Employees are one of the most valuable assets of a company. However, as admitted by 43% of HR professionals, finding the best hires is a struggle due to high competition with other companies.
If you’re experiencing the same problem, it’s time to learn about employer branding. Your business can use it to improve the hiring process and find the best future employees.
In this article, you‘ll learn about employer branding, why it’s important, and how you can use it to find the best hires. Let’s get started.
What Is Employer Branding?
Employer branding is a branding strategy that represents your reputation as an employer. Working on employer branding means using your company resources to elevate the company’s reputation, making it more attractive for job seekers.
Employer branding consists of several elements, including:
- Company culture. By developing your company culture, you pave the way for seamless employer branding strategies.
- HR and PR work. Employer branding combines both HR and PR work to be successful. It requires maintaining your branding in all situations, from posting job vacancies to hiring new recruits.
- Company branding. The factors included here are a website powered by excellent web hosting, social media, and other channels that shape your brand.
- Employees. They are the foundation of all businesses. A strategy based on the employees’ best interests helps establish a strong employer brand.
While employer branding is all about creating the message for your target audience, recruitment marketing is how you share that message.
Thus, employer branding needs to work along with recruitment marketing to succeed and attract the best hires.
Much like other marketing funnels, recruitment marketing consists of four processes in total, namely:
- Awareness
- Engagement
- Consideration
- Hire
Why Focus on Employer Branding in Recruitment
Focusing on employer branding brings in several benefits, such as:
Stand Out from Competitors
As stated previously, one of the hiring challenges is the high competition with other companies. It’s a competitive landscape with employers trying to attract and hire the best candidates.
Employer branding helps define the right message for the target marketing, including why your company is a great place to work. When working on employer branding, you can also follow the latest recruitment trends and create your own hiring strategies.
Attract the Best Talents
A positive employer brand helps tackle hiring and HR challenges and recruit the best talents. By choosing the best talents, you help the company prosper in the long run.
Employer branding attracts the best talents because it answers the question of “what’s in it for me?” from the viewpoint of the potential candidates.
Reduce Hiring Costs
Your hiring cost is called a cost per hire. It’s the metrics you use to determine how much money is invested in hiring.
Many internal and external factors affect it. However, without proper employer branding management, bad hires may cost up to $240,000 according to the Undercover Recruiter’s report.
Employer branding helps reduce hiring costs by focusing on quality instead of quantity. This means you can hire one employee instead of two or more, reducing the costs and improving results.
Retain Your Best Employees
Employer branding is not only about hiring but also retaining your best employees. The employee happiness rate is proof of how good the employer brand is.
Better hiring decisions improve employee retention, automatically lowering the turnover rate. A low turnover rate means you can save money by reducing payrolls and resource expenses for new hires.
By retaining your best employees, you can also turn them into ambassadors or recruiters. Let them set examples and show prospective employees what it’s like to work at your company.
How to Find the Best Hires Using Employer Branding
Here are eight tips that combine HR and marketing to help your business find the best hires.
1. Define Company Values
Defining your company and team values at the start will act as a foundation for employer branding. The company values tell you where you should go, what approach you need, and, eventually, reach your business goals.
They help increase trust for employees and potential hires. In the long run, it increases satisfaction and improves the overall internal working environment.
To help define your company values, ask yourself these questions:
- How do my team members feel about these values?
- How will the company mission reflect these values?
- How will these values benefit the employees?
- What results will I achieve as an employer?
2. Communicate Your Company Culture
After determining your company values, create and communicate your company culture.
From the standpoint of job seekers, your company culture is a selling point, telling prospective employees why they should choose your company over others.
When highlighting your company culture, remember to use relevant social media platforms. Each social media has various audience backgrounds, so communicate your company culture with the right content and in the right channel.
Alternatively, focus on employee-generated content. For example, Drift showcases its remote work culture through its Instagram content.
3. Build Your Employee Value Proposition
Employee value proposition (EVP) is similar to employer branding. It’s what existing and prospective employees get from working at your company – career development opportunities, benefits, new skills, etc.
Building your EVP works by changing your mindset. Think of your potential candidates as customers, and you’re the seller.
Thus, it’s necessary to tailor your company’s benefits package to fit your EVP and company’s culture. To do this, you should:
- Calculate the benefit to cost ratio.
- Understand your employee demographics.
- Provide value to all employees, even the remote ones.
- Consider the essentials, like healthcare or wellness packages that help improve employee welfare.
4. Promote Your Employer Branding Strategies
After building your employee value proposition, the next step is to promote it through your recruitment marketing strategies, spreading the company values and culture to the best talents.
A good way to reach more potential candidates is by communicating with your social media followers and mutual connections. For example, start using LinkedIn to promote your EVP:
- Create a keyword-rich LinkedIn profile.
- Emphasize visual branding for great first impressions.
- Encourage employees to work on their profiles, sharing experiences and expanding their network.
- Post job descriptions.
5. Reflect Employer Branding on the Job Description
Job seekers learn about the company they’re applying to through the job descriptions. Therefore, use the job description to introduce your employer branding.
Start by emphasizing your uniqueness, providing reasons why they should choose your company. Do this by mentioning growth, learning opportunities, and other elements of your employee value proposition. Align them with your company’s vision and mission.
Then, create an effective job description by:
- Creating a compelling job title.
- Highlighting your company’s benefits.
- Adding photos of your team members.
- Talking about your company culture.
6. Identify Potential Candidates
Writing a great job description helps find future employees that understand and relate to your employer branding. It is a first step to separate regular candidates from the ones that best suit your company.
Once you’ve got several candidates, shortlist the ones that show interest in your employer branding. Doing so takes you a step closer to completing the recruitment funnel and hiring new employees aligned with your company culture.
7. Maintain Employee Happiness
Your existing employees play a significant role in employer branding. When they are happy, you create a positive work environment and also boost your company’s reputation.
A positive work environment increases the number of people interested in applying to your company. It also helps expand your hiring network through the employee’s mutuals on social media.
Some of the ways to maintain employee happiness include:
- Promoting transparent communication.
- Providing perks and benefits.
- Listening to their feedback.
- Encouraging proactiveness.
- Rewarding their hard work.
8. Build Engagement Among Employees
Building engagement among your employees means checking more than happiness in the workplace. It involves making sure existing employees are committed to the company’s goals and their own role in achieving them.
To build employee engagement, start from the onboarding process to the day-to-day communication. Engaged employees have more ownership and help the company deliver better results.
Also, it makes them a great choice when it comes to communicating the company’s values and recruiting the best candidates.
Conclusion
Employer branding is a set of strategies companies use to find and hire the best talents. Focusing on employer branding provides benefits that help you stand out from competitors to retain the best employees.
We’ve discussed eight ways to find the best hires with employer branding:
- Define company values.
- Highlight your company culture.
- Build your employee value proposition.
- Promote your employer branding.
- Reflect employer branding on the job description.
- Identify potential candidates.
- Maintain employee happiness.
- Build engagement among employees.
Working on your employer branding using these strategies will help improve your hiring process. Good luck!
