Your Company Needs a Strong Employer Brand: This Is How to Cultivate It
Any recruiter or hiring manager knows finding strong employees to fill open positions is much easier when candidates are genuinely attracted to the organization. That’s why it’s important to cultivate a positive employer brand. The right employer brand makes the idea of working for your organization much more appealing to candidates.
To better understand how you can develop the type of brand that attracts talent, keep the following tips in mind:
Manage Your Brand Online
Odds are good your company has an online presence, which it likely uses to manage its consumer-facing brand. The same principle should apply to your employer brand. Start developing and improving yours by checking sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor to read reviews of your company from employees. Your main goal is to identify common complaints. You might also want to distribute anonymous surveys to your current employees, asking them questions about their experience working for the organization. These steps will help you determine what aspects of your employer brand are not working. This is of course key to making necessary improvements.
Additionally, try to respond to online reviews whenever possible. Just make sure you do so in a courteous and respectful manner. This indicates to potential jobseekers that your organization cares about making positive changes instead of simply rejecting or denying feedback. If your employer brand is suffering due to poor reviews, you can at least signal to candidates that you prioritize addressing these issues.
Essentially, you should treat this aspect of your company’s online presence the same way the marketing department treats its social media presence. If you respond to feedback and take active steps to manage your reputation, your brand can improve.
Another way to improve ratings on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed is by asking your current employees to submit reviews. You may want to take the temperature of the room before you use this strategy — it can backfire if your employees are largely unhappy. Usually, however, asking current workers to submit reviews will at least increase your review volume, which has a positive effect on how jobseekers perceive you. Having lots of reviews can be protective, too — it can drown out the weight of one really negative review.
Differentiate Your Organization
A brand serves as a company’s unique identity. It helps organizations connect with customers on an emotional or intuitive level. For instance, Apple remains one of the most successful consumer electronics brands on the planet, despite many tech experts claiming Apple’s products are no stronger than many of its competitors’ products. The hardware itself isn’t the key (or at least, the only key) to Apple’s success. Instead, it’s the brand that stands out to customers.
You need to think of your employer brand in this way. After all, there’s a good chance yours is not the only company in your niche. Potential job candidates likely have other options from which to choose if they would like to work in your industry. This means you need to determine what makes you different from the competition.
The specific answer to this question will of course vary from one organization to another. For instance, perhaps you’re the hiring manager for a tech startup. As you know, there are plenty of other tech startups your employees could be working for. However, maybe your company places an emphasis on developing products that will benefit the world in some way. Focusing on your mission when developing your employer brand can help you not only stand out from the competition, but also attract the type of employees who are passionate about your work and your vision. Such employees are more likely to be engaged than those who don’t care as much about your values.
Create a Brand Website
You already know it’s important to manage your employer brand on such platforms as Monster, Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn. The problem is, those platforms all have limits. For instance, on Glassdoor, negative reviews from former employees can have a harmful impact on the way jobseekers perceive your brand. All you can do when that happens is respond to these reviews and indicate you’re taking steps to correct the problems.
However, you might also want to develop a platform that allows you to exercise complete control over the manner in which your employer brand is presented to candidates. For many companies, this platform is a jobs website, or the careers page of their main site. Consider the example of L’Oreal. This global cosmetics company created a website solely dedicated to its employer brand. At L’Oreal Talent, prospective employees learn about the benefits the company offers, the organization’s mission and values, what types of people work at L’Oreal, and much more. This is a tactic worth considering if you want to be certain you’re communicating your employer brand.
Just keep in mind that cultivating a positive employer brand isn’t the only way you can attract strong talent. For instance, if you’re trying to fill the role of CEO, you might also want to coordinate with an executive hiring firm to ensure you find the best candidate for the position. An employer brand will help you stand out to jobseekers, but it’s not the only factor worth accounting for.
