Overview
Tune in for Ep.10 of Employer Branding: The Inside Podcast, Season 4!
In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Gabriela Vieira, Employer Branding Specialist at InEvent. We talked about the roles of recruitment and marketing in employer branding, but also about emotional intelligence at work, cultivating diversity and inclusion, as well as the importance of building a creative concept for a company’s Career Page.
Check it out on Spotify to listen to the last episode of Season 4!
What you’ll learn by listening
- Understanding the role of recruitment & marketing in employer branding
- Company values & their importance in the recruitment process
- Inserting a creative concept into your Careers Page
- Diversity & inclusion reimagined: meet “Ash”!
- The role of employer branding in the US
- How much does creativity matter when developing Employer Branding initiatives?
- Guidelines for fostering emotional intelligence in the workplace
About the company
InEvent is the most powerful software for professional events. If your company needs a platform for B2B events, video-driven conferences, or any virtual or hybrid experience, InEvent is the perfect solution. At InEvent, we are passionate about virtual and hybrid technologies. We are building the most powerful and versatile platform for professional webinars and V&H (virtual and hybrid) events.
The InEvent team has developed some of the most respected products, support, and community for the A/V and event industry on Earth and beyond. Our experienced software is where audiovisual and event professionals host their hybrid and virtual events, offering 24/7 support, branded scalable platform, transparent pricing and feature-rich customizable tools.
Podcast link – Enjoy listening to The Inside Podcast, S04Ep.9!
Podcast transcription
Georgiana: Hello everyone! This is Georgiana with a new episode of Employer Branding: The Inside Podcast today featuring someone from the United States. Her name is Gabriela Vieira. Did I say correctly? Gabriela? And she’s an employer branding specialist at InEvent. Actually, she is the first guest from a larger batch of guests from the US where we’ll be trying to investigate what employer branding looks like and what and how companies do it. Welcome, Gabriela. Thank you so much for being with us today. Please tell me a little bit about what InEvent does as a company.
Gabriela Vieira: Okay, thank you! Now I’m feeling more nervous, like what a huge responsibility. But Hi, I’m Gabby, you can call me Gabby, Gabriela. So I work as Employer Branding specialist at InEvent. And so I work as a part of the people and culture team, which means that I’m basically inside the HR department. My main duties are to create and develop projects that can contribute to creating brand awareness in the company. So that in the near future, I hope so, people will connect the name of the company and say like, whoa, InEvent is this amazing place, this fast growing startup and I truly want to work with them. So I mean, this is basically what I do when it comes to a regular job description. I guess these are the basics.
Georgiana: I told you before we started how we are trying to understand what happens, the more we go towards the Western Hemisphere. Because I feel sometimes there’s a lot of talk here in Berlin, especially, and in Germany about the importance of maintaining a good company culture and doing Employer Branding consistently. But unfortunately, it doesn’t happen to the scale that I would have wished that it happens or that some people claim it does.
So this is why I’m trying to investigate and understand a little bit how things happen in the United States. We want to know everything about what you do, as an employer branding specialist and we want to know how is it different from the ones that are currently present in Europe. So I’m wondering, what does a typical day look like? What are your main duties and responsibilities?
Gabriela Vieira: So as you said, my company is based in New York. We have an office in Atlanta, but with the pandemic, we became fully remote, which is amazing. My day-to-day work life is great because I do love remote work. And we have people from many different places, such as Nigeria, Africa, Brazil, and we have some people from the UK, so it’s a very diverse company.
And as I said, my main duty is to create brand awareness. But what I do is create projects that can grow and get people to really truly know the company. For example, as we were discussing before, my company has this summit, this retreat that we do every year. This year was the first one in person because of the pandemic. I think that brand starts when you read a job description, and you’re engaged to work with that specific company. I think that when it comes to employer branding, you can start with the job title, and job description, and promoting an opening to you can go 100 ways after that.
Georgiana: I am so happy you mentioned job description and job ad because we actually recently wrote an article and I also posted it on LinkedIn about how most job ads look like a grocery list. It’s like all companies use the same template for their job ads, and they don’t really send a specific message or any particular message. They’re all written in the same way. And it’s just disappointing sometimes when you read this sort of content, so I’m really really happy that you mentioned that. I’m also curious to know, would you say you work more with recruitment or with the marketing department?
Gabriela Vieira: For sure, recruitment. But for example, a job description, it’s something that I will never do it without help from the marketing department. So I believe, as an employer branding specialist, I have to establish great communication between the marketing department talent acquisition, and learning and development. I decided we are working on this project to try to have these really great job descriptions. And not even that.
We work with recruitment marketing to develop nice emails to people. And that’s because it’s frustrating when trying to apply for a job, and then you hit Send nothing about it, and you receive just an email, okay, we got your application, nice way to go. We’ve tried to create better communication with the people that we’re trying to recruit. So, of course, recruitment. I mean, there’s no way to talk about branding without talking about marketing. So just try to get you to work together as a team.
Georgiana: And if you were to choose between the two, would you say it’s 60% recruitment, 40% marketing? Or is it the other way around?
Gabriela Vieira: More recruitment, for sure. Because nowadays, I’m working with the Careers Pages that we have. I’m working with our Instagram Careers, TikTok, and other social media. So recruitment, for sure.
Georgiana: Okay, um, how important are the company values? And do you include them in the recruitment process in any way?
Gabriela Vieira: So we have these different values that we use. I mean, for example, I even have like this, this board here that I have my values. So it’s like, or just the members keep learning on it. But during the recruitment, I think that the one that really stands out is the freedom one because I see that now is the pandemic, a lot of companies are asking to go back to the office or working on a hybrid way. So to really have this 100% Freedom work from everywhere, and you can work in different time zones. So these kinds of things, we usually have this process very as our candidates to create something. So we usually try to think of, challenges that we can really integrate with our day-to-day work. So I think that they’re very aligned.
Georgiana: Exactly. You don’t just let them they’re hanging these empty concepts that become devoid of meaning at some point, right? Or at least try you try to, you know, what, Gabby, I went over the careers page of your company. And I have to say, it’s one of the most extensive career pages I looked at recently, which made me very happy. And I also like the inclusion of ash, this character that I found very personal and creative at the same time. I’m really curious, what’s the story of ash? And how do potential candidates respond to this concept?
Gabriela Vieira: Yes. Ash is our genderless mascot, and the idea came because the company, especially the CEO, they were looking for something and someone that could be everyone and everything that shows inclusion. So as represents all of the people and all of the nations, and so he wears an astronaut suit, because then it’s open for you to imagine that he’s able to wear any kind of different clothes and hanger different.
Say, saying so basically, we’ve been with us, we just want to represent inclusion. So our brand always goes around us. So when we had to develop different kinds of gifts, and different kinds of emails and things we always try to include Ash as the voice of the company to talk with people from outside, like I says, the first one to the first image that you get, and he’s always on the onboarding, the one month anniversary, he’s always there. So he’s a part of that company.
Georgiana: That’s so nice. I think it’s really intriguing and playful at the same time. It was a really, really good idea. It sort of personalizes the brand, in a way to newcomers, and to people who check the careers page to see what the company is about. I’m wondering, I’m really, really curious, based on your knowledge in your role so far, how extended would you say the role of employer branding manager is in the States at the moment?
Gabriela Vieira: I mean, I cannot say for for for all of it, of course, but from what I believe Employer Branding is all about, and I just say, that’s why I think I am more about recruitment and more about people and culture than marketing. Because I believe that when it really comes to the end of it, it goes down to people. As an employer branding specialist, I want employees to feel appreciated, have fun at a job, and really live for what they’re doing.
For example, when we went to our summit, we were just at this amazing resort and having fun with people at the resort, the actual guests, they would come to us and say like, what’s going on? What is this all about? They even want us to participate in our own activities, because they felt like, what is happening because we are a startup, so we have a lot of young people.
And I mean, so to have happy employees. I think this is when recruitment and marketing collide to become recruitment marketing. I think we have a lot of word-of-mouth marketing, because, for example, I entered the company, because they had this friend working there, and she was like, this company is so much fun, we have a lot of life. Happy hours, the job is amazing. So we have to go that. So inside our company, we have a lot of people, their friends, and we even have like families, or we have sisters that work together. So I think that when you treat people like people want it to them, Well, you just go you have like, you know, you have people saying good things about your company and people wanting to join them.
Georgiana: Exactly. And I think that you’re right in saying that it doesn’t really matter if you have the role in place, or if what you do is actually called Employer Branding. As long as there’s good word of mouth, good marketing, and your recruitment brand, for sure things are going the way they should be. I agree.
Gabriela Vieira: Yes, exactly. For example, we have this monthly happy hour and every event that we organized, because I think that to have events, it’s something that it’s really good for brand awareness. And even in recruitment, we had an event for young developers, so they really enjoyed it. And we’re like, this company is amazing want to work with us. So for every event, we have different gifts that we create swag bags with different branded items. So, my family, it’s like, you only have things from your company like T-shirts, mugs, and everything. Like you’re sponsored by your company. So those small things, I think create this word of mouth marketing.
Georgiana: And for sure, it’s something that every company would wish for. In the end. I’m coming back to the career page that I mentioned previously, there’s a sentence there, which drew my attention. And it says “behind every successful company is a brilliant team”. How would you describe a brilliant team?
Gabriela Vieira: So we have these core values, which are to “disagree and commit” and “together as one”. So I think the really the reason like this really intense because we have people from everywhere. So it’s good because I don’t know sometimes I work in a certain way is that I have this mindset from the places that I’ve worked before in companies that have worked before. So I think to have a different environment with all of the different cultures. This brings like so much to our daily work because we can have different kinds of agendas mixed together. So then you can say we can include everyone so then we don’t even have to say that it just says the picture of our company went in were like, well, they’re very inclusive because they have so many different people.
Georgiana: And diversity, I also agree with that.
Gabriela Vieira: Yes, yes. So one thing is when you are a company and you are trying to show that you are diverse and inclusive, but when you actually see that on a day to day basis, you see how rich that can have different people have someone from Venezuela posting something on Slack like today on Venezuela? So it’s just great to have inclusion in a diverse team.
Georgiana: Yeah, and I’m sure it’s something that not all companies managed to do successfully. Unfortunately. We’ll have an episode specifically on diversity in a few weeks, and we’ll explore it exactly. We’ll explore it more in depth.
Gabriela Vieira: I wanna watch that one.
Georgiana: I’ll let you know. Given your experience in audiovisuals and creative arts, how creative would you say Employer Branding initiatives must be to succeed?
Gabriela Vieira: So I think that to be creative, it’s something that most people say like, you need to be creative. But as we were talking about before. For example, I do not have access to knowledge of all of our budgets. But I think that’s a nice thing. Because when you try to be creative and work with the least possible, as I said, I’m from Brazil. So I’m pretty much used to working with a really small budget.
So that’s when you need to get creative to think outside the box and to think of, okay, so how can we send a message? How can we create projects that benefit everyone? For example, now, we are developing a recycling project. We are thinking of ways to make it global, to bring up people outside the company. So I think that creativity is just to have a different way of showing things that people are always expecting. So I mean, I love this theme about creativity. So it can be here the whole day. So it’s just like to think differently.
So think about people’s needs. How can we do it? Because when you think of it on a global scale, sometimes it’s so hard to think of a project like, for example, we have this A-pack team. And we were like, okay, so how can we manage to let them feel inclusive? Can we do like a happy hour outside of our working hours, and then combine a time zone too? How can we get to know them better? So that’s it, I think it’s getting what people need, and really just about communicating.
Georgiana: I agree. I agree. And I think in the end, when you care about the people, I think budgets don’t really matter that much anymore. Because on the one hand, people can see that you care about them. And so they’re going to create or engender altogether this amazing culture in which everyone’s going to thrive. And then secondly, you’ll figure something out, if you’re really up for it. And if you really feel like you belong somewhere.
Gabriela Vieira: Yes, exactly.
Georgiana: We are approaching the end of our discussion, which I found very, very interesting, and really different in many ways, from what we usually cover with my guests from Bucharest or from Berlin or, you know, from Europe, and I’m so happy about it. I have one bonus question if you’d like I can. I saw something on your LinkedIn profile that attracted my attention. And that regards emotional intelligence. And that got me thinking about how can you create or facilitate emotional intelligence at work? Is this something is there something you can look at or do specifically in that direction?
Gabriela Vieira: I think that I’m really glad that if the whole pandemic where people had to go back to their homes, I think that we start discussing like to have a safe environment to think about your mental health and how this is important because unfortunately, I saw a lot of friends suffering from burnout. So I think that nowadays, is super important to feel like you have a place where you can really be yourself and be a human being.
Because as a human, we have days and days. And I think that the most important thing is communication. Because sometimes I was just telling a friend, because we spent, I spent a whole year at my company only talking with people through slack and Google meetings. And sometimes you don’t quite understand people’s tone of voice. So you’re like, step two person being rude, maybe I’m not sure, I don’t know.
I think the most important thing is respect, to have respect to communicate well. Why can and why do I know about emotional intelligence, but I think that when you acknowledge that the other person is a human being, you just need to treat them with respect and communicate. Well, I think that’s the way you go. I have responded to the HR manager. And she’s, open to like, so how are you today, are feeling okay, do you want to have some days off? What’s going on? Do you need to prepare yourself? Do you have a task? We are all working towards the same goal.
We want our company to succeed, we want to be happy, everybody wants to be happy, and everything. But I think it’s good to acknowledge that you’re talking to a human being because I think sometimes we get lost because we are trapped in LinkedIn and seeing just photos and pictures and articles and people seeing a lot of stuff. But sometimes you forget that that’s the human being on the other side of that computer. So I don’t know, I think it’s just to try to communicate, to respect and to create a connection. That’s basically what is pretty hard. Right? It seems easy, but sometimes it’s not.
Georgiana: I think it’s while being human, it’s about being human and being kind in the end, and always thinking about the other’s perspective as well, not only about yours. And that boils down to empathy in the end. I think so if we were all just a little bit more empathetic. I think there will be much less conflict and much less burnout and much fewer problems when it comes to employees nowadays. I totally agree with what you said.
Gabriela Vieira: Yes.
Georgiana: But I think the least we can do is just try to be kind to each other and influence as much as we can in our own little environments, right? There’s not much we can do on a macro level, fortunately.
Gabriela Vieira: We must also be kind to ourselves, sometimes we forget that. Sometimes you also need like, that’s okay, you can cry today. It’s okay. Don’t worry.
Georgiana: Exactly. I was reading something on the topic on LinkedIn a few days ago, this woman saying that every morning she tries to only set up some realistic objectives for herself. Like what are the three or two little things that are attainable in one day because we all have bad days and we all have days when we look at our to do lists and we’re like, no way I’m going to be able to Do that and then we feel bad about ourselves and we lose perspective and we lose track of, like you said, Being kind to ourselves. But yeah, I’m, I’m sort of delegating a little bit. But to conclude this is really, really fun, really interesting and useful. I’m hoping for everybody. And I wish you good luck with an event and in your personal life, of course.
Gabriela Vieira: Thank you. I’m so glad we did this. And thank you so much for inviting me.
This was Employer Branding: The Inside Podcast. You can find our podcasts on Spotify, on Apple podcasts, and content on employer branding-related things on employerbranding.tech. Until the next time, stay tuned.
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