What elements should you consider when creating your employer brand? Iain Wills, managing director of Powermeeter, gives his insight and explains how a strong employer brand can support the process of recruitment.
At Powermeeter, we spend a lot of time meeting with in-house recruiters to discuss the challenges that arise throughout the recruitment process; the quantity and quality of candidates sourced, their cultural fit, diversity considerations, their past experience and the development of on-demand talent pools, to name a few.
With these challenges identified, we recognise that they are influenced by a key element: employer brand.
Employer branding and recruitment
In many ways, a brand represents the organisation’s values, and if communicated effectively, it can encourage an engaging and effective recruitment experience.
An employer brand should be created with the organisation’s culture and values in mind, as well as prospective candidates. The projection of an employer brand will ideally seek to be positive and aspirational, while remaining honest to candidates about what a career with the business entails. Authenticity is essential; the brand is the backbone of candidates’ awareness and engagement with the organisation, and it could be counterproductive if the expectation level in candidates’ minds ends up becoming unattainable.
Projecting a strong, realistic, employer brand should become a key part of your recruitment process at every stage – from reaching out to and attracting talent, to educating and informing those in the application process, to encouraging the best-suited candidates to be successful.
In its most effective form, a well-communicated employer brand can have a long-lasting impact – by, for example, encouraging unsuccessful talent to remain engaged and apply for subsequent roles, and helping to improve retention rates by successfully matching employees to opportunities.
Why employer branding is important
As the economy gradually shifts into a more optimistic outlook, I think there are three further reasons that make a well-defined employer brand increasingly important:
- The talent pool is bigger than it’s ever been
Talent is now exposed to a vast array of opportunities as a result of globalisation. Candidates’ expectations of their career paths, as well as of their employers, have influenced a need for organisations to engage, attract and communicate in a more joined-up way than in the past.
- Workforces are multigenerational
Employees of different ages have different expectations of what a career means to them. Therefore, projecting an employer brand that revolves around a strong core of values, is attractive, and is broad enough to resonate with different age groups, is paramount.
- Digitalisation affects your brand
Having a consistent, solid brand identity will help candidates to understand and appreciate your organisation’s values and culture, in this fast-paced, 24/7 world of technology advancements and change.
An effective employer brand is strong and authentic to differentiate itself from competitive organisations. It is versatile enough to be communicated across all platforms to increase candidates’ attraction to the organisation, and to ultimately contribute to improving the recruitment and retention processes.