How to Create an Employer Brand that Candidates Love

The father of advertising, David Ogilvy rightly describes branding as a creation of genius, faith, and perseverance. Creating an employer brand is no different! Your employer’s brand is central to your recruitment process and defines the people whom you recruit.

Why do you need to create an employer brand?

Today the power dynamic between the candidate and employer has changed. The unemployment rate in the US is at 4.6%, the lowest in 10 years. A number of experts have defined the current labor market as ‘candidate-driven’. Today, candidates have more options than ever and this trend seems to be growing. Having a bad employer brand can cost you more than 10% per hire.

Employer branding is now a company-wide priority. More than 60% of CEOs handle employer branding themselves. Employer branding helps them secure long-term recruitment needs and differentiate them from their competitor. LinkedIn reports that a company with a well-established personal brand can reduce the cost of hiring by 43%.

Finding the employer brand

Before you go into creating your employer brand, you need to identify it first.

Research is an important aspect when it comes to creating an employer brand. It gives your company its true voice and helps you attract more candidates. Following are some of the questions you need to ask yourself, your team members, and your candidates.

What’s your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?

Talk to your team and know what is it they love the most about your company. Your EVP is at the core of your employer’s branding activities.

What do your candidates think about you?

Today candidates are more aware than ever. Before even applying to a company they would check reviews on Glassdoor, social media, and various online forums. Talking to your candidates would allow you to know where your current reputation stacks. Companies that invest in digital coaching, for instance, allow their talent to grow and help them achieve future goals, appealing to the digital era candidates.

Is your team on board?

Creating an employer brand is a team sport. You need to get everyone including your leadership team onboard. You should also get to know what percentage of your employees would recommend your company to someone they know. Just carry out an NPS survey among your team.

Creating an employer brand is really similar to creating a story, a voice as an employer! Heineken created the ‘Go Places’ employer branding campaign in over one and a half years. Gathering information was a critical part of the campaign and the video highlighted the EVP at Heineken.

Creating the Employer Brand

Creating an employer brand and professional branding assets requires a strategic approach toward how your company attracts, engages, and retains talent. It’s a continuous and iterative process that involves everyone in the team.

Start with strong visuals for your brand.

A logo design plays a pivotal role in employer branding as it serves as the visual identity and first impression of a company. In the competitive job market, a well-designed logo can capture the essence of an organization’s values, culture, and mission, making it instantly recognizable to potential candidates and clients. A strong logo not only enhances brand recognition but also conveys a sense of professionalism, trust, and stability, fostering positive perceptions among job seekers. This is why it is important to hire an experienced graphic designer or using a logo maker. Certain business name generator tools can also be useful in creating text-based brand visuals. It creates a sense of unity and pride among existing employees, boosting employee engagement and retention.

Creating and consistently updating strong visuals for your employer brand is crucial in attracting the right talent. Whether it’s your corporate website, revealing the culture and workspace or engaging posts on social media showcasing day-to-day activities, visuals tell a compelling story. For impactful visual content consider utilizing a range of poster templates designed to captivate and communicate with potential candidates effectively. They’re highly customizable and can reflect the uniqueness of your brand effortlessly, strengthening your recruitment campaigns.

It’s not your candidate database! It’s your candidate community.

The candidates who apply or are interested in your company are more than an entry in your candidate database. They form a part of a much larger candidate community. You should try to engage with your community from time to time, even if they are not actively looking for a job. Many companies like McKinsey, Facebook, P&G, and Google are taking a community approach in their employer branding strategies.

Engage regularly with your talent community.

You should regularly engage with your community. Send them a monthly newsletter talking about the latest update, blogs, and achievements of the company. You can also run drip email campaigns to reach out to a large number of candidates automatically.

Match your employer’s brand to resonate with the candidate’s persona.

To hire the right talent, you need to build a candidate persona for your open positions. Your employer’s brand marketing should target candidates with this persona. The Heineken ad above also talks about the candidate’s persona through a series of interview questions and what they expect from the candidate. It attracts the right kind of talent to apply to the company.

Also, check out our blog on strategic interview questions to ask candidates.

Employer Branding is a team sport!

Always involve your team in your employer branding campaign. They not only define your EVP but also help you expand your reach. Your leadership team should be involved as it’s the difference between average and great employer branding. When your leadership team publishes or shares about it, it sets the tone for the entire company.

Many large corporations have established branding awareness strategies for an omnichannel strategy, which naturally incorporates employer branding, where employees frequently serve as brand ambassadors.

Communicate directly with the candidate

You should always send the right message through the right platform to your candidates. A number of employers have started using Snapchat to attract millennials to their companies. Creating employee stories and sharing them on your website and social media pages gets your message directly to the candidate. You should always focus on ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’ across all platforms. You could also create a blog or social media handle for your employer branding campaign to showcase the life where your employees work.

Instagram with its latest update has become very similar to Snapchat. By leveraging various Instagram hacks, you can better leverage Instagram for your recruiting efforts.

UPS did it brilliantly in its employer branding campaign showing the human side of the job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IsL5AMqLMY

Use multimedia to get attention

Feel free to use images and videos as collateral to enhance your employer’s brand. They do not help get more attention but are also widely shared over social media. You can also create your culture deck like Netflix and put it on Slideshare where your prospective employees get a chance to know more about your company.

https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

Data is the key

You should measure data at each point. Always measure the candidate’s experience with NPS. You can also use the same methodology for measuring employee happiness and compare it against your candidate community. Track metrics like hiring speed, pipeline status, and ROI of sources to get maximum results.

Use Technology

Today thanks to technology most of the work can be automated. Tools like Recruiterflow help you expand the reach of your employer branding efforts. You can use tools like Buffer to schedule and measure social media posts across platforms. Always try to add a layer of automation wherever you can without compromising the human side of it. You can use dynamic QR codes to make your branding efforts interactive by adding a human touch to technology. With a dynamic QR code generator, you can create unique QR codes and reuse them by just changing destination, you can also track your campaigns efficiently and make effective changes accordingly.

Creating a great employer brand needs a lot of discipline and work. Having a product branding roadmap will help you get results. Some of the companies who did it exceptionally got more than 5X quality applications in a span of 6 months. It also decreases your cost of hiring as your sourcing engine becomes self-sustainable.

A good employer branding is the essence of your recruitment engine!