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How Your Employer Brand Helps (Or Hurts) The Hiring Process

Written by: Ben Hanson
Published on: Nov 6, 2017
Category:

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You hear a lot about branding these days. Brand values, brand differentiators, brand ambassadors, and so on. These hot-topic discussions about branding focus on customer engagement and building that important business to consumer relationship. But there’s another important branding opportunity that most businesses overlook…another relationship that’s just as important—your employer brand.

Employer branding may be an unfamiliar term to most, but HR departments and business owners need to understand its implications for the sake of future company growth.

The strongest companies are always hiring. They’re always willing to find room for top talent whenever it’s available. But if the business has a weak or unappealing employer brand, that top talent will pass by and never look back.

So What Is an Employer Brand?

According to one online recruiting firm, “An employer brand refers to the perceptions key stakeholders, and more specifically current and potential employees, have of your organization. An effective employer brand presents your organization as a good employer and a great place to work and can, as a result, help with recruitment, retention and generally affect market perception of your company.”

A strong overall company brand certainly plays into how current and potential employees view your company, but the employer brand—distinct from the consumer-facing brand—matters more. Having a good impression of a business from a consumer’s point of view might plant the seed in a candidate’s mind that the company could be a good place to work. However, that positive impression does not always translate into action in the way of actually applying for a job.

Why Employer Branding is Important (Now More than Ever)

employer branding2A well-developed employer brand, “as indicated by an individual having a positive impression of your company as a place to work, is twice as likely to be linked to job consideration as [merely] a strong company brand,” according to a 2012 LinkedIn.com whitepaper (emphasis added).

Tweet: Competition for top talent is only going to increase as technology evolves. @JobsHQ #EmployerBranded #ContentMarketing

Hiring people with the skills needed to keep your company competitive in such a landscape is as important as maintaining that overall company brand that attracts paying customers.

Branding is all about maintaining that top-of-mind awareness—company branding targets the consumer, whereas employer branding targets your current and future employees. 

Tweet: Your current employees are the biggest asset to your #EmployerBranded #ContentMarketing goals. @JobsHQ

Use them to help define the message you will use to attract their future co-workers.

How to Develop Your Employer Brand

It’s never too late to start working on developing (or improving) your employer brand. If you’re starting from scratch, it’s best to do a little bit of research and inward reflection on what you want your company to stand for in the hearts and minds of your employees—both current and future.

Use this #JobsHQInfographic to guide you along the way:

Employer Brand JobsHQ Infographic

With this approach – and a clearer understanding of how your #EmployerBranded #ContentMarketing can work for you – your hiring team can start to develop and refine what your company stands for as an employer.

As competition for hiring gets tighter and tighter, knowing what sets your company apart—and being able to communicate that to potential candidates—will help you build a workforce that will keep your business growing.

Ready to get started? Talk to one of our helpful Recruitment Marketing Consultants today from 8 am – 5 pm CST at 1-888-514-4473 or email us any time at: jobs@jobshq.com