Hiring talent is becoming increasingly difficult and companies are pulling out all the tricks to attract the best available talent to join their team. Job seekers are now equipment with more information than ever before, and it is up to the companies to determine what people can find out about. A strong Employer Brand can put you above your competitors and we will explore how you can improve on it and what you can get from having one.
What is Employer Branding?
It illustrates an employer’s workplace reputation, work culture, and value propositions, leadership, and management reputation, how employees are valued and equality, and compensation related information. It is anything and everything that potential job seekers research about to see if that is the kind of employer they would like to work for.
Your Employer Brand should answer several questions. The first one being why? Why should anyone consider job your company? It should also answer the what’s. What is it like working with your company? What is the team like? What is the company culture? What are the working hours and flexibilty? What are the perks with this job? Lastly, people want to know about the how. How can I grow and develop with your team? If your branding fails to answer the key questions that people ask when considering a new job, it may not attract all the talent that you want. Start by identifying what kind of message you want to be sending out to those that are outside of your organization and what you want them to learn about you.
How to create a Strong Employer Brand?
To establish a strong Employer Brand, you must have an effect strategy that covers both the short-term and long-term goals with plans of action. Just like any strategies, you must put attention to it regularly and revise your goals along the way making appropriate adjustments in creating your unique Employer Brand. It does not happen overnight, and you must approach it with the mindset that it will develop overtime to what you want it to be. You do not have to have a big budget and quick timeline when developing your brand. Start small and grow your brand.
Building an effective Employer Brand requires participation of member of the company from top to bottom. To be successful, there must be leadership from the top to lead in the conversations and provide guidance on how it must be carried out. The rest of the organization must ensure that the branding is an accurate representation. If the Employer Brand does not align with the reality of the employee experience, the word will quickly get out and all the effort put into building the brand that you want will be gone.
It is important to have an appointed team or member who is responsible to carry out the strategy of building your Employer Brand and ensure that it is effective. This would usually be Human Resources or Marketing who will actively monitor the content for the employer’s social media and blog, revising and updating job descriptions, and interact with employees and job applicants to promote the Employer Brand and get feedback through the interactions for further improvement on the Brand.
When strategizing for your Employer Brand, remember who your target audiences are and make sure the message you are putting out is tailored to that group. Know who you are trying to attract and deliver messages that can reach your audience and get them to identify with your Brand.
Your Employer Brand comes in all shapes and forms
It can be published reviews by employees, by word of mouth in formal / informal settings, comments and statements made on social media and other media outlets, and more. It can also be found directly from within your organization in the form of your Mission, Vision, and Value Statements, your website and its contents, your social media pages, successful employee stories, and any marketing material like a job description.
Remember that any information that is readily available for the public can and will be found and you must ensure the information that is put out there is how you want your organization to be perceived. More importantly, anyone can put out information about anything in today’s world, so if any information is to be found on the internet, you want to be the one putting out information about your organization so you can control what people learn about you. Just remember that you must be consistent in your Branding so that people are getting the same message no matter where they find information about you.
An Employer’s Brand is created with the (or lack of) efforts made by a company to create the Brand. People will have an opinion about a company based on information that they receive from their peers, the internet, or other media outlets. It is important for any organization to be in control of their branding and letting the world know just exactly who they are.
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