Brand Awareness
Published: July 23, 2024
Recruiting top talent can be a time-consuming and expensive process. But, it doesn’t need to be. Incorporating employer branding into your recruitment process can save you time, resources, and even money.
Employer branding is how you market your company to prospective and current employees. It’s how your current employees perceive your company’s reputation, and it’s the first impression potential employees have during the job-seeking process.
Incorporating employer branding into your recruitment touchpoints ensures that every interaction with your company reflects the brand’s values, mission, and culture. As a result, your company will stand out as a great place to work, attracting top-tier talent and instilling a sense of belonging and loyalty in your existing team members.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the importance of employer branding and share employer branding initiatives that you can use to improve your recruitment process.
Here are a few reasons why you need to implement an employer branding strategy:
Providing an exceptional candidate experience from interviews to onboarding can make a positive difference. By ensuring the application process is seamless (and reducing the time-to-hire), you'll be showcasing the company in the best light. When recruiters are responsive and organized, candidates are more likely to be invested in the process and engaged when they start work.
Additionally, gamification can further enhance the candidate experience by introducing elements such as point scoring, competitions, or challenges that make training later on more interactive and fun.
Think of recruiting like setting up a dating profile. If you are specific about what you’re looking for, then you’ll attract matches who share your values, goals, and expectations.
Strong employer branding helps attract candidates who align with your company ethos, resulting in better matches. Plus, these employees will likely feel more connected to your brand, which reduces turnover rates.
When your branding is embedded in every stage of the recruitment process, your prospective hires have clear expectations of what it’s like to work for your company. When candidates are equipped with a realistic understanding of what the job will be like, it is less likely that unmet expectations will lead to high turnover rates.
Let’s say you’re hiring call center agents. Most call centers will struggle with call avoidance at some point. But, if you make it clear during the hiring process what the rules are and what constitutes misconduct, you’ll avoid hiring individuals who would struggle.
Traditional methods of posting open positions on job boards and hiring recruiting firms can make recruiting expensive. Tapping your current employees’ networks and gathering employee referrals is not only more cost effective, but it generates higher-quality talent.
The cost per hire of a referred employee is only the amount of the employee referral bonus that you’re offering. For example, the average employee referral bonus is $2,500.
Put yourself in the shoes of a job hunter who’s been presented with two job offers. The first company has been communicative about what to expect, outlining its unique values and benefits. The second company has not gone beyond a generic job description.
Naturally, you’d probably choose the first offer. That’s because strong employer branding makes all the difference in today’s competitive job market.
A strong employer branding strategy helps shine a light on the most exciting training and development opportunities that you offer team members, such as AI sales coaching, reskilling, and cross-skilling courses.
Candidates who have a positive experience applying to your company are more likely to share their experience with others.
Word-of-mouth recommendations are a valuable tool for building and boosting your reputation in the talent market, thereby making your company even more desirable to job seekers.
In fact, 75% of candidates research a company’s reputation and employer brand before applying for a job. And, 69% of candidates would reject an offer from a company with a poor employer brand.
Now let’s take a look at the candidate journey and how your employer branding can strengthen the recruitment process.
To optimize your recruiting process, follow these five steps:
The first step is to ensure that your recruitment goals match up with your overall brand identity.
For example, if you are a CCaaS (call center as a service) provider, your core values may be a commitment to innovation and customer service excellence. You want to impress upon potential new hires the importance of communication, empathy, and creative problem-solving, in your company’s culture early on.
From job postings to interviews, you want to be consistent in your messaging, reinforcing your employer branding at every step. Moving from the application stage, to interviews, to training and onboarding should not come with any surprises about who your organization is at heart.
The candidate journey is a multi-step experience a potential candidate goes through during the recruitment process (e.g., from applying to interviewing to onboarding).
During the candidate journey, there are seven touchpoints where employer branding can have a positive impact:
Awareness. Your brand’s social media presence, website, or word-of-mouth promotion generates brand awareness.
Interest. Describing what makes your company different from others will pique potential candidates’ interest.
Application. How you communicate with applicants during the process will leave a lasting impression. Consider using middleware software to connect your various HR systems and ensure a seamless flow of information (e.g., your application has been received).
Screening and Scheduling. Implementing internal communication software can help streamline interactions within the recruitment team, ensuring that information is shared efficiently and candidates receive timely updates.
Interview. The interview process differs between companies. You might opt for multiple stages, trial shifts, group interviews, panels, one-on-one, in-person or over the phone. While you are assessing the applicant’s suitability, they are also forming opinions about the brand.
Job Offer. The moment of decision, whatever you decide, the way that you break the news will have a lasting impact on a candidate’s view of your company.
Onboarding. Provide new employees with the tools and support they need to succeed in their new role. For example, a new hire in a sales role might not know all the specifics about finding leads until after the training. But, they should be able to answer questions like ‘what is sales prospecting’ from the overviews provided while onboarding.
Remember, during each of these touchpoints, your brand’s messaging and hiring team’s responsiveness can have a positive (or negative impact), which brings us to....
At each stage of the candidate experience outlined above, your recruitment campaign materials and content need to directly reflect your employer branding.
Carefully scrutinize your job descriptions, mission statements, recruitment videos, social media posts, and email templates. Are they visually appealing? Are they consistent? Do they effectively communicate your company’s culture, values, and employees’ experiences?
If you’re struggling to standardize tone of voice and brand messaging across various materials, look into AI templates to help your team get on the same page.
No one can give more authentic insight into your workplace than the people who currently work there. That’s why employee testimonials are so useful for communicating your employee brand. They help candidates imagine themselves in the role and what it is like working for your company.
Showcase your employee testimonials in job postings on your website and LinkedIn posts. LinkedIn, in particular, makes it easy for your employees to reshare your posts with their networks, which increases brand reach and builds trust.
What if you could turn your employees into brand ambassadors?
It’s worth incentivizing existing employees to recommend like-minded individuals who they believe would be a good fit within your organization. To ensure high-quality referrals, try implementing a probation period (e.g., 90 days) which the new hire must pass before any hiring bonus is granted.
Source: LinkedIn
Incorporating elements of your employer brand into your recruitment touchpoints can have a positive impact. Recruitment is an opportunity to communicate your company’s story and core values to high-quality job seekers.
Remember, first impressions are key, and candidates are judging you, too. Strong employer branding attracts top talent, fosters loyalty, and builds a positive reputation.
For the best candidate journey, you should be continuously monitoring and looking for ways to improve. Gather feedback from candidates about their experiences and use this to refine your processes and materials, ensuring that every touchpoint consistently reflects and promotes your employer brand.
Consistency matters, so make sure your brand messaging is in alignment with your company values from the beginning of the recruitment process to the end. An employee advocacy tool like GaggleAMP can help your brand consistently and efficiently promote a culture of sharing and engagement on your social channels.
Schedule a demo today and start amplifying your employer brand and recruitment efforts.
Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness
