Why is Employer Branding So Important?
With unemployment being much lower, candidates now have the advantage in the job market. They get to pick and choose their employer. That why it is important to make your company stand out from your competitors – other companies looking for the same talent as you.
You can do that with Employer Branding. These days, Employer Branding is the key component of every successful Talent Acquisition strategy.
In this article, you will learn 5 important ways to promote your Employer Brand. Employer Branding is the key component of every successful Talent Acquisition strategy. Building and promoting your Employer Brand is essential if you want to attract talent and retain your employees.
Employer Branding is the process of presenting your company as a desirable employer. According to LinkedIn survey, there are 3 main advantages of an effective Employer Branding strategy:
1. Employer Branding is necessary to attract candidates
Did you know that 75% of candidates research company’s reputation before applying for job opening?And if they don’t like what they see, 69% of candidates won’t apply – even if they are unemployed! ?
2. Employer Branding improves hiring process
Employer Branding improves three most important hiring metrics: time-to-hire, cost-per-hire and quality-of-hire, time-to-hire and cost-per-hire.
Companies with strong Employer Brand see 50% more qualified applicants, take 1-2x faster to hire and reduce cost per hire by 50%.
3. Employer Branding helps retain employees
Did you know that most commonly used metric for measuring Employer Branding ROI is actually retention rate?
This should come as no surprise. Successful recruiters are well aware that 83% of employees would leave their current Employer if they receive an offer from a company with a better reputation.
Where to promote your Employer Brand?
Promoting your Employer Brand is an important step in implementing your Employer Branding strategy. There are many different methods and channels you can use for promoting your Employer Brand at various touchpoints of your candidate journey. Here are the 5 most important ways to promote your Employer Brand:
1. Social Media
Social Media is a simple, fast and affordable way to target the right candidates and spread the word about your company.
You can use social media to find, attract, engage and convert top candidates into applicants.
According to research, 62% of job seekers use social media channels to evaluate Employer Brand of a company. This means that Employer Branding on social media will help you present your company to interested candidates looking for new opportunities.
But the biggest advantage of Employer Branding on social media is actually reaching passive candidates – those who aren’t looking for the job at the moment, but would be willing to consider a great job offer. You won’t find these candidates browsing through job boards or visiting your career site, but you will find them on social networks. Use this opportunity wisely! Present great content to capture their attention.
2. Career Site
Your career site is the central place of your recruiting strategy.
Think about it for a moment – social media is a great way to reach candidates and get them interested in your company, but where do you want them to end up?
Exactly. You want to them to visit your career site, check out your job openings and apply. Or at least join your Talent Network.
But they won’t do that unless your career site wows them.
So make sure that your career site offers great user experience. You need to present a beautiful, branded carres site which is easy to navigate and full of appealing content.
Your career site is not just a place to post your job openings. You career site should wow your potential candidates and convince them to apply to your job openings.
You can achieve that by presenting additional content, besides form your job openings. Present your employees and their expertise, write passionate blog posts about the interesting projects your team works on and showcase your company culture with appealing high-quality photos.
Oh, and one more thing – in order to get more applicants from your career site, make sure it is correctly optimized.
3. Local Events
Local events are a great, but often overlooked opportunity to present your Employer Brand.
Taking part in local events will help build a reputation of a company invested in your neighbourhood and community, which will definitely help you in attracting local talent.
What type of local events should you pay attention to?
That depends on your candidate persona. What type of events would your ideal candidates visit? Start there.
For example, if you are looking to hire young professionals, turn to your local college first. Find out if your company’s CEO could give a talk at some student organization or if your company experts could organize a lecture for interested students. You can also offer to sponsor some students’ academic or event sports events.
Your company can join many other existing local events. At some events your employees could give a talk or a lecture, and some you can sponsor or co-host. You can even organize and host your own events!
Of course, you can organize an industry specific event, such as a conference, lecture, short course or a training, workshop or a meetup.
But you can also be more original and take part in local sporting and students events, career fairs etc.
All of these events are a great opportunity to showcase your company’s culture and values and promote your Employer Brand.
4. Current employees
Recent surveys have shown that people trust regular employees more than company executives. Did you know that employees’ voice is three times more credible than the CEO’s when it comes to talking about working condition in that company?
And it makes sense. After all, who knows your company’s products, services, culture and values better than your employees?
This is why you should involve your current employees in promoting your Employer Brand. You should empower them to become your best Brand Ambassadors.
Feature them as writers on your company blog and let them share inside perspective of working on an interesting project.
Create a video such as “ A day at (your company name) with (your employee name), a (your employee’s job title). Let them share an inside perspective of working at your company.
Ask your employees to help you spread the content you created by sharing them on their social media networks. But don’t stop there!
Encourage your employees to create and publish their own content (such as tweets, photos, videos etc.) and then share their original content on your company’s social media profiles.
Of course, don’t forget to recognize and reward your employees for their effort and contribution!
5. Candidate communication
Communication with your candidates may be the last in this list, but in is by no means the least important way to promote your Employer Brand.
According to research, 60% of candidates state that better communication during and after selection process is the number one thing that would make the most positive impact on them.
This is why you should invest your time and effort into improving the communication with your candidates.
When I say communication with your candidates, I mean 3 types of candidates: your current, future and past candidates. In other words, you should ensure seamless communication with all the candidates in your talent pool in order to build and maintain relationships with them.
Communication with your candidates should be relevant, timely and engaging. Keep in mind that candidates also expect personalized approach. You need to set up personalized campaigns for different candidates’ groups. The groups based on their interests, stage in your recruiting and position their are qualified for.
Employer Branding: Key Takeaways
Candidates now have the luxury of choosing between many different employers. In order to make candidates choose your company as their employer, you need to stand out from your competitors for talent.
You can do that with Employer Branding. Employer Branding is the key tactic successful companies use to attract talent and retain their employees.
5 most important ways to promote your Employer Brand that every company should use are promoting your Employer Brand on social media and your career site, through communication with your candidates and employees and by taking part in local events.