What is employer brand? It describes a company’s reputation as a workplace primarily from the perspective of a potential employee, but also their related industry. There are many factors that contribute to an employer’s brand, from the company culture to the benefits offered to the types of people that are hired.
78% of candidates will look into a company’s reputation before applying for a job, which means your company brand, as a concept, is especially important in today’s workforce. This is critical for companies because studies have also shown that a strong employer brand leads to 50% more qualified applicants. This begs the question: what can organizations do to ensure their brand is attractive to candidates and stands out from its competitors?
Try putting your marketing hat on. There are many best practices you can pull from the world of marketing to strengthen your company’s brand. But before we dive into those strategies, it’s important to ask yourself this question first...
What are your broader hiring objectives?
Before you take any steps to improve your employer brand, it’s important to get crystal clear on what your hiring objectives are. This will help you determine the areas to prioritize first. Here are a few examples of questions to ask:
- Do we have a healthy talent pipeline?
- Are we cost-efficient with hiring?
- Are we filling positions when they need to be filled?
- What are our best sources of hire?
- How’s our candidate experience?
- Are we efficiently hiring (time to fill)?
- What are the implications of delayed hiring?
- Are we hiring the right people?
For instance, let’s say you discover through Glassdoor data that candidates are generally unhappy with your company’s interviewing experience. This negative sentiment is reflected on review sites, which hurts your brand when strong prospective employees conduct research on your company. Once you identify the problem areas, you may consider an overhaul of your interviewing process to improve the candidate experience and boost your ratings.
Tips to strengthen your employer brand
If you’re unclear about exactly where to start, we can help! We’ve identified three tips to help you get the most bang for your buck when it comes to strengthening your employer brand. Here are a few ideas to consider:
#1 Give the people what they want
When thinking about your employer brand, put yourself in the shoes of the employee. What do they want from their next job? If you look at the research, it shows that the top five factors job seekers consider when applying include compensation and benefits (55%), company culture (45%), opportunity to learn new skills (40%), challenging technical problems to solve (29%), and the team (27%). Use existing data to take a step back and evaluate where your company stands when it comes to all these offerings. Identify the areas that may need improvement, and go from there!
#2 Fish where the fish are
Consider where your potential employees are looking for information about you. For instance, 92% of candidates use review sites in their job search. This includes places like Glassdoor, The Muse, Blind, and Indeed. So if you have less-than-stellar ratings on those sites, you may be missing out on the quality applicants your company needs to excel. It’s worth assessing how your brand is represented on those sites and work to improve your ratings. Studies show that candidates will also get information about your company from your website (59%) and your social media platforms (34%), so be sure that your online presence accurately reflects the mission and values of your company.
#3 Tell authentic culture stories
What types of stories are you sharing with the world? This is an important question to answer when it comes to strengthening your employer brand. For instance, when people visit your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts, what do they see? Is it just a bunch of product-related updates? Or are you telling authentic stories around your culture and sharing photos of your employees volunteering together, being recognized, and bonding as a team? The latter is much more impactful and can give potential candidates a taste of what it’s like to work at your company.
How to think like a marketer
Now that you have the tactics to start strengthening your employer brand, there are a few pages you can take from the marketing playbook to make sure they’re implemented successfully. Here are three strategies to consider:
Identify your audience persona(s)
A key tool used in marketing is the creation of target personas. A persona is essentially a fictional “character” with key traits that you use to better understand who you’re selling to. This same concept can also be used to help strengthen your employer brand. Create a profile for your desired candidate by outlining their potential background, personality, career goals and motivations. This will help you better understand what type of brand will be most attractive to the persona you want to bring into your organization.
Build a brand portfolio
This might seem like an overwhelming task, but we promise it’s not! You already have everything you need to create a brand portfolio - it’s just about packaging everything together in a way that’s shareable and shows your company in its best light. The first step you need to take is to gather your assets. Take photos and videos of your company’s physical space, your product, and your people to give the outside world a sense of what it’s like to work at your organization. Then be sure to champion employee advocacy by encouraging your team to share authentic stories on social media, tag your organization, and use your company’s branded hashtag. You can also give employees the mic and create tons of powerful branded content about your company’s values or why they love where they work.
Measure your impact
Finally, measuring key metrics is critical! Whether you use an external survey platform or have an internal tracking system, make sure you have a way to measure what’s working and what’s not when it comes to employer brand initiatives. Maybe you noticed an uptick in your candidate experience survey after changing up your interview process. Or you received constructive feedback on your company’s social media presence. All of this information should be analyzed and used to further strengthen your employer brand.
Did you know that a strong recognition program can positively impact your employer brand? If you’re interested in bringing an experiential recognition program to your employees, be sure to reach out to us at hello@blueboard.com, or Request a Demo via the orange button above.
