Alex Her

I think you gotta always keep working hard. Never feel that you've made it. I know, that's, you know, it's tough, right? With the, with what we have going on, like on LinkedIn or Twitter, we have a lot of a lot of folks who like a lot of, you know, self promotion for themselves, hey, I'm so great. Like, you don't need to tell the world right? Move on to the next thing. Hey, if I got this like for me, if I've got this award this one day, that's great. Also, the next thing, how can I make myself better? My team better? How can we you know, do things better here at GoDaddy? From an employer branding perspective? Just keep it going. But yeah, on to the next step.

‍Nasser Oudjidane  

Hello and welcome to our series of scaling stories, a discussion with talent leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Alex Her her the head of Global employer brand at GoDaddy. For those that are who aren't familiar, GoDaddy is a publicly traded internet domain registrer and web hosting company. GoDaddy has more than 21 million customers with over 6000 employees worldwide. Alex a huge welcome and thank you for joining us.

‍Alex Her

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Nasser Oudjidane  

So to jump straight in, would you mind give us a brief introduction about you and your background?

Alex Her

Yeah, as you mentioned, Alex Her her I'm based here in the States and Austin, Texas. I currently head up the global employer branding at godaddy.com. I've had the opportunity to be in this amazing Employer Branding space for the better part of six years and just enjoy all things. Employer Branding, making connections, mentoring, public speaking, traveling, you name it, I'm down to do it.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Cool. Why do you think that employer branding is so important to build a great company?

Alex Her

Um, so let me break it down. I would say I think Employer Branding is important, however, to get to build a great company, right? Like, we are storytellers and the employer branding space, like if there's a great culture there and capturing those stories telling that and then in turn working on like, you know, things such as the EVP, I think that we can do. But I will say it's a little it'd be a bit of a stretch for me to say, hey, I can jump in my employer branding is going to make this a great company, right? I that I don't think you can do. Sure.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Perhaps I can rephrase it then and say How does Employer Branding contribute to obtaining the great talent from the market and therefore building great teams and therefore producing great products and revenue?

Alex Her

Good, the good catch there like that. So I think it does a lot right. Because what companies do not understand is just because you don't have an employer branding. person or a team managing that. That doesn't mean you don't have an employer brand. Once you have a career page. Once you say we're hiring, you have recruiters you're doing you're making some sort of attempt to sell to you and I as potential job seekers, you have an employer brand. So you might as well jump in, you know, manage that. And I end up saying control the narrative and they in a negative way, but okay, hey, you know, let's say if there's a startup, they have an employer brand right away if they have three employees, four employees, so jumping in and saying, Alright, what's what's what's good about us, you know, let's say if it's you, Nasser and I and you know, two other folks. All right, what do we offer, right? We offer you know, then we're gonna go with the typical lines here. You know, family first environment, work hard, play hard, but those are our values, right? We're building everything up. We're sharing that and that's the employer brand people. So just even taking that little, little ounce of ownership there. goes a long way.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, absolutely. And from your experience in digital marketing, perhaps could you share how your previous careers in in digital marketing has made an impact on the perspectives of of building what you're doing today at GoDaddy?

Alex Her

Yeah, I think it’s huge. Not just huge here at GoDaddy, but also from my overall experience and employer branding, because I came in with the the bulk of my experience, was IT digital marketing, digital marketing, knowing anything and everything about that from you know, ops reporting to media planning, I could, I could plan everything from display campaigns, mobile campaigns, SEO social and then just, you know, actually activating on that right. So knowing all those things, helped me then move into Employer Branding, which I didn't know was that at the time, and that just taking the other aspect, which is okay, I know all this stuff here with digital marketing. I could break that down to a T. But I'm putting my taking that in and putting myself in the shoes of myself many years ago where I was an active job seeker. Right I was applying for those jobs I was looking at you know as lame as it was a cool they have these you know, they have like these company Olympics there's there's free coffee free beer ping pong tables, that stuff has died off right you know, briefly it has it's finally died off but you look at that you're like okay, well, yeah, I can do that. I just take that experience. I applied that with my digital marketing skills. And there we go. But I think it goes a long way in helping you be successful on top of many other things.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Can we perhaps dive in one level deeper here? What what sort of what are some of the initiatives that you've led to help create and foster that? So you've mentioned some of the perhaps things that were novel at the time. And you've taken that from your previous career history at Informatica I believe. What was in addition to that is Are there anything that you've actually taken from there and taking into GoDaddy and elsewhere?

Alex Her

Oh, yeah, I mean, you know, some of the initiatives that I led previously at Informatica and are brought here to GoDaddy is employer, employee advocacy campaigns. So essentially, taking, you know, coming up with the content marketing of you know, let's say there's, there's requisitions that are out there and we want to highlight people in blogs or different videos or social post, come up with a messaging there and then having individuals who are advocates share that. So doing that in the form of using platforms such as like bamboo, bamboo, everyone's social gaggle app, and then even homegrown as we have in current state today at GoDaddy, where we're just using slack and it all to the same thing, but what I what I liked about that, in terms of that initiative is that you're already finding people who are happy about the company, right? You've done your homework, you know what, you know that they like sharing stuff. They are the natural advocates you want to work with. They just need the right content to get out there and share. So it was okay outside of Hey, Go Daddy's earnings have this right people want to hear from them. Like what is it like to be there? So empowering them but also enabling them with the okay, what are the proper hashtags? What are the videos the graphics I should use? Give me some suggested messaging. Should I tag the company? Should I tag the GoDaddy Life pages should I tag the individuals all that goes into it right? So leading that initiative there was what you know was super key to me and then also taking that to the next level, which is, you know, we're moving into here at GoDaddy, but at Informatica was creating a monthly program. We're okay. Hey, all right. If these advocates are sharing, right, it's for the top two folks who get the most shares. All right. You get some points, points or gift cards, you know, every company has that they don't think about it, but you have an internal system unless you're like a really, really small startup and then the second was okay, people are already natural sharing, but who has the who has the deeper network, right, deeper network that we can tap into? So I would also award the people at the top engagement because the top engagement tells you quite a bit, right. You may say, okay, alright, yeah, they may get a you know, 20 likes, but then if their engagements better, they have a really good network and who knows, maybe they're an engineer. You're looking to hire a you know, like a ramp up of 20 engineers. There you go. That's, that's the person you want to be you know, you want to tap deeper into them and pick their brain on what to be doing. But to me, that was one of the one of the better initiatives that I learned early on at Informatica.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, sounds great. And moving on to GoDaddy. Could you perhaps share a little bit more about its mission vision and your role there?

Alex Her

Yeah, so um, you know, our mission is to empower entrepreneurs everywhere. Make an opportunity more inclusive for all. Now in terms of vision, it's to radically shift the global economy towards a life fulfilling entrepreneurial ventures and I like what we're about. That's, you know, one of the main reasons why I joined the company because it's I've never had the opportunity to work with a to work with the employer brand, but one that also tied into a very strong consumer brand, and that was relatable and I think it relates on both fronts because you know, we, we, you know, I just gave you our mission and vision, we also our big line on the customer side is make your own way. The employer brand side, we say you belong here, right. And I think that the two go really well, really well together. And it ties in nicely to the employer brand because we we empower people here, you know, when you join us, I don't want you to join most companies, okay. Hey, you gotta keep your side hustle on its own. We encourage you, we tell you, hey, when you join, alright, take advantage. Grab those domain names that you feel hey, if it's maybe Nasser.com Or you know, Alex.com. scoop that up. You never know when you're going to need it. And we give you the tools to do that too. We've actually highlighted several people I mean, we have that going on the GoDaddy life blog as well we're okay hey, you know what Nasser if you're doing this, but you're also maybe you're running a you know, like a UFC class on the side. You can do that great. Let's let's let's enable you to make that happened. And I don't think you get that from really any other company out there and they don't showcase that employer brand as much as we do.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, that is really cool, and I don't think anybody or at least find out find it harder. Anyway, wouldn't subscribe to that mission and vision that you just you just mentioned. It's very good. 

Alex Her

Agreed.

Nasser Oudjidane  

And how was your role developed since you joined? I mean, considering you joined peak COVID, where people don't know where they're going to be working for the long term. In addition to that, some of the other things going on in the world. What were the first perhaps that you saw that I need to address and how was that like, kind of developed?

Alex Her

Um, yeah, you know, you know, what I saw initially was we we had a good brand, right? That's, now I don't, I don't always dive in every situation and say, okay, hey, if it's if it's perfect, I want to know if I bring value right building value one of our key values here too at at GoDaddy, but I wanted to make sure Okay, was there an opportunity for me to succeed and to really make a difference? The first thing was I was brought on, I know people may think that's a crazy idea, but I was brought on to lead EMEA living here in the States and then adjusting to those hours. Now that's just the travel enthusiast in me or just my my love and passion for for the continent, but I was brought on to do that so I can see early on Okay, all right. We're good here in the US, you know, people, people kind of knew that Danica Patrick commercials and all that we have said to nobody brand assistant, but we were known marginally on the consumer side there like in the UK, probably better out of all the countries, but everywhere else. People if you said GoDaddy, they didn't know who we were. So there was a lot of work to be done. So you know, the opportunity there to you know, to work with the recruiters because I feel that recruiters and everybody are recruiting marketers and also great advocates working with them and also working with the the other internal stakeholders across like engineering, customer care, other corporate departments and understanding like what were some of the challenges, you know, what, what they like, what were we doing? Like, do people know us when they're coming into apply for us? You know, if we put an advert out there, do they even know who we are? Is that even working? You know, do our people feel comfortable about who we are? Can they go out there and even say, you know, as advocates of the brand, all right, come work here and I can refer you that stuff wasn't there. So it was building that up? Which which was a lot of fun. I loved the challenge. And I say I loved the challenge because I was going back to development. I was just having a meet up. We had some changes on team and then I ended up becoming the head of employer branding. So I was able to move from just a lead to heading up the team. And then I'm in the process of, you know, brought on two people since then, and it continued to like rebuild the team and structured in a way that that I feel can take advantage of what we have because you know the the consumer brand was there already and a lot of the great stuff that my former teammates had put together from a design perspective, different, you know, different photos and everything that we had, so it was more of okay, I have this here. I've got to activate this but also make it you know, a little more a little more specific, and then hone in on those different different stories and like I would say like, treasure trove of opportunities that I've tapped into it. I don't think we're you know, I think we're far from done. There's still a whole lot more we can do in the coming years.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, and is there anything that comes to mind with something that you've you're proud of since since joining

Alex Her

Um, yeah, I can. I can say we we didn't have a blog when I when I started. And so that's a that's a big thing for me. As you can tell, you know, from the sidebar conversation, I'm big on finding advocates. And yeah, I feel we're storytellers. So creating that and, you know, just just working with the different teammates globally right diversifying that taking that to the different you know, next level because it's very for us very easy for us to be based in the US and keep the stories to be us specific. But you know, I started with the media first right, so capturing everything across different departments different you know, stories that we could find, but I have found that that is that's worked wonders, you know, we get people who not just teammates who are here or former teammates, people who know are people who are being featured and reach out and say, Hey, I love this person. You know, this person has a great story. I've worked with them at another place. And you know, it's, it's great. I mean, I can't think of anybody who who would not want to be highlighted, especially if you're proud of where you work, the work that you're doing. And then again, it gave us the opportunity to hit what I had a bunch of before with having a side hustle like you know, that's that's the focus of one of our series at the moment. And that has been resonating you know, extremely well with our audience. But I would say that of the many things we're doing is one of the most that I'm proud of.

‍Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, yeah, I can see it as an In addition, it can also help strengthen retention as well because it actually acknowledges people for the work that they're doing which is also great. What would you say is perhaps some concrete examples, our listeners who are, you know, in the trenches, trying to build great teams and attract talent to build and maintain an employer brand and perhaps this is an opportunity for you to go into the team's framework that you've created?

Alex Her

You Yeah, um, you know, I so I'm glad you mentioned that, you know, team was a concept that I came up with, before heading over to Recfest, you know, I thought about the different things that I've had to do and what has worked what does not work to be successful. So, I think applying that concept goes a long way to helping anybody be successful. The key thing is so team for those who have not, you know, seen the seen the talk or the blog on that stands for T for time, you need to either be successful in the space whether people want to tell you or not, you can not run in the door or the virtual doors initially and be successful. E for empathy because you need to be empathetic. You know know what you need to be like reaching out having virtual calls with your with your teammates understanding about their you know, their problems like the pros, the cons, what needs to be done. A for Advocacy. Again, another big I'm very passionate about but you need advocates to really get your brand out there to activate that. And then once you've identified those advocates and demagnetize so activation to a whole new level, how do we, you've developed everything at this point, the EVPs there, the messaging is there, the graphics, the videos, get to push that out there to find those people that match what you're looking for out of your employer brand and to really get things going. But so in terms of like, you know, so that concept there I think, you know, use can be applied, but then if you're looking for steps and how to make that happen. You know, I'll be talking a little more about this at Employer Branding stars in October, but, you know, to the key thing for me is when you jump into any new company, right, you're you're you're working on owning that employer brand. I don't want to say you're building it because it's there already. You gotta get out there and reach out to the people who number one if you're in TA reach, which is the case and most people reach out to those recruiters see what the problems are that they're having see where you can be a benefit offer yourself as a service because I think Employer Branding is you know, we're storytellers we're, we're offering them recruitment marketing as well. We are a service to them, and then start putting calls on you know, when you find out okay, hey there they're working with, so on, so on remaining are the other locations across different departments. Make yourself part of those calls. Because if you're doing stuff in a silo, it's going to be very tough to succeed. I've seen a lot of people do that and you'll you'll, you'll fizzlel out pretty quickly, but you got to make yourself part of those conversations and then you can tap into knowing Hey, what have they tried before? Maybe, you know, you may be the expert. Maybe they have an idea that you have never considered or maybe what you've done here in the States or in the UK, is not reciprocal, and let's say Serbia or Croatia, you've got to be open to that. But yeah, so doing that and just keep the conversation going but also working to make everyone feel like they're a part of the story. I mean, we all like you know, if you want to relate it back to sports, I mean, we all like individuals like like LeBron James, or you know, a Cristiano Ronaldo Midas this current situation right or Messi who keep everyone involved right when they make everyone better. You know, they understand the strengths and weaknesses and they make it work versus someone who is like a I'm not gonna say Mbappé but they I don't think he's he's like that but you know, you got your your athletes, whether it be football, basketball, baseball, wherever, who are very self centered. That approach is not getting you anywhere. I think if that's your approach in the space, you're going to fail miserably.

‍Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, absolutely. And that's one question I have is on the advocacy part. How can you ensure that everybody plays a part or as many people can play a part to actually maximize the overall impact?

Alex Her

Yeah, so I mean, you got to make it relevant. If you if you look at your employee advocacy, right, it all comes down to the base of a district content marketing. So when you're creating a content marketing, if you have ownership of your social channels, you already know you need a good mix. So I can't keep saying hey, Nasser is doing this or doing that or you know, the UK team is doing this. Eventually, if I'm in the US or India, I'm gonna say why don't you feature me? Why aren't you featuring this? Or this my other teammates or this other location? Or there's other great things that we're doing, but you're not featuring us? You've got to mix up the content, right? So you're taking that content there. And then you push that out to recruitment marketing, and then well, you know, another small area we just talked about your employee advocacy, as well. Your advocates are going to want a diverse mix of content, right? So you want to share you know what we just talked about there, like various different topics, but also industry specific. If I'm an engineer, I can only share so much about hey, we're hiring because I want to talk about you know, whether it be the projects we're working on the the tech stack that we use. So my recommendation for that is like, well, you know, we got a great alternative here where we have an engineering blog, I can give that to them to use. But then if there's recruiters, hey, you know what, you don't just have to use your own content. That's where the curation comes. In to, you know, there's great articles on the muse, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, grab that you know, give them some messaging to us in terms of okay if you find that article, you know, look at the the intro the conclusion how can you mash that together, that gives them something we're okay they're not just because they do want to be advocates for the company, right? But they, you want to help them build their personal brand, because if they build their personal brand, and then they keep talking about all the great things that are happening, someone's gonna say, hey, you know what, Steve over here keeps talking about that GoDaddy life. He seems to know his stuff. He shares a lot of great content about recruiting. Maybe I should talk to him if I'm either looking to make the switch or I've been made redundant as a result of the, you know, slight small recession, whatever you want to call it that we're going through. It all goes in like that too. But mixing it up is going to going to be key if you want anybody to one participate, two actually stay part of that in the long you know, for the long haul.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of like scaling your efforts or perhaps making things more efficient, how are you approaching technology implementation to help achieve these goals? What tech do you use in your job?

‍Alex Her

Yeah, technology is key. I mean, it can be as simple as just automating like sending an automated message. That's what I do within slack. It's okay. I can't be on all hours of the day right? I put a lot of hours in but you because I love what I do, but I cannot be there. 24/7 So something as simple as you know, I don't know if teams has this. This option within slack. You can automate your messages. So okay, hey, if you know, you're gonna want content from your people, you need to know what the latest and greatest jobs are. What their pain points are too put a scheduled message out there. And then if that's flowing, okay, someone's going to respond to that and say, Hey, I saw this thing from Alex and he's, he's looking for content or he's willing to help me. The other thing is we utilize, we utilize snow, aka service now we use a lot of acronyms here at GoDaddy, but so we have a forum where Okay, outside of that Slack message is not getting you or if our, you know, on our leadership calls are all hand calls, you know, you're not sharing what's happening. That's fine. We have this form here where you can drop it in request if you say alright, you know what, I'm not sure if this is Employer Branding, recruitment, marketing, whatever the heck it is. Let me drop that in. I'm going to tell you what I'm looking for. My team will then in turn, reach out to you, you know, partner one on one and go through the you know, the details of that request, and come up with a solution that is you know, going to help you attract the right candidates, get yourself on a job board and a social advert out there. But that's one thing that we use. Also, again, back to Slack, you know, we run our advocacy program through there. It's it's quick, simple, homegrown, there's no money that needs to be used. You know, that's what we're doing at the moment. And he just does matter of just putting the time and effort into it. Showing everything you know, step by step in terms of how do you post on a platform, the message to share the graphic that's gonna pop up. And then you know, it's a little manual for the folks you know, my teammates after that to copy paste ago and that works, but it gets it done. And then we've had people who who've been very pleased with that, but outside of that, you know, Canva and the Adobe Creative Suite. Adobe, if it's, you know, something a little more a little more sophisticated. But then Canva if you need to make something quick on the fly, I don't think there's a thing that can beat them and then I would say Textio and then Grammarly. You know, you it's good to create all this, you know, all these great messages but you want to make sure the grammar is correct and also that it is localized to I think that's another component that people do not take into consideration. It's like a we use localize over here, you know, maybe with a Zed over there, it's an S. So small things like that, right? And then or even small things like okay, seasons, would it be autumn or fall, two things do matter. But gosh, I'm trying to think I think after that. Then social platforms if you want to consider that, you know, part of your tech stack, and then programmatic. And another another platform who I've I've grown to love this this, this company and what they offer stack adapt, I think they are phenomenal when it comes to the type of adverts you can put out there that gonna spill all the beans here you know if you if whoever's listening if you want to check them out or want to have a, you know, a quick zoom chat about that I'm happy to share but I think they are phenomenal and it's something that anybody should be adding to their, you know, their employer branding, recruitment marketing tech stack to be successful.

‍Nasser Oudjidane  

Thank you for sharing

Alex Her

Sure

Nasser Oudjidane  

And in terms of mistakes that you've made, are there any that come perhaps top of mind and how would you approach it differently now, when perhaps, like, go entering a role and the assumptions that you had? And perhaps with the benefit of 2020 hindsight

Alex Her

Um, let's see. Biggest mistake. There's a couple of I've been doing it for a while, I would say. One is, you see all these openings out there for employer brand specialists or leaders. The assumption that you can go in and fix a bad situation that's why you know, we back to question one it was like, Okay, I don't I don't think we can make employer brand Academy company great. Now be you know, we like to think that we are, we're magicians we can come in and make everything happen. I mean, you could probably do that for a little bit. You know, wholeheartedly, you could you could make that attempt, but then one Do you believe in that? You know, because if you're if you're actually going out there and and do some of the things that I've mentioned and the team concept, when you're reaching out to people, are they happy about things, or you know, people will always be mad? Yeah, there's going to be something you know, it's never perfect. But are they truly happy about things? Can they go out there? Do you feel they'll be even be ambassadors? If they don't, I mean, you're you're in a losing situation. But I think one of the biggest mistake is just assuming that okay, that's going to happen naturally. I guess, you know, my other. Other mistake for me is, I would say, there was a time I hold an event and it's like, you thought it was gonna be phenomenal. You did everything that was going to you soon what's going to happen? And they have the event. They get like two or three people to show up. It happens to the best of us, but it was just the thing. We're okay. You assume that a tried and tried and trusted approach was always going to work and it was in the heart of, you know, I was at the heart, the middle of COVID and we thought it was going to work because we were at home and it did not work maybe for whatever reason the advertising wasn't good. Zoom fatigue, which is true compared to people don't want to believe it, but I think it is true. So that's about it. But I guess the whole assuming you can fix everything is probably the biggest mistake.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah. And perhaps help our listeners avoid future mistakes are there perhaps any nuggets of wisdom, or perhaps any specific advice that you can give for them to perhaps develop a strong partnership with the business with their hiring. Managers to help develop a strong employer brand.

Alex Her

Um, yeah, so I would say, you know, early on if you're looking to avoid, avoid a bad situation, I mean, you can try your best. I'm not gonna say it's like bulletproof that it's going to work. Do your homework before talking to a company, because it's important branding is the latest buzzword, right? Everybody Everybody wants to now talk to those people who say yes, we want to bring you in. We want to give you X amount for the budget. We'll let you develop the EVP you'll own everything. You probably want to talk to the other people who they say will let you own everything. And I say this to help people out because you could be told during a call that a you know you're going to be given the all the social channels you will have the budget to develop an EVP career page will be your own your own the LinkedIn channels as well. Very rarely does that happen right? There are processes in place there is you know, if they did not just a start up anymore, they do have an internal comms team, a marketing and branding team, do your due diligence, look at that. Also look and see if they have are they doing any form of employer branding? This should be one of the first things you do before you even apply for that job is okay. Audit the company go through and like you know, for example, but that's we have to go daddy channels and we have to go daddy live channels, you know consumer employer brand or some companies. Very few have found like a you know, they you know they found like that harmony to make it work together with one channel but I think you know, most have split up but doing that will tell you a lot about where they're at current state and then the career page but you know, terms of you know, once you've you've gotten in the door and you you want to develop those relationships with leadership, it's showing them like letting them know what even do because if you, you know, in most cases where I would say most cases in some cases, you know, the person you're speaking to works at a different apartment right? Does that person actually connect with the CFO, CTO CEO? And then you know, it probably not the case or do they? Does the marketing team even know that the TA team has a person who's doing stuff like that? I ran into that before at Informatica was, you know, working with the CMO that didn't you know, had a difference of opinion in terms of, you know, the the role that I was doing, which nobody crossed that bridge and we moved on from there, but reaching out to them and letting them know, Hey, this is what I do. This is, you know, see where you can help them they can help you and, you know, just just making, you know, not working in a silo, I think is the biggest thing because you could be doing all this amazing work, but then if they don't know what's going on, right? It's tough for them to support you. But internal calls go a long way. I think they're very people may frown on them or say hey, they're not necessarily people should know. Like, if I come in as an employer brand leader, people should know what I'm doing. They don't know what you're doing. They just they have over the last two years. I probably have a better understanding of employer branding before them. Nobody knew. I mean, when I got into the space, my title wasn't even employer brand strategic. So you're expecting them. It's not their job to focus on that to somehow know what you do. And then to give you the time of day, I mean, you've got to show them, you know, reach out to them, show them what you're about, and then you know, find any way after that just to to really, I would say sell yourself and sell yourself in terms of what you do what you offer and it's it's a constant process. I wish I'd be lying if I said, Hey, after you do it one time, that's it. Because the next day there could be someone from who's adding that, you know, leadership level who's, you know, who's asking, Hey, what do you do? I see the stuff on social. I want to know more about it. And if you're getting upset or just assuming that's the end of it, then you got a long way to go. It's constantly education.

‍Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, and perhaps I have to ask this on the flip side of this. What's the biggest BS advice that you've heard encountered? That perhaps needs to be put in the trash?

Alex Her  

Is that your is that your building the employer brand or that it should have been built yesterday? And I say that because, yes, it probably should have been there yesterday, right. But if there's time that goes into it. You you can't just join I, you know, I've done consulting gigs, full time gigs, too, In house it takes time to make it happen. If you're, you know, if you and I started working together consulting, and you want a result in two weeks, I'm still reaching out to people, I'm still auditing things, I'm still getting acclimated, setting up those calls, you know, finding out things, some people. So expecting something right away, I think is just impossible. And it's, I would, I would ask any of the you know, the the leadership who's listening who's like a party, a marketing or comms, you got to give these folks time, right? We were able to make, you know, able to create some amazing things, right? But we're not magicians, we can't flip the switch right away. I think if someone does that, you know, you probably have to question what was done to make that happen. But yeah, I think it's bias, just, it's impossible to make that happen in a matter of weeks.

‍Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah. And final one, before the closing questions, what are some of your goals for the future?

Alex Her

Um, you know, for, for me, it's, I like to tell my, my, you know, my people, my teammates, that their success is my success, right. And I mean, that like, I, I, I've done tons of webinars, podcasts speaking things, you know, those, those will always be there. But I think a sign of, you know, true leadership and really, up leveling, the people who work for me, is they get a chance to get out there, you know, they can talk about the amazing things they're doing. They're not just, you know, putting stuff on a silver platter for me to come out here on podcasts like this and say, Hey, this is what I've done. When it's really though, I want them to be in the limelight. Because, you know, if they, if they're out there doing amazing things, it's a reflection of, you know, the mentorship and the leadership that I've, you know, provided them with, and hey, if they enjoy everything, and they're successful, they're out there showing that right, I think that's good. And then outside of that, I'd love to, you know, look at, you know, how we're doing things as a team? And how can we, how can we scale this right, you know, our company is constantly growing. So I'd love to grow the team even more. And because I grow my team, I also am contributing back to the employer branding space, which I think is ever evolving, constantly growing. And then probably the third thing would be just just doing some different things that that are not what you see out there. And what I mean by that is, I think everybody's kind of running in circles, we all see what others are doing. We borrow that as inspiration. But what can we do the employer branding team at GoDaddy that is different. I know, we get something different with what we bring to the table in terms of our employer brand, that experience with the GoDaddy life. But what type of content can we create? How can we, you know, attack people? And I mean, in a positive way, it's like get those passive job seekers, right. What can we do that's going to be game changing to us? And maybe it'll be the some that is, it's going to be different than what I've done before what my teammates have done before. Always, I've just always been here to not not compete with others, but to challenge ourselves to be better, better and different.

‍Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah. Seems like constantly innovating.

Alex Her

Constantly. Yeah, I think if you're not growing, if you're not growing, then you're falling behind, we want to be complacent. So that's right.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Going into closing questions. Now. This is quite prescient, considering this is a content related question. Is there anything that you listen to or read or watch for inspiration? That's you think our listeners may be interested in?

Alex Her  

Yeah, um, so in terms of reading, got a friend humbly who runs recruiting brain food like that is that is a must have on Sunday nights or Sunday, midday when that comes in here in the States. He also has a Springfield live, I think it's good. I don't get a chance to attend that enough. So try to have that there. You know, chat and cheese podcasts, I think it's really good to get a lot of unfiltered thoughts and views on things, which I think is good because a lot of things in the HR TAspace to be all buttoned up, but you need to know what's working, what's not working. Start listen to Matt is an elder or Adler's podcast, didn't get a chance to connect with him at a Recfest, but I like what he has going on. Katrina Collier. She has a gosh. I feel bad. She's a friend too. But she's got a really good newsletter on LinkedIn that I think is good. Also, Lars Lars Smith has a he's got the AMPLIFi newsletter, and then I wouldn't be able to be you know, kicked myself on the kick myself if I didn't mention James, Alice's weekly newsletter as well. And gosh, outside of outside of reading there, but so that's industry specific, but I will say I probably, maybe I'm in the minority here, but I'm a fan of a lot of stuff on Tik Tok and YouTube. And it doesn't have to be industry specific. But okay, like, let's say, like Marquis Brownlee, right? He does some phenomenal stuff with his videos. So looking there and thinking, okay, hey, how can we somehow replicate some of that and bring that into what we're doing at GoDaddy or, you know, tik tok, there's people who do like, the smallest things. It's not highly produced, but it's very, very small. It could be dry humor, it gets right to the point. And you look at that and say, if they're doing this for that, right, can I get an engineer or a hiring manager anywhere across the business that can try doing something similar to this? And I'm not looking for it to go viral. But is that gonna resonate better? Versus a, you know, like, we're on camera here, and it's like, Oh, hey, join the GoDaddy life. It's so much fun. No one listens to that, right? It's gotta be gotta be organic and true.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing once again, and absolutely. I'm not on Tik Tok, but it absolutely is the new frontier. It's the most engaging social platform ever. So it's..

Alex Her

It's a lazy YouTube. That's what it is.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah. Is there any thought value or phrase that you live by?

Alex Her  

Um, let's see. You know, I that's a couple I would say, you know, treat others like how you want to be treated. I think that matters no matter what. Yeah, I've may have been lucky enough to win a few awards recently. But I don't think that changes me. I always want to stay grounded. And also, you know, if you're, you know, my dad, just say, Hey, if you're, you know, just because let's say you're on like, you know, I'm on one step, right. I moved on being leaders, like, that's not the final step, right, keep pushing, move on to the next step. Just just know, you gotta keep, keep working hard. Keep doing your best, but you're never you're never there. You've never made it. And maybe that's from you know, my, my Asian upbringing with, you know, with with my dad, you know, being a first or actually me being a first generation Hmong American here in the US, but I think you gotta always keep working hard. Never feel that you've made it. I know, that's, you know, it's tough, right? With the, with what we have going on, like on LinkedIn or Twitter, we have a lot of a lot of folks who like a lot of, you know, self promotion for themselves, hey, I'm so great. Like, you don't need to tell the world right? Move on to the next thing. Hey, if I got this like for me, if I've got this award this one day, that's great. Also, the next thing, how can I make myself better? My team better? How can we you know, do things better here at GoDaddy? From an employer branding perspective? Just keep it going. But yeah, on to the next step.

Nasser Oudjidane  

All right. And lastly, where can our listeners go to learn more about you?

Alex Her  

Um, yeah, I'm, I'm on there a little bit on LinkedIn. So you can find me there. So you can find more of the industry specific stuff there. A lot of my public speaking gigs will be on there as well. And then on Twitter. Twitter is just you know, free float ideas. A little mix of that too. But yeah, either Twitter or LinkedIn. That's last week.

Nasser Oudjidane  

And what's your Twitter handle? Is it first name, last name?

Alex Her  

It's yes Alex Her seven.‍

Nasser Oudjidane  

All right. Got it. Alex. This has been incredible. Thank you for your time.

Alex Her  

Yeah, thanks for having me on.