Employer Brand – How strong is yours?

Ali Harker, formerly Head of Recruitment at Homeserve and BSI, generously shares her advice on the importance and impact on nurturing a strong employer brand.

Your reputation as an employer is everything and if you have a good Employer Brand it makes it easier to recruit top talent. You may be missing out on attracting professionals because of a lack of brand awareness.

The No.1 thing candidates want to know before applying for a job is the company’s culture and values. So how do you get this across to your audience? There are various channels you can use and a number of things to consider:

Your employees are your unofficial recruiters and marketers. Expand your reach with this under-utilised secret weapon.  Independent research has shown that 1 in 4 candidates look at employee profiles after hearing about a new job. To make this work to your advantage, encourage your employees to use LinkedIn, Glassdoor and other social networks to share content and spread the word about your company, your employer brand and what it’s like to work there.

N.B. To gain support from your employees, provide guidance and support where it’s needed. Ask your company’s social media manager (or equivalent) to put together a few general guidelines to help employees understand what’s okay and what’s not okay to post in support of your employer brand

According to a recent study by LinkedIn, 59% of candidates visit the Company Website after discovering a job, with 1 in 5 job seekers reporting being unable to see what it would be like to work for an employer. 14% saying that the quality of information on employers’ websites is too vague.

 

So……make sure your Company Website is your shop window for attracting candidates and letting them know what it’s like to work for you. Achieve this by using engaging and informative content, photos, videos, and links to your social channels.

• Show photos that capture your employees having fun at work
• Share slides that sum up your company culture and values
• Celebrate your Company awards and employees’ successes
• Direct potential candidates to your social channels for maximum exposure
• ….. AND OF COURSE, publish your open job opportunities.

Adverts that are compelling will generate interest in your vacant jobs. Keep it brief and consider using images or even links to sites where your brand is showcased best.

More and more candidates are ‘checking you out’ on Glassdoor to get a feel for what it’s like to work for your Company before choosing to apply. Claim your FREE Employer Account and make sure your basic company profile information is up-to-date. Encourage employees to share their experience and (assuming you have a great culture – where people are motivated & engaged), their reviews and your messaging and pictures etc. will speak for themselves.  An ‘Open Company’ status shows a commitment of being open and honest to a candidate.

You may think of Indeed as just an Aggregator, pulling through your advertised jobs to their search engine, but they are fast becoming a competitor to Glassdoor in helping potential candidates to find out more about companies they are considering working with.

TOP TIP – Tucked away at the bottom right of each Indeed vacancy listing is a link entitled “more” where you’ll find salary surveys, pictures and employee reviews under “Learn more about working at .…..” .

 

Rather than leaving your employer reputation to fate, start proactively managing it by ‘claiming’ your Indeed Company profile. Add your own content, images, videos etc.  Answer any questions posted and encourage your employees to leave reviews on what it’s like working there.

Create your own page on Facebook.  With just under 100m users globally, it allows you to interact with a wide and diverse audience.  Those who ‘like’ it will then begin receiving your status updates in their user feeds.

Instagram as an image-centric social media channel, can showcase your Employer Brand in a visually-striking way, giving you a unique and refreshing chance to portray a more personal side of your Company.

Promote your Employer Brand on LinkedIn so that you are visible to both active and passive talent when they come to research companies and connect with friends and colleagues, at whatever stage of their career.

LinkedIn Career Pages (Life) are an extension of your Company Page and it’s here that your jobs and Employer Brand come to life. To portray an authentic story about your Company culture, use videos, photos, press articles, blogs and other engaging content e.g. ‘Day in the Life of’ stories from employees.

TOP TIP – If you don’t have any photo’s how about running a photo contest? Ask employees to snap and share photos from recent events, or life around the office. Winners could then be featured in the Company Photos section?

Investing in a LinkedIn package which comes with additional Careers Pages allows you to tailor your content to specific audiences.

By doing the above well you’ll drive quality applicants to follow your company and apply for your jobs.

N.B. InMail response rate is significantly increased if you target followers of your Company.

TOP TIP – Build employer brand awareness through joined up thinking between Recruitment and Marketing departments.  I highly recommend investing in hiring/appointing a dedicated resource to manage your social media channels, as I’ve found this really helps to drive Employer Brand promotion and increase candidate attraction.

Note: It’s not enough just to promote your Employer Brand on your website and social media channels; you should never under-estimate the importance of networking, blogging, attending industry events and careers fairs etc., or encouraging your employees to take part in community activity.  This will reinforce your brand, bringing it to life through everyday interaction and the ‘human touch’.

The Benefits of creating and reinforcing a strong Employer Brand are:

·     Increased applicant numbers

·      Improved quality of hire

·      Decreased cost per hire

·      Higher LinkedIn InMail acceptance rate

·      Increased followers on social media channels

BE CAREFUL not to ‘over-sell’ yourselves. Your company’s brand may be appealing but when it doesn’t reflect reality it can lead to motivation and retention problems for your employees and new hires when expectations are not met.

Looking forward

We all know that reputation/Employer Brand is important in our ‘media savvy’ world and Companies need to work hard to both build and protect it.

With 4 out of 5 professionals interested in hearing about new opportunities, are YOU doing enough to promote your Employer Brand and show candidates why you are a great place to work?

Consider the points above but above all don’t get left behind as TOP TALENT JOINS BETTER-KNOWN BRANDS.

Please feel free to connect with me to discuss anything Recruitment related.

Ali Harker

A huge thanks to Ali Harker for allowing us to share this great article on employer brand from the Employer and Recruitment perspective.

 

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Engage & Prosper is a UK based privately owned Employee Engagement Consultancy and Social Enterprise, on a mission to help organisations develop a highly productive and fulfilling workplace culture, with their people, through enhanced employee engagement strategies, fabulous and effective internal communications platforms and tailored reward and recognition programmes.

For more information on Engage & Prosper or to discover how we can help you achieve your organisational and people goals please call +44 (0) 330 223 0464 or find out more at www.engageandprosper.com