With the search for talent becoming more competitive, the power is very much in the hands of the candidate so employers therefore need to market themselves to jobseekers in the same way they would to customers, raising awareness of their brand and promoting the company ethos, culture and values.
‘Employer Brand’ is your company’s reputation as an employer. The goal of employer branding is to present your company as a desirable employer in order to attract high-quality candidates. Employer branding should be based on your company’s values, vision and mission.
If you ignore employer branding, you’re basically refusing to acknowledge that your company’s reputation is an important factor in a candidate’s job search process and therefore risk losing talented employees to your competitors and spending more money on recruitment.
Here are just a few benefits of investing in your employer brand:
Attracts the right candidates
Candidates are attracted to companies with a strong, positive brand that presents the organisation as a desirable employer. Indeed for many candidates the reputation of the brand is ranked higher than salary expectations. Many candidates rate job security, personal development, and working for an organisation that they are proud to work for as important as financial rewards.
Lower recruitment costs
As you develop your organisations reputation as an excellent place to work, you will attract talented professionals through vacancy enquiries and candidate referrals from current employees who like where they work.
Candidate referrals are one of the cheapest forms of recruiting, so you may consider a candidate referral incentive for your employees. Incentive examples include financial rewards, additional holidays or vouchers.
If you’ve developed a strong brand image and job seekers are naturally attracted to your company, you’ll most probably spend less money creating awareness for your job openings. Instead, you can just post your job opportunities across your company’s social media channels with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter being very popular platforms to advertise vacancies for free.
Lower turnover of staff / retaining talent
When employees love their job and place of work, they feel more committed to the organisation and more likely to stay for years to come. With reduced staff turnover you will be spending a lot less on the recruitment process and training of new staff.
Replacing an experienced employee is not only costly but the departure also means a certain loss of knowledge about how your company works, which means that any new person brought in to replace the employee will inevitably make more mistakes and therefore cost you more than the departing employee.
Create an EVP (Employee Value Proposition) that explains what an employee gets in exchange for their talents. When developed and activated properly, an EVP is a great way to communicate with your employees what makes you the best company to work for.
Quicker appointments
By developing and maintaining a positive employer brand you will increase the number of job vacancy enquiries from candidates that have identified your organisation as a potential employer of choice. It will also help your HR team build up talent pools and screen candidates long before you need them. Then when a position becomes available the selection process will be quicker.
Brand visability = Trust
By investing in your employer brand you’re giving candidates valuable information about your business. Because of this web site. It’s important to keep your website updated and include a section on careers where you can also post latest vacancies and information on working for your organisation.
Through social media you can also build communities and share information like new appointments, case studies of employees who have worked their way up the business and employee activity such as nights out, charity events, employee of the month etc. By giving candidates the information they need you are building trust and making your brand significantly more attractive.