Employers are currently faced with a job market reflecting low unemployment rates, which means the power has shifted back to the talent. If you’re looking to enlist the hottest new talent out there, you’re going to have to give them what they expect of a modern company: comfort, respect, flexibility, and an ethical approach to doing business. If you want to be the kind of company that attracts young talent who believe they can get a job anywhere they want, you’ve got to firm up your employee brand game. Here are ten ways to build an employee brand that will breed interest and curiosity in your company by job seekers.
1) Have a corporate message that is reflected in everything you do– Of all things we’ve been taught to root out by modern culture, phoniness is high on the list. Most people have become so sensitive to old-fashioned American phoniness that they sense it and sniff for it even when its not there. Woe be to any company that is sentimentally attached to doing it the old way, because these days job seekers want your corporate message to hold true from whatever angle they’re judging your organization at. A good jingle and the simple repetition of catchy credos no longer works, if it ever did…
2) Offer humanity– …But make sure that your corporate message doesn’t wallpaper all aspects of your company in a way that suggests forced conformity. That’s also a turnoff to the modern job seeker. The last thing they want to do is go to work for a stone-faced corporation where plastic smiles are enforced. What they want is to work with smart, like-minded, friendly people at a company they can respect. Make sure there is warmth and humanity (the real kind) in all of your corporate messaging.
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3) Get behind your CSR – Your corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative will be taken as seriously as your corporate message by much of the top talent you might want to attract. Right or wrong, many people have long since decided that most corporations are in the end up to no good, so put the lie to that cliché by maintaining vibrant CSR optics so that interested job seekers will feel good about hitching their careers to your business.
4) Be transparent about brand perception – The truth is out there, as they say. There’s not much a company can do about spinning its reputation from within when sites like Comparably and others are offering employees the chance to broadcast their beefs (real or imagined) about being mistreated or disrespected by their employers. So be prepared for your candidates to have read up and to know a little something about how employees feel about working for you. And be open about those things: if there are misconceptions about your company, explain your side of things.
5) Remember, candidates behave like customers in a low-unemployment economy– Some compare modern job seeking in the current American economy to online shopping, so treating your job candidates like customers and giving them easy and painless experiences during their candidacy is important. They will also write about the interview process your company offers on those mentioned websites, and about how they were treated regardless of whether they were ultimately hired. So for now, in this economy, the candidate is always right.
6) Be flexible– Modern workers, especially those who have only been on the market for a few years, expect their employers to be more flexible with time off and work hours than they have classically been. It makes sense: if they get their jobs done, goes the thinking, what do you care what hours they pull? So drop old worries about work teams going flaccid because they are scattered to the wind on different shifts at home and in the office. Being flexible with this kind of common sense issue and treating employees like responsible adults is what builds morale at a modern company.
7) Fun gets shared on social media– So make sure you have fun with your employees once in a while. Fun company outings and team building exercises are just the kind of things your employees will choose to share about their job experience and your culture, and the less forced those social media communications are the better. It’s hard to fake genuine fun, and a dozen coworkers laughing about their miniature golf skills (etc, etc) is a fantastic and organic advertisement to the talent you’re going to want to attract.
8) Make sure you can offer a pleasant place to work– This one should hardly only apply to a job market in a low-unemployment economy. You are asking potential employees to come spend a huge percentage of their waking life in your place of work. No matter much they like the work, a graceless office – not designed with comfort in mind – is always something to be escaped. So get plants, work with psychologically effective color schemes, make sure the air conditioner works well, and get healthy snacks for the break room. Think of your employees as guests: if you want them to stay, you’ve got to make them comfortable.
9) Offer some closure to those who don’t make the cut– Remember that the candidate’s interview experience needs to be thought out well and designed for ease, even for the candidates you don’t end up hiring. Because many of them will write up their thoughts on the interview process for public perusal, and the smart ones won’t just be complaining about not getting the job. Treat them respectfully, and let them know you appreciate their interest in your company and that you will keep them in mind in a very real way.
10) You can’t enforce a culture – And this is really the heart of the matter. In the 2020 job market, people are looking for ethics and authenticity. A culture – at least the kind that attracts people to want to work with you – is not something that can be forced into place by focus groups or corporate initiatives. A healthy, thriving culture is the organic result of a preponderance of happy, satisfied workers. You’ve got to have the real thing to make talent happy in 2020, so it’s never too late to start building some real two-way respect between you and your employees.
