Employer Branding: Make Your Company Irresistible

Having a strong employer brand in a time when unemployment rates are lower than ever and war for talent is ranging is no longer a choice or a luxury reserved for big brands. It is a necessity for every company who wants to succeed in today’s competitive market! In this blog post, you’ll learn how to build,promote and maintain a strong employer brand that will make your company irresistible to top talent.

What is employer branding?

Employer branding is the process of promoting your company as a desirable employer.

Whether you are aware of it or not, your company already has an employer brand. People who work for you, as well as people outside your company have a certain perception of your company as an employer.

Your reputation as an employer is called employer brand. Consequently, employer branding is the process of building, maintaining and promoting your employer brand.

The benefits of a strong employer brand

Building and maintaining a strong employer brand does take some effort, but it pays off big time.

A strong employer brand helps companies attract, hire and retain top talent. Having a strong employer brand will ensure that you have the right people working for your company. Additionally, it will also help you save time and money in the long run.

What are the most important, proven benefits of having a strong employer brand? According to Brandon Hall Group Survey, employer branding improves:

• Quality of hire (76%)
• Time-to-hire (61%)
• New hire engagement (76%)
• New hire retention (63%).

Additionally, LinkedIn reported that a strong employer brand reduces turnover by 28% and cost per hire by 50%.

Whether you want to attract new candidates or maintain your existing ones, you should invest in building a strong employer brand. Here is why:

• 75% of candidates will research your company’s reputation before applying for your job opening (Source: LinkedIn)
• 92% of people would consider changing jobs if offered a role with a company with an excellent corporate reputation (Source: CR Magazine).

Having a strong employer brand in a time when unemployment rates are lower than ever and war for talent is ranging is no longer a choice or a luxury reserved for big brands. It is a necessity for every company who wants to succeed in today’s competitive market!

So let’s get down to work and learn how to build, promote and maintain a strong employer brand that will make your company irresistible to top talent!

How to build your employer brand?

A strong employer brand is built from within. In order to present your company as a great employer, you first have to become one! This is why I suggest you start by analysing your company culture.

And by this I don’t mean just listing your company’s values, vision and mission. In order to really gauge your company culture, turn to your employees. After all. They are the ones that live it every day.

Turn to your existing employees. Conduct a workshop or send out a company wide survey. Ask your employees what they like the most about working at your company. You should try to find out what they would like to see improved.

Gathered insights will provide you with a clear understanding of your current position. Once you know where you stand, you can define where you want to go and devise a strategy that will help you get there. The next steps are to define your employee value proposition and create employer branding content.

First of all, you need to clearly articulate your employee value proposition. What is it that you offer to your employees? Why would top talent come to work for your company instead for your competitors? Your employee value proposition should provide a compelling answer to that question.

Your employee value proposition should serve as a cornerstone for all your employer branding content. Depending on your needs ad you targeted candidates, you can create many different types of content. Here are a few examples:

1. Job advertisements
2. Employee stories and testimonials
3. Company culture videos
4. Webinars
5. eBooks, etc.

How to promote your employer brand?

So far you have analysed your company culture to find out what makes your company a great employer. Based on that, you’ve created your employee value proposition, which will serve as your pitch for “selling” your jobs.

To avoid being to salesy and pushy, you’ve incorporated your pitch into an interesting, valuable content which provides additional value to your targeted candidates. So, what now? How do you get your message and your content in front of your ideal candidates?

Carefully evaluate different channels you have at your disposal to reach your perfect candidates. Here are some ideas for promoting your employer brand through different channels:

1. Career site
   Regularly update your career site with interesting content, such as employee testimonials and stories, photos of your company events, etc.
2. Social media
   Create a dedicated social media profile for your employer brand. Regularly update your profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Oh, and don’t forget to create a hashtag dedicated to your employer brand!
3. Newsletter campaigns
   Include your employee stories and testimonials in your newsletter. Your biggest fans and customers might be your perfect future employees!
4. Communication with applicants
   Make sure that you treat each of your applicants with respect. Provide timely response to all your applicants, as well as potential candidates. How you communicate with people interested in working for your company says a lot about your employer brand!
5. Company and recruitment events
   If there are fun and interesting events that your company holds, make sure to properly capture them via high resolution photos or videos and post them on either the company blog or social media
6. Employee ambassadors
   Ask your employees to share their experience of working at your company. They can describe a day in their life, their career development, etc. Share their stories on your career blog, in your newsletter and social media. Encourage them to do the same – using your dedicated employer branding hashtag of course!

Monitoring your employer brand

Developing an employer brand is an ever going, evolving process. Job market changes, as well as your employees’ needs – and so should your employer brand. This is why it is important to carefully and continuously monitor your employer brand.

By tracking the reputation your company has among your own employees and job seekers, you’ll able to discern what works and what doesn’t. That way, you can collect your rewards and make plans for improvement.

When you identify the things that your employees and candidates appreciate about your employer brand, you can highlight them in your future employer branding strategies. On the other hand, recognizing pain points and bottlenecks will enable to make further improvements.

Here is how you can monitor your employer brand among your employees:

• Send out employer branding surveys;
• Organize internal employer branding workshops;
• Conduct entrance and exit interviews

And here are a few ideas for monitoring your employer brand among candidates:

• Send out candidate experience surveys;
• Conduct social media searches;
• Check out your company’s reviews on Glassdoor and similar sites.

Using all these methods will provide valuable insights. Utilize them to guide your future employer branding efforts!

About the author

Kristina Martić is a Director of Marketing and Employer Branding at TalentLyft. She is an experienced digital marketer and a certified Recruitment Marketer passionate about latest marketing and recruiting trends.