VideoMy Pod host David Macciocca and co-host James Ellis talk to Michael Lowe, Recruitment Marketing Program Manager at a multi-state health system in Illinois and Wisconsin, to unpack one of the most practical EVP stories they've heard: building a full employer value proposition from scratch, in-house, in under six weeks – without an agency.

Just two months into his new role, Michael shares how he leveraged exit survey data, new hire feedback, AI chatbots, ERG partnerships and a healthy dose of agency-side experience to develop a validated EVP framework that leadership, marketing and HR all signed off on. He also gets into the unique challenges of employer branding in healthcare, from nursing shortages and staff burnout to building personas across wildly different audiences, and what comes next once the EVP is live.

For employer brand and recruitment marketing practitioners who want a realistic, no-budget-blown playbook for getting an EVP done quickly and credibly, Michael's story is as practical as it gets.

Key Topics:
02:00 – Moving from agency to in-house: what changes and what transfers
07:00 – Why Michael was handed the EVP brief two months into the role
11:00 – Replacing focus groups with exit data, new hire surveys and AI chatbots
16:00 – Using ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini to gather external sentiment fast
20:00 – Tapping the ERG as a built-in focus group to validate themes
25:00 – Getting leadership buy-in when the precedent was already there
29:00 – Navigating pushback: too authentic vs. too aspirational
33:00 – How healthcare's behavioural reality (nurses feeling unheard) shaped the EVP pillars
37:00 – Building personas across nursing, physicians, and corporate staff simultaneously
40:00 – What the EVP unlocks next: storytelling, advocacy, and campaign activation
42:30 – If you could do it again: what Michael would do differently

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