The word branding has been familiar in marketing circles for years. Now, the term is finding its way into the HR department, as well. As a marketing term, branding refers to a company’s messaging, aesthetics, reputation, and other factors that impact consumer perception.
Employer branding is similar in many ways. There’s still a focus on elements like reputation and messaging. The difference here is that the targets of employee branding are prospective employees.
Is employee branding something you should care about? If you want to attract the best talent in your industry, the answer is yes. Here, we’ll go over exactly why employer branding is so important and how you can build your own employer branding strategy.
Employer Branding Explained
To put it simply, an employer brand is a company’s reputation as an employer and the perceived value they have to offer employees. When you build a positive employer brand, people are more likely to seek you out when searching for a job. Additionally, you can take advantage of your employer brand to recruit great talent.
Why Is Employer Branding So Important?
Employer branding helps you save money on recruiting costs. You already know that the recruiting process is expensive. When you have established good employer branding, those costs go down. You are better able to attract the right talent. In many cases, prospective employees may even seek you out.
You will attract a larger pool of more talented recruits. Today, the overwhelming majority of job seekers will do some sort of research about a company before they apply or decide whether they should accept a job offer. Your branding efforts will impact what they choose.
Finally, your employer brand can boost your company’s reputation with the public on multiple social media platforms. That can lead to positive results in your consumer marketing efforts and recruiting.
Where Does Employer Branding Come From?
Your employer brand is something your company builds over time, much like consumer branding. It gets influenced by social media posts, employee reviews, corporate reputation, news articles, blog posts, even word of mouth.
Imagine that you’ve posted a job listing on a popular job search website. A potential employee sees the listing, and they’re interested in the position. The problem is that they’ve never heard of your company. So, they:
- Visit your website and social media pages
- Ask friends and acquaintances what they think
- Google your company and read results
- Read reviews and insights from third-party websites
By doing these things, that job seeker will learn about your work culture, compensation, benefits, and treatment of employees. They’ll find out what your most dissatisfied workers have to say, and hopefully what your most satisfied workers have to say as well. They may also find out about your company’s position on social issues and whether there have been any scandals that have impacted your company.
That job seeker’s perceptions about your company reflect your employer brand. Fortunately, you can take control of that branding to ensure that potential employees see your value as an employer. To do that, you have to create a great branding strategy.
Start with a Winning Branding Strategy Team
Employer branding is generally controlled by HR and recruiting. With that being said, a good branding strategy needs to involve many stakeholders. If possible, you need to build a multidisciplinary team to get this done.
Consider adding people from the following departments:
HR
Ultimately, your HR and recruiting staff will have to work with the results of your employer branding strategy. Additionally, they will have insights into current job seeker perceptions and current recruiting efforts.
Marketing
Your marketing team has many of the skills, technologies, and digital assets that you need to launch an effective branding strategy. They will be able to help with messaging, content creation, social media, and other recruitment marketing efforts.
C-Suite
Your talent acquisition strategy should align with your business strategy. In addition to this, executives should understand better than anyone what your employer messaging should be. You may not need to involve C-level staff in all decisions, but they should be part of the conversation.
Employee Advocates
Consumer marketers often recruit their most loyal customers to take part in marketing efforts. You can do the same with employees who are both happy with their jobs and willing to share their experiences with others. These brand ambassadors can help you get the word out about your employer brand to help boost your reputation and attract great talent.
Getting Started with Employer Branding Strategy
Employer branding doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an ongoing effort to position your company to appeal to the talent you want to recruit. Here are some steps to get started.
Write an Employer Value Proposition
Your employer value proposition (EVP) is a concise statement that expresses what you have to offer potential employees. That will become the cornerstone of your branding efforts.
Build Candidate Personas
A candidate persona is a prototype of your ideal applicant. They have the skills, experience, education, values, and personality required to be a great addition to your team. Once you create your personas, you can tailor your content and other efforts to attract people with the same traits.
Identify Social Media Platforms
Now you know what you want to communicate and to whom. The next step is to identify the best places to reach them. Of course, you can use your website for employer branding. You can also weave your branding into your job listings and other recruiting content.
However, any good employer branding strategy is going to include a social media component. Many brands begin with LinkedIn, but don’t stop there. You can reach your target prospects on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms.
Create Relevant Content
The key to great employer branding is relevant, quality content that communicates to potential employees about your culture, values, and EVP. That content might include:
- Employee testimonial videos
- Reviews
- Behind the scenes videos
- Blog posts
Remember that you can’t fully control what other people have to say about your company. However, you can use content creation to build the employer brand you want.
Awareness is Key
How do you know if your employer branding is working for you? The only way to tell is to set recruiting and retention goals and track the results. Further, your employer brand also gets influenced by the things that others have to say. You need a suite of analytics tools to track your reputations as well as other factors.
