Make the most of your employer branding with a little creativity.
The best ideas for building your employer branding strategy.
How important is employer branding in recruitment? Branding might be something your business associates with marketing or consumer-facing goods and services, but your brand is key to a good recruitment strategy as well.
The employer branding process involves sharing with potential employees the “story” of your brand – the history, growth, core values, and possibly most important, the personality. Applicants want to understand the kind of place they’d be spending 40+ hours a week, and employer branding is key to attracting the best talent to your organization.
Here are some employer branding ideas to help you recruit and retain the best talent.
Host an Open House
One employer brand example is allowing potential applicants to tour your office. Usually, candidates don’t get a chance to see where they’d be working until they’ve gone through the process of applying, but an on-site open house functions kind of like a job fair. Applicants can get questions answered and get a feel for where they might be working and who they might be working with. Tours would consist of meeting with me several key employees who could talk intelligently about the company, its history, and goals, without giving away a competitive advantage or any confidential information.
Even if the people who come through for a tour don’t decide to apply or if it’s not a good fit for them, it’s not time wasted. They might feel compelled to share info about your organization with other people who might then go on to apply and add value to your business. Word of mouth is an important art of the employer branding process.
Go Behind the Scenes
Another idea in developing your employer branding strategy is a more digital way of showcasing your space and your people. Lots of organizations will advertise their job postings on Facebook or Twitter, but more should consider using platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to give people a better understanding of what the position entails or where an applicant would be working.
People want to understand where they’d be working, whether that’s the space, the people they’d be working with or reporting to, or just how that position would be supporting the brand’s overall mission. Snapchat and Instagram stories can give people a glimpse into the behind the scenes of a business – what the office looks like, the personalities of coworkers, and info on the kinds of projects they might be working on. Using short videos or pictures to show users this is a creative way to grow your employer branding.
Re-evaluate Your Perks
If your company offers its hires something cool for joining the team, make sure that gets mentioned in your job listing. If your company can’t afford huge perks, like a yoga room, play up your other intangible benefits – like the cool coworkers, good work-life balance, and other potentially attractive things that will draw applicants to your organization.
Leave Something Behind
If you’re meeting people at job fairs, tours, or at outreach events, don’t forget to give them swag to remember you by. Not only does a gift seem like a fun gesture for your brand to use, the kind of gift can say a lot about the personality of your company. Is your company a down to earth law firm that wants to attract other likeminded people? Or an up and coming startup? Don’t be afraid to let your branded promotional products be a unique match to what your brand is all about.
Does your company include any employer branding activities in your hiring process? Have you used recruitment branding ideas to help you reach more qualified candidates?
