This week, Coca Cola and POM Wonderful are battling it out in the Supreme Court over whether or not Coca Cola should be labeling their Pomegranate/Blueberry juice as such considering that it only contains .3% Pomegranate & .2% blueberry (yes that’s .3% and .2% not a typo).
Cocal Cola contends that because the FDA says its okay, they should be able to label their juice Pomegranate/Blueberry. The people at POM find that misleading. Click over to the full article on Business Insider to get all the details.
So now that you’re back, what does this have to do with HR?
It’s about how individuals and companies sell themselves. We’ve all been to interviews where we felt we were sold a bill of goods about the company or the team we were joining. I worked at a company like that in the past: great employment branding, great interview talking points but little to back it up. I was young in my career and it taught me a valuable lesson: ask more/better questions to find out what is underneath the great branding.
On the flip side, I’ve done interviews with people that had stunning resumes but when I talked to them I was wondering…Where’s the substance? That is where my love for behavioral interviewing comes into play: “What was your role on the team? What did you individually contribute?”
Today, it’s very easy for both candidates and companies to promote their “brand” with a flashy resume and career page but if you don’t have anything substantial to back that up you end up disappointing people who had high expectations. At the best they are disappointed; at the worst they feel duped. Kind of like the people that thought they were getting pomegranate and blueberry fruit juice only to find out those two flavors make up less than 1% of the drink. I love self-promotion but it must be based on the truth. Don’t go out there and promote .2% of the truth.