Finding talent is getting difficult. Therefore, more and more companies are working harder to lure top talent, because of which there has been a significant shift in power from an employer-driven market to a candidate-driven market.
With job-seekers realizing that the power equation has shifted in their favor, they do not base their hiring decisions solely on salary – what the company has to offer and what’s makes the company stand out from the rest also contribute as major deciding factors.
Job seekers have become pickier with their decisions about where to work. They know what qualities they are looking for in an employer and their place of work. Therefore, companies must invest substantial time and resources in building a great employer branding strategy to compete for top talent.
Employer Branding Definition.
Employer branding is a company’s reputation, as seen in the eyes of employees and potential employees. It defines the desirability of the company as an employer and its ability to attract, hire, and retain great talent.
Why does your company need employer branding? Let the stats do the talking here.
Here are some stats that highlight the growing importance of employer brand:
71% of mid-sized companies with a strong employer brand reported increased company performance, compared to 45% of firms with weak employer brands.
Companies with positive employer branding receive twice as many applications as companies with poor employer branding.
Companies with a strong employer brand showed an increase of 28% in retention and a decrease of 50% in cost per hire.
94% of candidates prefer to apply for a job at a company that manages its employer brand actively.
Organizations with strong employer brands saw a 20% increase in revenues and 12% growth in the workforce.
95% of candidates consider the company's reputation important when exploring new career opportunities.
Not acknowledging the importance of employer branding in attracting and retaining talent can harm your company’s reputation.
According to research, 69% of candidates are likely to decline an offer from a company with a poor employer brand, and rather stay unemployed. And, 68% of HR managers in 2018 said they face difficulties in hiring.
Can you see the challenge here? If your employer brand isn’t as strong as it could be, it’s probably time you up your game. Because, if you fail to invest in your company’s reputation, you may have a hard time recruiting and retaining talent – not to mention the bad reputation your company will gain over time.
Although investing in employer branding is an excessive time and resource commitment, it has significant returns.
Employer branding improves the 3 most essential hiring metrics: time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and quality-of-hire. A company with a strong employer brand can also successfully attract passive candidates, which represents 60% of the workforce.
75% of job seekers consider the employer's brand before they apply for the job. This means, if you have a poor online reputation or if the candidates struggle to find information on your company, you may lose the right people to the competition. By investing in employer branding, you are making sure that you have an excellent online reputation and a website with an optimized career page.
83% of employees are likely to leave their current employer if they receive an offer from a better-reputed company. Did you know that the retention rate is the most commonly used metric for measuring employer branding ROI? Employer branding creates a valuable bond with employees before, during, and after the hiring process and helps retain good talent.
Here's a step-by-step approach you can adopt to build a great employer branding strategy:
You need to be clear about what you want to achieve with your employer branding strategy.
What are your goals?
With your goals in mind, your next step should be to define your candidate persona. Identify your ideal candidate and send messages to attract them. Check out our checklist for defining your candidate persona.
| 1. Bio What is your candidate persona?
| 2. Motivation What motivates your candidate persona?
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| 3. Goals Why does your candidate persona want to change jobs?
| 4. Job Search Behavior How does your candidate persona look for a job?
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| 5. Influencers Who influences your candidate persona?
| 6. Channels Where is your candidate persona looking for jobs?
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| 7. Skills What skills and attributes does your candidate persona have?
| 8. Personality What is your candidate persona’s personality traits?
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What is an employee value proposition (EVP)?EVP comprises an established set of values that make you a desirable employer.
The answers to the above questions constitute your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). |  |
This is an important step in your employer branding strategy. Here are the 5 most important ways to promote your employer brand:
Social media is simple, fast, affordable, and the best way to talk about your company to the right people. According to research, 62% of active candidates evaluate the employer brand of a company on social media channels. This means you need to be present on these social channels to find, attract, engage, and convert top candidates into applicants.
One of the most significant advantages of being on social media is that you get an opportunity to get through passive candidates who aren’t actually looking for a job change but are willing to consider a good offer.
Liven up your social media. Post at least one update a week and one tweet per day to show off your workplace and the people behind the scenes to get the attention of potential applicants.
Once you get people interested through social media, where do you want them to end up? To the career page of your website, right? The career page of your website is a recruiting hub.
You may have got them interested in your company, but they won’t apply if your career page fails to woo them. So, to convince them to apply, present a beautiful career page with great content and easy-to-use interface.
A great way to build an employer brand is to invest in your local community. Participate in local events because your potential candidates are going to be there too. Your company can co-sponsor or co-host a local event. Or you can get your CEO to speak at some events. These local social activities give you opportunities to showcase your company’s culture and values and promote employer brand.
Empower your current employees to be your brand ambassadors. Create employer branding videos to tell your company story or share an inside story, get them to write blogs, and allow them to share interesting highlights of a project. Encourage them to spread the content through social media networks. Lastly, reward them for their effort and contribution.
Research says that 60% of candidates admit that better communication during and after the hiring process made the most positive impact on them. Invest your time and effort into improving communication with your current, future, and past candidates. Communication with your candidates should be personalized, relevant, timely, and engaging.
Based on the goals that you set up in the first step, you should measure the success of your employer branding strategy. Technology can help you boost and measure employer branding.
Given below is a list of the best tools which you can use to reinforce your employer brand:
An applicant tracking software that focuses on candidate screening, scheduling, communication, engagement, and retention.
An ATS and recruitment software designed to provide recruiting tools to optimize your candidate recruitment process.
An app that helps your employees de-stress through meditation.
A useful app that helps employees stay financially healthy.
A user-friendly software to manage referrals by your existing employees for your open roles.
A software that offers online employer branding survey and market research tools to track candidate experiences and gather employee feedback from across the employee life-cycle.
This measurement tool measures and analyzes everything your alumni, candidates, and employees talk about your company online.
Employer branding attracts better talent. It also brings tangible results and exceptional return on investment to the table. Here are three companies that we think have nailed employer branding.
Everybody loves Google. Many people dream of working at Google, and this has very little to do with the compensation and benefits –it's about the perks Google offers to its employees. Google adopted clever employer branding techniques to create a company people want to work for. For example, employees get to bring their pets at work; they have free meals; they get generous holidays, and a commitment to give the partner of a deceased employee 50% of the salary for the next 10 years.
Starbucks builds its employer brand through its employers. The company is active on social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It does an excellent job of conversing online with its current employees and potential candidates. It refers to its employees as partners, and that instantly makes the employees take pride in the brand and love their jobs. Through the hashtag: #sbuxjobschat, Starbucks encourages people to contribute their feedback. It also has a presence on YouTube Channel, where it plays a Jobs Playlist.
Apple encourages new ways of thinking through diversity. Apple always pushes the envelope to do the best possible, and that's precisely what reflects in its work culture. That said, it offers amazing employee perks. Huge discounts on its products and services, parental leave policy, and regular beer bash parties with celebrity cameos – these flashy perks do shine on Apple's brand reputation.
There has been a significant power shift in the job market – job seekers now decide where they want to work. The scarcity of resources and talent has given the candidates the luxury of choosing between many different employers. If you want them to choose your company, you need to stand out from your competitors. You can do that with employer branding.
In a competitive job market, an ATS helps you build a great employer brand. It empowers your company to attract the right talent, reduce costs, retain quality employees, and gain a competitive advantage even with a fierce ongoing war for talent. So, make ATS a part of your employer branding strategy. Get started with Jobsoid’s free trial.
