Best Practices for Employer Branding

Employer Branding

Attracting and retaining talented candidates require efforts and some well-thought strategies. Wouldn’t it be great if the top talents knock your door for job instead of you looking for talented candidates? For this, you need to create a brand for yourself that stands out in this competitive market. Employer branding refers to the process of promoting an organization in a way that attracts the desired target group which the company wants to recruit or retain. Candidates now have the freedom to select the employers as well as positions they want to work for. Also, good candidates always do some research about the organization before applying for a job. Thus, to get the best employees onboard, you need to be excellent in employer branding.

Here are the best practices for employer branding that you must adopt:

1. Define your Vision, Mission and Values

The most important step of building an employer brand is asking yourself why a candidate would want to work with you. Define your organization’s vision, mission and values clearly and express them through your employer branding communication. However, in this area, many companies tend to put their focus on millennials. But it’s important to note that your branding strategy should be focused on all types of prospective hires. As a matter of fact a recent survey suggests that millennials are the least purpose-driven generation and the sense of purpose grows along with the career. Thus it’s important to communicate your vision and mission not only to the prospective hires but also to your long term employees.

2. Go Digital

In this era everything is going digital and so should your employer branding. Having a good website is must that explains your work as well as work culture. A survey has revealed that 89% of the job seekers are of the opinion that mobile devices are an important means of searching jobs and 45% have revealed that they use mobile devices for job search at least once a day. It’s a convenient way of learning about an employer’s work culture and atmosphere. Thus, you must ensure that your website contains a “career” page which displays your brand in an interactive and structured manner.

3. Use Social Media

A huge number of applicants visit the social media profiles of organizations (especially LinkedIn) before applying for a job. Also a number of candidates evaluate an employer brand through social media channels. Thus, its’ important to have a good social media strategy not only to communicate your employer brand to top talents but also for stimulating employee engagement. You can chalk out innovative ways of using social media for successful branding like publishing company reviews, personal insight into the work culture, corporate influencers etc.

4. Employee Onboarding

Employee onboarding is another important strategy that must be considered for employer branding. Your organization must put efforts to ensure a smooth transition for new hires. This not only strengthens your employer brand but also helps in increasing the chances of long-term employment. You can use online forums or platforms to enable new hires to interact with employees, ask questions, express their opinions and become familiar with the structure of the organization.

5. Build Leadership Capabilities

Research suggests that the majority of managers are not trained on how to manage or build an employer brand. Managing a brand could be a huge challenge and its’ important to optimize the leadership capabilities of your organization. Instead of relying on one or two leaders for building an employer brand, you need to create awareness and capabilities among a broader range of employees. Invest generously in training your employees on employer branding.

Best practices for employer branding include smart strategies, strong leadership and alignment with the latest trends and technologies. However, while building your brand you should never promise what you cannot deliver.