Guide on Ways to Build an Employer Brand
Being an employer is not a small responsibility. You are a boss and a colleague at the same time. It’s your job to hire new employees and manage existing ones. The position requires considerable leadership and assessment skills to successfully recruit qualified and talented individuals who will help build your business. But prospective employees have a lot of options, especially qualified and skilled ones. There’s an endless list of companies for job seekers to choose from.
There are plenty of employers clamoring to hire their talents, companies that could even be your rival. The competition to recruit top-notch talent is stiff! You are not the only employer scouting for talents. You snooze, you lose. Therefore, your role as an employer involves much more than sitting in a fancy office and “behaving” like the boss. You need to work hard and play smart to attract what you want. To entice the right type of applicants, your brand needs to be attractive enough for people to want to become a part of your team.
An employer brand should also be strong enough to support your current employees and encourage them to give their best. Your employer brand is therefore what people think of you as an employer. It is their perception of you, the impression you make in the minds of job seekers and your staff. What can you do to make your brand stand out? How do you build a brand that resonates well with people hoping to work for you and people already in your employ?
The process of creating a brand no matter how small requires well-thought-out plans and strategies. You need the right techniques to become an employer that everyone wants to work with. Branding also sets you apart from the competition. Thinking of how to go about it? Worry no more. This article divulges all the secrets of building an employer brand.
- Recruit from a Diverse Population: A diverse demography cuts across gender, race, religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, and other designations. When hiring, it is important to select from a big population. It ensures that you have the opportunity of selecting the very best because you have a wide variety of skills and experience to choose from. It presents a long list of high-quality candidates to you. But not only that, it points you out as an employer without bias. When recruiting, be free and fair. While you should have requirements for applicants, place no restrictions on who can apply based on your predispositions or prejudice. On the contrary, try your possible best to recruit from minority and underrepresented groups. People will be willing to work with you when they can see that you embrace an inclusive culture.
- Know Your Prospects: This is an important point to note when building your brand as an employer. Knowing what type of employees you are looking for will help you recruit candidates whose motives match yours. Ask yourself, Where is the talent I am looking for located? What are their goals? What channels can I use to get through to candidates? What kind of career benefits are they interested in? What appeals to them? What impacts their decisions – job review sites and social media, what their peers say, or others? Once you recognize your target audience, it will be easier to build a brand centered around them and thereby, skillfully recruit the talents you seek. For instance, if your company is a tech startup, your focus should be on young tech enthusiasts yearning to improve their skills. They are probably willing to learn and earn. You can easily find them online or at events where programmers and others meet for collaborative software development. Your target audience will not be middle-aged people well advanced in their career and earning six figures. The channels and approach you take to branding should differ per the role you are hiring for and the skills and qualifications it requires.
- Use Every Available and Adequate Channel: Go Online. If you want your brand to be visible, you should put it out there. Technology and social media have made it possible to reach as many people as possible from just one device. Many applicants develop an interest in a company or employer when they read an article online or visit the Careers section of a company’s website. The world has gone digital and you don’t want to be that employer that is still asking candidates to submit handwritten copies of documents. Go with the flow. Utilize your company or organization’s social media accounts and website to post visible proof that you are an employer brand that every candidate wants. Use video and picture testimonials from employees to demonstrate how working for your brand has benefited them. Put a face behind your brand. People believe what they can see.
Today, the most popular channel for creating awareness about employer brands is online. It is also the best place to engage with your target audience – prospective candidates. Answer FAQs about the career opportunities in your company. Make sure that you address reviews and feedback people give because it can affect your reputation on job alerts and employment websites. Connect with people who have the skills you are looking for through targeted ads, emails, newsletters, seminars, recruiting events, or any other means accessible to you. You may need to do more than online and word-of-mouth awareness, maybe a campaign when you are carrying out a mass recruitment exercise. Post job openings on social media and job alert sites. Use technology to digitize your recruitment process. That makes it accessible and attractive to candidates. Very few people want to work for an employer which makes the recruitment process so stressful. It makes them wonder what working for you would be like, probably as hectic as your recruitment process. Your current employees can also help you promote your brand by word of mouth or by sharing your messages online.
- Indicate the Advantages of Working With You: Employer branding is targeted at presenting yourself to prospects as the brand that will give them all the career benefits they desire. These benefits you promise to give are called EVPs – Employee Value Proposition. When engaging with candidates, explicitly state what they stand to gain if they decide to work for you. Point out that those reasons are why your current employees chose to work with you and have stuck with you for as long as they have. For your proposition to be attractive enough, it has to mirror the expectations of candidates. These include, apart from salary, your company values because a prospect may want to know if the services the company provides and how they provide them align with his career objectives. When giving information about your brand, make sure to include the advantages of working with you like remuneration, room for growth, conducive work culture, and environment. The advantages of working with you can also include perquisites like free coffee and lunch, an in-house therapist, paid vacation, and the unique things that make you different from the next employer.
- Take Care of Your Current Employees: In the course of reading this article, you have probably deduced that branding while aimed at prospective candidates, also involves your current employees. We have mentioned that they help promote your employer’s brand by spreading the word and creating awareness. We also mentioned that how you treat them affects your brand. Your employees, especially the HR department, can also help you audit your brand so you can know where you are failing and where you can do better. Have meetings with them and walk them through your strategy. They’ll assist you in making sound decisions. That’s how important they are. When you provide a thriving environment for your employees, they are less likely to leave your business in search of something better. As an employer, when you have a high retention rate of employees, it reflects well on your brand. It shows that you are a loyal and committed employer. Building a reputation as an employer whose workers are always leaving makes your brand less attractive and the cost of recruiting frequently is exorbitant. Do not forget that actions speak louder than words. In essence, treat your current employees right.
Final Thoughts
Employer branding requires planning and may even cost money. However, the benefits you will reap in the long run are numerous to mention the foremost being that you will be able to attract the type of candidates you want – committed, candidates with the skills and qualifications your company needs to grow.