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Employer branding, once a silly startup notion, is now a real driver of talent acquisition growth. Have you started to work on your company’s employer brand? Do your organizational stakeholders even see a need for a great employer brand? Many companies are shifting their company branding procedures and talent acquisition processes to compete for talent in the recruiting world. So what does the future hold for employer branding and the companies that implement EB plans?
56% of people said a company’s reputation is a deciding factor when they are looking for jobs.
This means that your candidates are googling you and checking up on your company on Glassdoor. Applicants are asking their friends about your company and even looking up Yelp reviews to see if you treat your clients and customers right. Your reputation matters and you have to manage it. Where to start? With your own employees!
1. Even more employee engagement techniques.
You think you’ve been reading a lot about different employee engagement tactics, right? Buckle up, the future of employer branding is riddled with creative employee engagement techniques. A strong company culture with mutual engagement benefits is quickly becoming a new workplace norm.
Companies are failing to show how much they value their employees, only 21% of employees say they feel strongly valued.
Are you showing the most likely to champion your employer brand how much they mean to the organization? Survey says: nope. Take the time to implement rewards and recognition programs that give employees not only a sense of accomplishment but convey how imperative their work is to the bottom line. The first step? A great goal alignment platform!
2. Calling all personalities
Careerbuilder found more companies are looking for outgoing attributes within a potential employee including traits like: hard-working, dependable, positive, self-motivated, team-oriented, just to name a few. Stay up to par (if not more so!) with your competition. Hire those enthusiastic francophiles, hire the literary geniuses, the rare wordsmiths of common conversation. Hiring productive and unique personalities can set you apart from your competition. In fact, diverse teams often outperform their homogenized counterparts. Personalities in themselves can be an asset to your company if directed in a productive goal achieving manner. Drive innovation and performance with a diverse team made up of different and unique personalities. Use your performance management software to build profiles of who you need to get to the next level in your talent organization. At Clear Company, we call this the Total Talent Lifecycle and it’s a useful and effective lens to add to your talent acquisition and management arsenal.
3. Millennials. Here they come.
They’re young, they’re almost always around, and they’re coming in herds. Millennials are taking over the workplace. Roughly 77 million millennials make up part of the U.S. population. They come with a slew of talents, different skills, and are up to date on almost all trends surrounding basic social media platforms. Attracting these bright-eyed candidates, is written within again, your company culture, benefits and engagement techniques. Up your ante, and watch the talented candidates pour in. While Saturday Night Live may have recently spoofed Millennials as underworked, overstimulated and generally self-involved, the numbers tell a different story. Millennials crave coaching, love benefits over salary and yes, it’s true, really want work-life balance. Adjust your recruiting strategy to make allowances for, as of this year, the largest generational group in the workplace.
Why Saturday Night Live is wrong about Millennial work ethic:
4. Psychometric testing, personality testing, & much more
Evaluate your employees strengths via personality assessments. Personality tests point out core strengths in individuals’ personality. Psychometrics measure behaviors, and mental capabilities. These tests can help you better determine what area certain employees will thrive in. For example, if an employee takes a personality quiz and scores highly in an innovation category, you may consider shifting their responsibilities to mirror their strengths or putting them on a team where productivity is high, but innovation is non-existent.
Recognizing strengths within employees can build workplace confidence. If an employee sees that you both recognize and appreciate their core strengths, the more they will want to prove themselves via their prolific attributes and strengths. Gallup has made an entire industry of showing people where they can shine most brightly and investing in that. Isn’t it time the workplace started doing (and promoting!) the same? Well, they are. Over 75% of Fortune 500 companies use psychometric profiling when hiring. Are you? If so, are you letting your prospective employees know you are?
5. Role play: pretend your candidates are your customers
Brand doesn’t stop when someone agrees to an interview. When trying to attract new hires, treat them as you would a client or a customer. In order to have a successful company you must have great employees. Attract the right ones by treating them like a customer or a client.
Use client etiquette to attract candidates.
Consider these three tips during the interviewing and onboarding processes.
6. Be time conscious
Promptly notify candidates with relevant information regarding their interviewing process. Candidates could quite possibly be interviewing for other positions in addition to yours. Don’t lose your potential candidate to another employer simply because you weren’t prompt. Create an FAQ’s page to explain to new hires or applicants what they can expect from the process.
7. Keep in contact
If you’re stuck somewhere in the interviewing process, let your candidate know, they’re still in the running, you’re just working out some kinks. If you decide not to hire them, give them a call, let them know why they weren’t chosen. Candidates often crave feedback on what they could or should have done better. Ninety-four percent of candidates want to hear back from the recruiter or hiring manager post interview. Even an email telling them they “did not best fit the qualifications we are seeking” is good enough for the 65% of job seekers who would prefer hearing bad news via email. Which, let’s face it, is basic courtesy!
94% of candidates want to hear back from the recruiter post interview.
8. Speaking of courtesy...
Courtesy counts, be polite constructive and welcoming even if you decide not to hire a candidate. Your company brand is on the line, represent your company values by remaining both professional, and courteous. This will speak volumes to your word of mouth reputation. Nerves, a bad day or frustrating circumstances can frustrate HR professionals and recruiters, but make sure to never take this out on the candidate or speak ill of your company or fellow workers. Be courteous, polite and keep candidates informed. Even if you can’t hire them, you can make their experience amazing.
Even if you don't hire a certain candidate, keep this tip in mind:
“Employment branding seems to be approached by lots of companies in the same manner in which politics works. All talk, no action. All packaging, no substance. Externally beautiful, internally void. If companies would get busy working on overhauling processes, the communities which they are trying to impress would take care of the brand. Because brand is the perception and doesn't always match up with the intended message. Change the original message (the internal processes, the onboarding/interviewing/candidate experience) and the brand will follow.” Amybeth Hale
The future of employer branding is ever evolving. Pay attention to trends, see how your competitors are keeping up with the times, evaluate and then “out think” them. The technical aspects of employee branding may change on a regular basis, but one detail surrounding the fact remains true: projecting a positive uplifting image, while being both respectful to your employees and engaging in company culture attracts people to your brand.
