If you’re not attracting top talent, the right candidate or those with the necessary skills to fill your job openings, it’s time to reassess your company brand.
Because a company’s brand not only affects its recruiting capabilities, it can affect every aspect of conducting business successfully, says Suzy Feine, a Senior Strategist with Ciceron, a brand advocacy, digital strategy and marketing firm. From general awareness to driving sales, the brand is the cornerstone to all inward and outward communication.
“Truly successful brands focus great effort on building brand advocacy,” says Feine “Brand advocacy is when your customers and employees talk positively about your brand to their networks. Since more than 90% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, this is an incredibly powerful way to promote your brand to both customers and candidates.”
Having a strong employer brand – backed by a powerful, authentic employee value proposition, is not only how you remain top-of-mind but also how you win, retain and inspire your unfair share of today’s top talent, says Andy Curlewis, Senior Vice President of the Employer Brand Practice for Cielo, a global recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and talent consulting firm.
“These days, having an outstanding social media presence, careers page and application process are table stakes,” says Curlewis.
And, a truly strong employer brand consists of at least these five things, according to Curlewis
- Knowing your audience
- Tailoring your messages to make them relevant
- Promoting your internal heroes
- Engaging your brand ambassadors
- Enabling a two-way dialogue between the candidate and your organization
“The career site is one of the first places candidates go to research your business,” adds Curlewis. “Unfortunately, the information is often too generic to inspire candidates and help them make an informed decision. By not targeting your messaging here, you risk losing quality candidates to competitors.”
In addition, organizations must be honest and authentic in their messaging to candidates. If you sell people on one vision but deliver something different, it will harm your brand and send talent running in another direction, says Curlewis.
“Play to people’s aspirations as well as their needs,” says Curlewis. “In employment terms, it is about wanting to work with people who are smart, collaborative, trustworthy and fun to team up with – people who can make our daily work life enjoyable, and who can help us learn and grow.”
Happy employees can be your brand’s best cheerleaders by promoting and celebrating how you conduct business and treat employees, adds Feine. Likewise, unhappy employees can take to social channels and voice negative opinions about compensation, how they are treated on the job and more, which can deteriorate a brand’s image and severely impact your abilities to recruit top talent.
A poor employee brand begins when there is no employee advocacy program in place.
“Companies who fear and restrict an employee’s social interactions are missing the boat,” says Feine. “Instead, companies need to embrace this form of influencer marketing by empowering employees to share content and speak positively about the brand to their peers, friends and family. By building an employee advocacy program, you can locate and empower your internal brand advocates, and sit back and watch as the talent comes to you.”
