Employer branding matters more than ever

David Barklöf, IT/Tech consultant at Alumni, discusses the importance of employer branding and how it’s promotion and elevation should be treated as a process of continuous improvement rather than a one-off exercise. He includes some pointers to how to best manage your corporate image in order to appeal to the target talent pools that your organisation needs.

Employer branding today plays a significant part in attracting an increasingly fickle and discerning talent market. But how do you succeed and quickly see results in today’s reality? Especially when the potential workforce that is more environmentally and socially conscious, more vocal and demanding of a better work life balance, and unimpressed by a swish office with loungers and ping-pong?

A continuous effort

Many organisations create a ‘employer branding’ project, analysing the current viewpoint of both internal and external stakeholders and try to adjust or influence that view. They pick a metric: number of applications per advertised role for example and see whether their changes are impactful. Working with employer branding shouldn’t be an end-to-end exercise but should be seen as a continuous improvement process that constantly responds and reflects what the talent market perceives as positive.

Define your strategy

Get started by setting out what competences you are lacking or which competences you need more of. This will help you identify the different target talent groups that will meet your requirements. Identify the points of attraction in your target group and build a communication that answers those needs. Do your targeted candidates today work for a company with a strong social responsibility footprint perhaps? How can you attract them to your company instead? Perhaps your candidate target group generally responds better to a clearly defined work-life balance? What can you offer? Now you can start building that journey for your potential candidates by creating a persuasive communication and story around your vision, purpose, brand and culture.

Employer branding requires agility and a data-driven approach

By using digital marketing tools, you can work in a data-driven way, and adapt your story to reach those specific target groups. It is important to consider the impact of your reach. Would you rather assess 15 great-fit candidates who know what you are all about? Those who bring the right skills and will settle into your culture easily? Or would you like to entertain and maintain a relationship with some 200+ candidates who may or may or not sit well against the values-based proposition of the business. Both can be right for you depending on where your company is at. Be as clear as you can in your communication. In this day and age, you will not want to take up anyone’s time unnecessarily and with scarce resources you are better to use the tools you have at hand to work efficiently.

Great leaders reflect your culture

You also need to focus continuous efforts on developing and maintaining great leadership. Your leadership is the biggest influencer on retention rates and whilst it is great if there is a dedicated owner for employer branding within the business, all leaders in all areas should take responsibility for positively reflecting the culture and values of their organisation. One of the best measures of good employer branding are retention statistics. When talent is a good fit to your brand and your culture then they will stay. They will not only stay, but they will also spread the word to their peers and improve your brand externally. Win-win!

“When working with an external partner like Alumni, you should expect them to engage with the market as a great ambassador of your brand. We look at your USPs , we work hard to analyse and articulate the positives of your culture and the employer brand, we build transparency and clarity around your career opportunities.”

Engage with strategic partners and ambassadors for your brand

Get the word out there and use all your internal and external stakeholders to help you reach further. Do not miss out on the potential and value of having external partners speak for you. It can add further credibility to your messaging. For instance, at Alumni we help many of our clients to cover skills gaps in their organisations. The reasons vary but often we are called to help clients that have been unsuccessful in their own efforts for a variety of reasons. They may have struggled to find candidates in their own network, they may be a small company with a lesser-known brand, or they don’t have in-house resources to manage a full recruitment process.

When working with an external partner like Alumni, you should expect them to engage with the market as a great ambassador of your brand. We look at your USPs , we work hard to analyse and articulate the positives of your culture and the employer brand, we build transparency and clarity around your career opportunities. We communicate your brand with the correct messaging for the identified candidate market.

Often this means proactively approaching candidates who are not even looking for a career change. This requires the pitch to be powerful and capable of persuading candidates to consider leaving their comfortable desk and explore the unknown but exciting prospect of a new opportunity. In short, Alumni become additional evangelists for your business based on examined facts and due diligence rather than hot air.

With a clearly thought-out strategy and process, great leadership and the power of a search agency experienced in managing employer brand – today’s scarce, highly sought-after talented individuals will be attracted, hired and kept, to in turn tell their story about how great you are!

If you would like to learn more about how we support other clients in attracting, retaining and securing the best candidates in the market be in touch. Running a recruitment process through us has the added benefit of being a good way to benchmark your employer brand in the market, as we can provide you with valuable candidate input based on our confidential discussions.