spot where we were actually better than we were before? And so if you can take your, what could be a pretty bland mission statement or reason for being and actually infuse it into a story, you can compel a lot more people to want to A, work there, but B, really be energized and engaged in a way that they aren’t right now, necessarily.
Matt Alder [00:11:51]:
And when it comes to the kind of the act of recruiting, have you seen examples of sort of really good storytelling being used for recruiting?
Matt Johnson [00:12:01]:
Absolutely. And you know, I’m glad you asked it because, you know, despite their current challenges in terms of stock price and things like that, General Electric here in America actually did a really good job. Because if you look at companies, there’s a broader issue here. By the way, I think many of your listeners who are in talent acquisition, talent management, will recognize that globally we’re really on the brink of, you know, a so called talent war. So here in the States, we’ve got about 40 million baby boomers who are on the brink of retirement. And we’re getting to a place where it’s getting harder and harder to find qualified candidates to fill those positions. Especially if you’re not a, quote unquote, sexy company who has, you know, a lot of appealing external factors, whether it’s Silicon Valley type companies or even just more edgy younger companies that seem to be drawing a lot of the, the talent today. And so what the problem that General Electric face is probably a similar challenge to what we were just talking about. And because they couldn’t essentially get any qualified coders or programmers to come on board, because that is really, if you look at the labor market today, one of the most rarest resources that there is. And so they really wanted to connect with how can we draw in candidates who could go get jobs in Silicon Valley and make a significant amount of money? How could we actually compel them to want to come to General Electric? And so what they came up with was a really ingenious recruiting campaign that really heavily leveraged storytelling. It was called the what’s the Matter with Owen campaign. It was a kind of quirky, funny series of commercials that they actually ran on broadcast where it was a young guy named Owen who was a programmer who had just accepted a job at ge and every group Whether it was his parents or his friends sort of looked at him confused and really didn’t understand why he would want to go work there. And Owen really embodied this guy who was like, no, I’m going to work at a very important company that doesn’t just build apps, they build physical things, they transport people around the world, they, they operate MRI equipment. And so in that story about this guy Owen, they communicated the meaning and purpose of what this organization was all about. And so great, you know, that that’s good. A guy that, like, story is of course going to like that type of recruiting campaign, but it actually had a very tangible impact on the number of qualified candidates that they received because those applications actually increased by 800%. And so, you know, as far as recruiting and storytelling goes, that is the gold standard of what you could do if you infused story into your recruiting campaigns.
Matt Alder [00:14:48]:
Very often when I talk to people about using storytelling in talent acquisition, people immediately assume that they need to hire a creative agency and spend an absolute fortune on video or audio, you know, or the formats through which they tell their story. Have you got kind of examples of what people could do with say, you know, job descriptions or things that, you know, think. Things that kind of happen on an everyday basis to, to add sort of more sophistication to their storytelling?
Matt Johnson [00:15:17]:
Absolutely. And this is a, this is interesting too, because I also hear the same thing where it’s like, not everybody can pay a creative agency and, and hire out ads on a national campaign. Now that’s very, that is very ambitious endeavor. But for any company, any company, you can change the way that you frame your job descriptions. And so if you look at how we do that right now, typical job description leads with what you need in the candidate. So, you know, we need a programmer with 5 to 10 years experience. We prefer if you were, you know, fluid in these programming languages. And, you know, we also would like these degrees and you name it. Any position essentially is structured in terms of what the candidate needs to have in order to apply, but they’ve missed a key opportunity because with these job postings, you actually can get to a spot where you don’t lead with what you need from a candidate, but you actually lead with what you believe. And this is a key point here. And so if you look at a company that’s doing this really well, John Deere has actually done a great job. And so every single job posting actually starts the exact same way. For John Deere, it starts. There are 7 billion people on this planet, and by 2050, there will be 2 million more, many moving into urban centers at an unprecedented rate. And blah, blah, blah, they keep going on, but essentially they get to a place where they establish that they are there to provide enough food, fiber and infrastructure to shelter the world’s growing population. And the way they end that first paragraph of their job description is if you believe one person can make the world a better place, we’ll put you to work. And that has actually given them a tremendous gain on candidates because it is such a stark difference from what you’re encountering. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re driving a forklift, you’re an engineer, you’re a white collar office worker. Every single job description starts with that same thing. And it’s really incredible and it’s shown a lot of gains from where they sit. So again, if you want to infuse story into the, you know, in a very practical way, lead with what you believe in those job applications. And all that means is take a paragraph on top and tell your story about who you are and what you’re there to do as an organization.
Matt Alder [00:17:41]:
And are there any kind of other ways that organizations can use storytelling to make sure they’re getting and retaining the best talent?
Matt Johnson [00:17:52]:
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think if in terms of getting the right talent, all of the content that you push on your traditional channels that would be targeted towards candidates, if you can also frame those in a similar way where you’re always leading with what you believe and what that story actually is about your organization. And this ties back to Sinek’s original book Find you’d why where he talked about this and when you lead with that, why it is so much more compelling because you’re actually engaging the limits limbic system and not just the language processing parts of your brain so you can create an emotional connection to your company. And what’s fascinating is that if you can do that, then it doesn’t have to stop at recruiting, you can actually get to a place. And now we’re going to shift to retention. If you create story powered onboarding experiences, you will also drive increased engagement and retention. And there are a variety of different ways and we can talk about them, that companies have done this as well. And you know, I promise you I’m not getting paid by John Deere or anything like that, but they’ve actually done a really good job with this sort of thing. And so like as I mentioned, they start that story for the candidate on the job description. But when you actually get the job at John Deere, your Onboarding experience is powered by that same story, and it looks something like this. So let’s say you get the job a few days before you actually start, you’re sent an email and you’re told, basically, hi, my name is, let’s say, Alicia. I’m going to be your ambassador here at John Deere for the first few days. I’ll be meeting you in the lobby and I’m really excited for you to start this journey together. Now, we know that my onboarding experience starts with a human being, so that I have a personification of John Deere. When that candidate comes in on the first day, the ambassador gives them the tour. And this is all kind of expected, right? You can show them where your office is, and here’s all the facilities in the printer room and things like that. But when you actually get to your desk, you’ve got a banner. You’ve got a banner sticking up. That essentially gives everyone in the office a heads up that there’s a new person here. And that triggers a norm and a behavior on the employee side, which is, I will come up and introduce myself. And so now the candidate sees the banner, they say, oh, that’s great. They sit down, they’ve got a letter sitting on their desk from the CEO, hand signed, that essentially outlines the mission that they’re on, which is to food and to feed and nourish a growing population on this globe. And then if you look on your desktop computer, you’ve got a video from the CEO that talks about the origin of this company in the 1800s and what the plow meant for America and what this company now means for the world. And that video cues the worker to look over to their right to see a small little replica of the original plow that John Deere made. And all of this is to reinforce the story of what John Deere is all about. It’s not about creating tractors for farmers, it’s not about creating construction equipment. It’s about feeding and sheltering a growing global population. And what’s crazy about onboarding like this, and it doesn’t stop, by the way, on the first day. They have a number of different experiences that they create. But when you do stuff like this, the mission statement and the purpose of the company isn’t something that you’re either, you know, laughing at when, when you, when you read it, or it’s not something that you’re reciting at the beginning of every meeting just because you have to. It’s something that you start to connect with. And the reason people connect with it is because, again, story engages the. The real emotional components of our brain in a way that will drive connection and actually release hormones that drive cooperation. And if you do create that onboarding experience like that, you’re going to get a lot higher engagement and retention.
Matt Alder [00:21:56]:
So obviously, we talked about a few different ways of using storytelling, you know, within. Within talent acquisition. What your sort of best advice to companies who want to get more sophisticated about the way they sort of craft and deliver their stories, or people who just want to get, you know, want to get started and, you know, make their recruitment marketing a bit more effective?
Matt Johnson [00:22:21]:
Yeah, I think the easiest and best place to start is with those. What is that paragraph that you would put at the job, at the top of the job posting? And that paragraph needs to really just outline for people, you know, what is this company all about and what journey are you on? Because if we reflect back on the shape of a great story, it’s got to have that hero. And in this case, your candidate is your hero. And it’s going to put that hero in the context of the journey that you’re embarking on, and you’re going to be honest about the challenges you face. And it’s going to be a place where you can actually have them connect with the idea that they could do so much more with your company than they could do alone. So I would start there, and then that process will actually probably start to have you questioning other aspects of the way you communicate. And I think then you could get to a place where you actually, as an individual, can infuse stories in a number of different places. And it, you know, it’s a. It’s a spectrum for sure. You know, I don’t know if anybody has watched the depiction of Abraham Lincoln that was in the. I think it was a 2014 movie called Lincoln. But Abraham Lincoln was probably one of the most prolific storytellers in American history. But his downfall for some of his staff was that he only communicated in story. And so he got to a place where people either had already heard the story about 14 times before and didn’t want to hear it anymore, or they just didn’t have the time to listen to it. And so it is a spectrum of when can I strategically tell a story in a meeting or to my people that is going to really land an impact, and when do I need to just communicate in a very clear and concise way? So that is something that becomes more instinctual with time. But, yeah, I’d start with the job description, then think about On a personal level, where can I infuse story in my day to day work experience?
Matt Alder [00:24:14]:
So, final question. What’s the role of technology in this? Do you think the sort of the increasing amounts of technology that are available to talent acquisition professionals, it helps them tell better stories, or does this technology actually get in the way of that?
Matt Johnson [00:24:29]:
Yes, it’s a fascinating question. I think it ties into a broader macro issue here where if you look at the role of technology and culture and what it’s doing to storytelling, it certainly is getting to a place where it’s your audience, regardless of what you’re doing, whether it’s advertising or talent acquisition, your audience is under increasing demands where there is a rapid influx of information coming at them. And obviously this is no surprise to your listeners here when you look at just email traffic and text notifications and notifications from social media. The marketplace for ideas is incredibly competitive right now. And so what’s interesting is that part of technology obviously poses a big challenge for storytellers out there. But on the flip side, some of these channels provide an incredible opportunity for you to retell your story in a compelling way. And so I think what I would say with regards to the role of technology is that our tendency in large organizations is to look at technology as a fix and to get very hyper focused on the tool itself. And unfortunately we get to a place where we might have some new tool that engages candidates at scale and you know, is some new promotion platform for jobs or things like that. And it, it’s easy to think that just because we get in front of a human being on a screen that we might drive more engagement. And what I always like to tell people is that yes, that is absolutely true, but it’s just a necessary condition for getting engagement. It’s not sufficient. The sufficient part of it is that you actually embed a story into whatever channel that is that will compel people to want to read on. And so that is where if you lead with a story and it can be a paragraph, like I said, you will already have broken the mold on what the last 10, 12, 100 job postings or pieces of content that person’s seen. And you will engage them just by virtue of the fact that you’re something different than the rest. So I think technology has a role, but it also sort of raises the bar in terms of how we need to push content.
Matt Alder [00:26:45]:
Matt, thank you very much for talking to me.
Matt Johnson [00:26:47]:
Hey, thank you very much, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:26:49]:
My thanks to Matt Johnson. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com. on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about Working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
