In the 1990s, we began to see a paradigm shift in the employment market; employment branding became important to attract the right candidates. Prior to that time, companies could pretty much pick and choose from a seemingly endless pool of qualified employees willing to fill any opening. As the US has aged and baby boomers have begun to retire, the talent pool has shrunk, meaning companies now spend more and more time and resources finding qualified candidates.
While this trend was been noted in the HR market, it took the recent publication of seminal works like The War for Talent , Winning the Talent Wars and Topgrading to raise awareness of the issue among corporate management in general. Now we must move from recognizing the issue to developing practical methods to address it. One discipline we believe is central is Employment Branding.
So what are we talking about? Every marketer knows the importance of positioning your brand in the minds of your consumers. It’s what drives consumers to pay a premium for products with ‘Intel Inside’ and businesses to opt for BASF over commodity chemicals. In much the same way, employment branding can work for companies in the employment marketplace, and that’s one element we address in becoming an employment destination. Very simply, it means becoming known as a great place to work so that talented individuals looking for a better opportunity think of your organization first.
The value of employment branding has been proven empirically. A 2005 Maritz poll found that 53% of employees chose their company based on its brand image . So while employment branding sounds simple enough, just like product branding, it requires a conscious commitment of both time and resources to be successful. In working with a variety of clients from mid-sized to Fortune 100, we’ve identified some principals that make a difference in employment branding success. These are essential in becoming an employment destination.
Identify Your Current Employment Brand
Ground zero for any employment branding effort is a definition of where you are today. What do your employees think about your company and what is the buzz on the streets? What is your employee value proposition, or the selling points that make your company a great place to work? Where you start on this exercise depends on the information you already have on hand, but at a minimum you’ll need to know:
What your current employees think—how your employees perceive the company goes beyond satisfaction to uncover how they really feel about your company and their job. What do they say when someone asks them about their job? Do they enjoy working for your company, do they feel their work is important, that they’re making a contribution, that they are being fulfilled? Are they happy with the benefits you offer, do they feel they’re treated with respect and valued by their bosses, workers and peers? These are metrics that management needs to monitor and consciously influence in any employment branding effort.
*What do former employees think—and what do they say about you? Here, exit interviews are valuable but outside research may help you uncover important feelings and beliefs that an exiting employee may feel reluctant to share with the HR department or their former managers.
*What prospects think—this is without a doubt the most important aspect of employment branding and is often the most difficult to predict and control. The image a prospective employee forms depends on a variety of sources including employment ads, job fair efforts, your website, your corporate branding efforts, their experience with your company in the event of an interview and the word on the streets. There are a number of ways you can determine this—through candidate exit interviews, market research and self-examination .
Once you have an idea of your starting point, you can begin to manage your employment brand.
Determine and Manage the Gap
Upon close examination, most companies find there is some room to cover between where they are today and where they’d like to be if they’re to be ideally positioned to win the war for talent. While setting your sites on the image you’d like to convey is key, setting realistic goals is equally important.
Do your homework to find out what you’re up against first as this can help you frame your positioning. As in product branding, it helps to know your competition and do a SWOT analysis to determine where you may have a competitive advantage. Questions you’ll want to answer include:
*Who are your competitors? In the employment market, you’re not only competing with others in your industry, but you’re also competing with other companies in your locality/region.
*What are these competitors offering current and potential employees? Do some sleuthing to find out about their HR policies, recruiting practices along with talent acquisition strategies and tactics.
Armed with a realistic assessment of the competition your company faces, you should be able to determine areas where you offer an advantage to potential employees and capabilities you can shore up to widen this advantage.
Next, you’ll need to lay out a game plan for publicizing your strengths and widening your sources of advantage. This is a process that requires commitment throughout the organization, as becoming an employment destination becomes a corporate goal. The leadership team has to instill a culture promoting practices that combine to make current employees more satisfied and attract the high level talent needed to sustain growth.
Begin by assessing each touch point in the candidate experience with your organization. What is the first touch point? If it’s a newspaper ad, an online job posting, an appearance at a job fair, etc. recognize this as your first opportunity to establish your employment brand. Spend as much time crafting the message that prospective employees will see as your marketing group does on their messaging for customers and prospects. Enlist the help of the marketing communications group in honing your communications, placing your company’s best foot forward. Your goal for the first step is to interest the prospect in finding out more about your company and its opportunities for employment.
The next touch point is often the career website. This should also be a joint effort of the best marketing minds of the organization to effectively position the unique advantages your company can offer prospective employees. Caution: If there is an application that’s part of your screening process, don’t let this become an obstacle. Consider this--odds are that the most qualified individuals for any given opening are already employed. Make the application as brief and easy to complete as you can to avoid losing the best candidates to an arcane form.
The next touch point is some type of interview. Pay close attention to the details in setting up this interview. We can tell numerous horror stories of clients that spent untold resources to attract wonderful candidates, only to blow their chances of ever hiring them through sloppy planning at the interview stage. Most interviews are set up via phone or email. Do not relegate this important candidate touch point to a junior member of the organization. Make sure that whoever is communicating with the candidate is delivering the correct messaging. Don’t drop the ball in making arrangements for the visit. If a candidate is traveling for the interview, consider this your best opportunity to sell them on the advantages your company and location has to offer. Make sure these come through loud and clear during their visit as you plan their itinerary. It’s one thing to tell candidates about the hospitality of your area, but take the extra step so they feel it first hand by making sure they are met at the airport by someone warm and knowledgeable.
Orchestrate the interview process just like your sales team does a customer visit. Make sure that everyone who will interview the candidate has been coached in delivering your employment value proposition. While it should go without saying, make sure that the interview schedule has some flexibility built in so the candidate is not kept waiting. Remember that they’ve taken valuable time from their schedule to talk to your company—make sure that you have contingency plans to cover emergencies that may require a manager to delay their appointment.
The last touch point is follow up, and it’s one many organizations fail to recognize. It should begin during the interview as you set expectations about the follow-up process. Let the candidate know what the steps in your hiring process will be and when they can expect to hear from you—and stick to it. Follow up with every candidate, including those you’ve opted not to invite back. Assume that everyone has told several of their friends and associates about their interview. Make sure that they report a positive experience, as you may find yourself recruiting some of their contacts (or going back to one of these candidates) in the future. Lastly, do candidate exit interviews. When you follow up with them, inquire about their experience and perceptions to learn how you can improve the candidate experience and bolster your employee value proposition.
As talent becomes more difficult to locate and attract, organizations must become deliberate in positioning themselves as attractive, rewarding career destinations. Employment branding is a discipline that is every bit as important for today’s companies as corporate and product branding. Management needs to make a commitment of resources to ensure that their organization’s employment brand has positioned them to attract, recruit and retain the most qualified talent in today’s competitive market.
