Easy possibilities to enhance employer branding
An employer brand is something you have whether you've developed it intentionally or not. It's how job seekers, employees, and other important groups perceive your company. So it makes sense—in more ways than one—to take control of your employer brand.
Regardless of your employer branding strategy, we have created this guide with tips and tricks to improve your employer brand.
We'll begin by evaluating the current state of your brand, and then move on to suggestions for improvement.
Understand the health of your employer brand
Before you can update your employer branding strategy, you should first review your current tactics to understand what is working and where you should focus your efforts. Here are some tips to get an overview of your employer brand.
Check your employee ratings
A good place to start is by looking at employer review sites and different rankings of the best employers. These sites will give you an insight into what current and former employees think about your company and your employer brand.
It is important to reply to reviews, whether they are positive or negative. By doing so, you demonstrate to the reviewer and to anyone reading the review that you are interested and that you value feedback.
Keep gathering feedback by surveying your current employees to find out why they stay and why they might leave your company. In the survey, ask how they first learned about your company and where they applied. Doing so will give you insight into the platforms that attract the best candidates.
Track key performance indicators
By determining which metrics to follow, you can ensure that your efforts will be successful. After examining your employer brand's current state, you will have a good understanding of where improvement is needed.
After you have selected the metrics to track, you can establish a baseline and set a tracking schedule. This will help you measure the results of your efforts in the months and years to come.
Identify candidate personas
When creating a new job opening, also create a corresponding candidate persona. This will help you to identify the ideal candidate when they apply, and will also show you how and where you can use your employer brand to reach them.
Who? Well, candidate personas should contain information on things like expertise and skills, geographic location, as well as online presence.
This information allows you to narrow down which platforms top candidates are likely to visit. For example, if you are looking for an experienced software developer, you will more likely connect with him on GitHub than on Instagram, but if you are looking for a marketer, Instagram is the better choice.
Establish core values
It is more important than ever for people to know for whom they are working and how their work affects the company and the world around them. If you have not done so already, write down the core values and mission statement of your company. If it has been a while since you created your values and mission statement, you should review them to make sure they align with your current company culture and vision for your business and brand.
Assemble a group of experienced employees who have been with your company for some time in order to create and define your values and mission. Ask them to write down the core elements of your company and its vision, and refine the data to identify commonalities.
Strategies of competitors
To beat your competition, you need to know their strengths and weaknesses. The best way to do this is by acting as a job seeker, more specifically as your candidate persona. Search the platforms they offer, go to search engines and enter queries as if you were a job seeker.
Try to identify which pieces of content are engaging, and which ones have repeated ideas or themes. This can help give you insight into strategies that may be effective, even if you don't have clear metrics to measure success.
Refine your employer branding strategy
By researching your current strategy, looking at evaluation pages, talking to internal employees and understanding your competition, you are in a good position to improve your employer branding strategy. Candidate personas will help you identify where to focus your efforts, while your values and mission statement will help you communicate your message more effectively.
Start improving your internal employer brand
Your workforce is your most valuable resource - they understand your brand and have an impact on every facet of your company from top to bottom. To enhance your reputation as an employer with job seekers, you need to prioritize cultivating your internal employer brand. If you make sure to hire the right candidates and provide a clear and concise value proposition to your employees, then your internal employer brand will be in good shape.
Find out from your employees how they speak about your company as an employer and why they see it as a preferred employer. Ask employees also what they don't like about the company and whether they would change anything.
Ensure that you are accepted by all, especially managers and leaders who are the driving force behind your internal employer brand. These are the people who are best placed to identify and resolve sore points before they escalate.
It is important to keep your internal team up to date on your employer brand building and development progress, as well as any changes. This ensures they can support your efforts and that your messages and content remain brand-compliant, no matter how or where candidates learn about your company.
Invest in your corporate culture
The employer brand is mostly a reflection of the company culture. Therefore, if the culture in the company is not good, it will have a negative effect on the employer brand, which will impact all areas of the business. On the other hand, if the company has a strong culture, it will be easier to maintain employee satisfaction and, as a result, the employer brand.
No matter the state of your company culture, you should always test new ideas for it, in order to continually improve the experience for your team and encourage candidates to apply. The better your company culture is, the easier – and more enjoyable – it will be to create great employer branding content.
Improve your advantages
Highlight the aspects of your employee value proposition in your employer branding strategy that resonate most with job seekers. The two most important things candidates look for when choosing a job are salary and benefits. Moreover, it is one of the most frustrating things candidates experience during their job search when companies do not share enough information about their benefits.
The benefits and perks you offer play a big role in employee satisfaction and attracting top candidates. So take the time to review everything you have to offer. Ask employees what benefits they love and use the most, and what ones they would still like. Investing in high-quality benefits will increase both your retention rate and your applicant pool.
Build in your recruitment strategy
Once you have a solid understanding of your employer brand, the next step is to create an action plan to expand your brand and maintain your reputation with job seekers and interest groups. This is where your recruitment marketing strategy comes into play.
Even if you can't control every aspect of your reputation, you can implement a consistent recruitment marketing strategy to share key information about your company and its employees at every stage of the recruitment life cycle. This way, you can attract and engage top talent, and maintain relationships until the roles are filled.
If you have not yet created a personal marketing plan, please reach out to your marketing department in order to learn about how they present your company as an employer, as well as how you can work together.
Create a content calendar
The content is everything in an employer branding and recruiting marketing strategy. They are constantly updating old and creating new content. To keep everything up to date, it is best to create a content calendar. In this way, you can set clear deadlines and ensure that your strategy is divided among your team.
You would like to coordinate internal employee spotlights, write content for social media, and respond regularly online to requests and reviews. However, your long-term strategy may take months of preparation to create recruitment videos, hold recruitment events, and update your career page. Document ongoing efforts, such as connecting with people in your talent community or planned email campaigns. Organizing all your content in a calendar makes it easier to manage and maintain.
Use social media recruiting
No matter your stance on social media recruiting, it is not an optional part of your employer branding strategy but a mandatory one. With nearly 80% of job seekers using social media to look for jobs, it is better to have an outstanding presence on social media to build their trust and encourage them to pursue employment.
Social media is unique in that it allows companies to be more authentic and transparent with job seekers - so use this to your advantage. Give live updates on events happening in the office and on team outings. Show the fun and quirky side of your team and the unique individual personalities that make up your culture.
Job seekers often use a company's social media presence to get a better understanding of their potential colleagues' culture and everyday life. Keep your content current and relevant to give them an accurate portrayal of what it is like to work at your company. You may need to invest in a social media tool to help your team stay on top of social feeds.
Test new platforms and ways
While social media is a large part of any strategy, it is not the only one that should be pursued. With the research conducted, one should have a better understanding of what is effective and what is not. Additionally, this research should give clarity on which platforms are most likely candidates for engagement.
You will need to do some research in order to understand how to optimize your content and strategy for the functions of each platform. Some content can be reused on different platforms, but it will definitely need to be customized based on the available functions and specific target audience for each platform.
Be authentic and transparent
Candidates are smart; they can tell when an employer is being disingenuous with its employer brand. Play up the best parts of your company, but do so in a way that is true to your brand and employees.
Conducting onboarding and exit interviews is another great way to get feedback from people who know your employer brand from an external perspective, as well as from those who have lived your culture first-hand.
Every company will find different ways and strategies that work best for them and these tactics will undoubtedly change over time. If you keep employer branding in mind, you can naturally create content that truly reflects the great company and culture you have built.
