Great employer branding is a recruiter’s best friend.
Whether you recruit internally or use an external team to support you, it’s essential that you align your employer brand with talent acquisition efforts.
It goes without saying that it’s so much easier to hire people when your business has a good reputation.
In this blog, we’ll cover the benefits of great employer branding through the recruitment process, and how you can better align your brand with talent acquisition.
How does great employer branding help with talent acquisition?
As mentioned, a good reputation goes a long way in recruitment, and great employer branding goes even further:
Faster time to hire
A well-established employer brand reduces the time it takes to fill your open positions. You’ll become the number one choice for candidates, many of whom will actively follow you and wait for you to advertise their dream job.
This, naturally, speeds up the recruitment process, as candidates will be champing at the bit to get in touch with you.
Attract better prospects
Quality candidates want to work at quality businesses.
When you’re known for your positive work culture, values and progression opportunities, you’ll naturally draw the attention of more qualified people.
Candidates will be a better fit for your company’s culture and values, and they’re more likely to be engaged and committed, reducing the risk of mismatches/high turnover.
Increase application volume
Do you struggle to attract high volumes of candidates to your roles?
Having a great employer brand will often lead to increased application volume, meaning you can choose from a larger pool of candidates.
This is great if you’re looking for specific skills, or need to find people with varying levels of experience or knowledge. This is great, as you’ll often find that you find people that can add value not only in their role, but to other areas of your business, too.
Lower overall recruitment costs
As we mentioned earlier, recruitment is expensive, and the longer the process takes, the more expensive it gets.
Consider:
- Recruiter costs
- The time spent interviewing
- The cost of hiring someone (who then leaves when they realise it’s not the right fit)
A good employer brand makes this process much faster, saving time, money and stress. It also can attract candidates directly, cutting out the external recruitment agency and saving you from paying their fees.
Better PR opportunities
Having a great culture and employer brand isn’t just beneficial for your recruitment drive.
A positive employee experience and great brand contributes to a better overall corporate reputation.
We recommend seeking out public relations (PR) opportunities, ones where you can share the stories of your employees and demonstrate why your business is an amazing place to work.
This will:
- Let prospective employees know you’re a great place to work
- Let prospective customers/clients know that you treat your people well (this usually means better service, too!)
How to align your brand with talent acquisition
Now we know why having a great employer brand is so important, it’s time to talk about how you can align your brand with ongoing talent acquisition.
Define your employer brand strategy
Make sure your employer brand is well established, and everyone in your business understands what your values, culture and mission are.
If you’ve not yet defined your employer brand, we highly recommend getting in touch with an employer branding agency as soon as possible.
It is an investment, yes, but it’s an investment that will pay dividends in the long run. The sooner you get a proper employer branding strategy formed, the sooner you can start profiting from it.
Understand your target prospects
Many businesses, especially SMEs, head gung-ho into recruitment without taking the time to understand their target audience and what an ideal prospect looks like.
By sitting down and mapping out what perfect candidates look like for your business, you’re able to better tailor your employer branding content to their unique wants and needs.
Recruitment is so incredibly competitive. If you fail to properly understand your target prospects, you’ll miss out; you can almost guarantee that your competitors will be doing this, too, so don’t fall behind.
Create an employee value proposition (EVP)
You’ll no doubt already have a business proposition, and you’ll know how best to position your business when talking to potential customers, but have you formed an employee value proposition?
This is a unique set of benefits, rewards and opportunities – a pledge to prospective employees detailing exactly why you’re the best in the business, and why they should want to work for you.
Your EVP should be compelling, positioning your business head and shoulders above the competition, just as your business proposition does.
Create compelling employer branding content
Content is incredibly important to any recruitment effort.
For our clients, we create employer branding content packs that they can give to their recruitment teams. These packs consist of:
- Videos – These might show your workspace, day-to-day culture, benefits, rewards, interviews with employees, days in the life of content and much more. These videos are to be shared everywhere, demonstrating what makes your business unique, and why people love working for you.
- Interviews with employees – We’ll take the time to sit down with your employees, asking them why they love working for you, what attracted them initially and what makes them stay. These interviews should be held with everyone, from the bottom of the ladder to the top. They will be used to form testimonials that can be used throughout your recruitment comms.
- Blogs – Blog content can be very powerful. Blogs detailing company milestones, wins, new hires, events, parties and more all contribute to your employer brand, showing that your business is A) successful and B) a fun place to work!
- Social – Consistent social posting is essential. Almost every candidate will check your social media channels before applying. If they’re destitute or unengaging, that’s not going to leave a great impression. A vibrant, varied selection of social content showing employee successes, rewards, recognition and more is a great starting point.
Optimise your career website/pages
Many SMEs stick a short careers page on their website and call it a day.
This is not enough.
Modern candidates have high expectations, especially of your digital presence. Chances are they’re talking to a variety of businesses when choosing where to work. They’ll compare your website to theirs, meaning that if your careers page is lacking, it’ll stick out like a sore thumb.
For inspiration, check out our careers page. We’ve included:
- An intro to the business and our style of comms
- Real quotes from our team
- A selection of pictures of our team having a bloody good time
- Up-to-date stats and statistics
You need to ensure that your career page or website is tailored to the type of person you’re looking to attract. Fail to do this and you’ll compare poorly to competitors.
Make sure your recruitment team has everything they need to succeed
An employer branding pack from Catalyst should be provided to any recruiter.
Without it, they’re starting cold. Give them the content that they need, and they’ll be off to a running start (they’ll thank you profusely for the content, too – trust us!).
