Does Your Company’s Branding Affect Recruitment?

Branding is more than just the visual presentation of your company. It is your direct communication line to your customers. Through their words, your brand gains renown or becomes infamous. The infamy or fame impacts more than just revenue, as their effect bleeds into the job-seekers perception of your enterprise.

The term that rises from that effect is called employer brand. When you reach out to prospects, it becomes a critical part of the employee proposition. You must take care of your employer brand, especially when you want to attract candidates for executive positions.

Why is that?

What is the importance of employer branding?

“Why would the top talent of an industry want to work with you?”

Branding is essential in attracting and retaining new customers. If you have a good employer branding strategy in place, it will cut down hiring costs and employee turnover.

What is employer branding about? Obviously, it is not about the product. Your employer brand depends upon your company’s internal aspects, such as values, leadership, culture, and vision.

The better your branding, the closer you get to becoming the employer of choice. It means that prospects will seek to work for your organization. The culture, market position, and authority you foster in the ecosystem turn you into a magnet for good talent.

And it also attracts customers and clients – increasing employee performance and your ROI.

So, what does the power of your employer brand means in terms of statistics?

1. Less cost per hire: LinkedIn stats say you’d likely spend 43% less on hiring new employees if your brand is strong.
2. Preferred by candidates: By TalentNow stats, 77% of candidates will be more inclined towards you if you have a good reputation in the market.
3. Important to applicants: 74% of job seekers are more likely to apply to your company if you’re actively managing your employer brand.
4. Less employee turnover: Higher employer brand reduces employee turnover by 28%.

Conversely, if you ignore employer branding, you’re likely to:

1. Pay 10% more to hire good talent
2. Lose 64% of your customers
3. Lose the attention of 50% of the candidates actively looking for a job

Now, how do you develop a bulletproof employee branding strategy?

1. Always be aware of your organization’s internal branding: Your organization’s value, mission, vision, goal, and culture are part of its internal branding. You must be attuned to them and understand the objective of your business. No candidate will work for a company that’s not privy to its values. Therefore, the very first task is to look at your own company’s website and find out if what you’ve written matches your values.
2. Learn how your employees feel about you: Conduct internal research to learn your employee’s feelings about you and your company. Research Gate published a paper about the impact of bad-mouthing employees on a company’s reputation. Conduct internal research to learn about your employee’s perceptions based on their job satisfaction, treatment, and what they seek from the management and the company’s organizational climate.
3. Conduct internal research with the target candidate group: Understanding the perceptions of those who’re likely to be your candidate will give a better insight into your company’s reputation.
4. Check out your competition: Conducting external research will give you a view of your company’s employer brand position concerning your competitors. You can do so using internet search, applicant surveys, or learning what people say about your brand on social media.
5. Re-develop an employee value proposition: “What value are you willing to give to the person who joins your organization?” The answer is what constitutes an employee value proposition. Cover your brand’s USP and ensure that your brand truly reflects whatever you write in that proposition.
6. Develop a two-pronged employee branding strategy: The first prong will focus on contacting the applicant group. Focus on your career page, recruitment sites, and social media to make yourself as visible as possible. The second prong should focus on constantly engaging with your customers and employees on the platform. Bolster your employee brand further by posting employee testimonials.
7. Use a holistic brand approach: “We treat our employees just as we treat our customers: with kindness.” That’s the holistic brand approach combining customer and employer branding. It makes your organization appear natural in front of your audience.
8. Train your organization to align them with employer branding: Employer branding is not about clever words and keeping up appearances. It is about truly being honest with the talent you want to attract. Therefore, train, coach, or compensate your employees, so your brand truly is what it says.
9. Keep an eye on the metrics: You cannot improve what you can’t measure. Since employer branding is a process that offers incremental improvements, you must keep an eye on not just your brand awareness, but employee satisfaction, referrals, and the quality of newcomers.

Conclusion

Branding your company in the market will always impact the quality of the workforce you get. Therefore, focus your efforts on fostering good values, culture, and ecosystem within your company. Be always aware of how your employees feel or say about you. And always be mindful about how your customer perceives you.

Use the information to develop better employer branding strategies.

What also helps is getting aid from an executive recruitment agency that can make you look good. ALIGN is a team of executive search consultants assisting companies in acquiring top talent in the current market for their executive positions. We help you find leaders who fit your culture. Our executive search recruiters have nationwide experience in industries like accounting and finance, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, engineering and beyond. Contact us today to get started.