Employer Branding for Recruitment

Your recruiting team has the opportunity to be a key ambassador of your company’s brand. With the ongoing war for talent, having a strong employer branding strategy is not only a competitive advantage, it’s also a business imperative and a way to improve the overall candidate experience.

Here are 5 tips to help ensure your employment brand is on target, giving your company the opportunity to snap up that top talent before your competitors do.

Define Your Message

The first step is to ensure you actually have a distinct brand message. It should be authentic, clearly representing your company culture and solidifying what your company stands for. Think about companies like Google and Patagonia. Even if you’ve never worked for either company, you probably know that Google has a fun work environment and employees receive a lot of non-traditional perks like free meals and drinks. Patagonia consistently makes “best places to work” lists, and they’re well-known among skiing, hiking and environmentally conscious candidates. The company gives its employees time off to go surfing and has had onsite childcare for nearly 40 years. If your business offers benefits like this, let prospective candidates know! Today’s potential employee wants to make sure they understand exactly what to expect from your company’s employee experience. Your branding needs to be consistent at every candidate touchpoint: your careers website, video content, social media, advertising, marketing materials and talking points for recruiters.

Get Ahead of any Negative Employer Brand Perception

Job seekers are checking out your company on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Facebook and Google before they even decide to apply for a role. And existing employees and past team members are freely (and anonymously in the case of Glassdoor) sharing their experiences with the business. If their reviews don’t align with the brand you say you have, that’s a problem. Of course, every employee isn’t happy all the time and you may have one or two rogue ex-employees who grumble about a manager. But if you really dig into the reviews and see patterns emerging, you can use content from these sites as valuable feedback and address areas where the business may need improvement.

Build a Culture of Brand Evangelism

Step aside, marketing! You’re no longer the sole owner of the brand. With two distinct types of company branding, corporate and recruitment marketing, the recruiting team and employees in every department have the opportunity to wear a marketing hat. Everyone who can promote your employer brand should amplify your employer brand. People trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than any other form of advertising, and this applies to recruiting, too. Give your employees some leeway on social media. Let them share the positives of your company and then use those kudos on your careers site and other recruiting materials!

Use Tech

Embrace automated technology like mobile job applications and texting with candidates to schedule interviews. Use texts to automate repetitive tactical actions like responding to applications received. Think outside the box and post jobs on Instagram and Snapchat. McDonald’s in Canada did just that in March. They held a one-day “Snapplication” event where applicants recorded 10-second videos saying why they wanted to work for the company using a McDonald’s created Snapchat Lens. Applications from the event surpassed their hiring target.

Know Where They Are

Millennials and Gen Z are highly tech-savvy digital natives, so the above Snapplications worked great with them. But the same tactic wouldn’t be as effective with Gen Xers who are most likely on Facebook and LinkedIn. You need to meet candidates where they spend their time.

As the first point of interaction with a prospective new employee, it’s important that your recruiting team reinforces the positive images of your company culture. They are the employer brand cheerleaders. Be sure to arm them with everything they need so they can get the best possible talent in the door. For more expert advice on recruiting visit the Recruiting pillar of the HR Center of Excellence.