Why Employer Branding is Important for HR?
Attracting top talent in a candidate’s market is anything but easy. Now imagine a scenario where the same talent is knocking at your door instead of you having to identify and attract them. Sounds great?
Not surprisingly, a strong company brand is most likely to help recruiters attract prospective candidates faster and retain them for longer. Knowing your company’s products, services, and employee experiences are vital for candidates. It helps them to decide, whether or not your business fulfills their career aspirations. This is why talent acquisition leaders have become increasingly focused on employer branding in recent years.
If you want your brand image to go beyond leaving a good impression, then employer branding is one of the best recruitment strategies to influence top talent to apply.
10 Employer Branding Best Practices to Attract Top Industry Talent
Use Online Reviews to Your Advantage
You can’t control online reviews, but as an employer you can definitely control your response. Use a candidate experience survey or gain insights from Glassdoor to create a compelling employer brand.
For instance, if your past candidates are sharing a negative experience, use the feedback to train your HR team on providing a positive candidate experience. If your reviews are a little harsh, respond to them with empathy and grace by telling them how you are trying to address the issue. You should focus on improving your ways to avoid such situations in future.
Be Active on Social Media Channels
Use social media to showcase a magnetic culture. You company culture should be such that employee aspirations are valued, creativity fostered, opinions respected and extra efforts are rewarded. Culture is an important consideration for every prospective candidate so use your careers portal to reflect your company’s vision, mission and values effectively.
Reinforce your identity by leveraging an applicant tracking system that lets you customize the careers page by adding your company logo and your brand’s color scheme. Bring in some personalization with real-life pictures of your employees or feature an office tour video to give your potential employees a feel of what it’s like to work for you.
Make Your Employees Your Brand Ambassadors
Reviews and ratings from existing employees rank much higher in connecting with prospects and creating trust as compared to your marketing campaigns and job adverts. This is why more than 40% of job seekers rely on employee reviews when they sit to zero down on their potential employers.
Identify high performers who are truly engaged and committed to your cultural values and mobilize them to promote your brand on social channels. Leverage their social networks and personal interests to expand your network and establish your credibility in the market.
Have your highly connected employees post, tweet and share about important organizational updates, promote open positions, and publish their personal and organizational achievements. When this internal arsenal is used for advocacy, you can easily attract prospective candidates and influence them with your brand power.
Use Your Core Values to Reflect Your Candidate-friendly Culture
What according to you inspires a candidate to apply? An attractive compensation? A balanced work-life? A meaningful career ladder? Or all of these? Today’s candidate desires a dream job that offers a conducive environment, helpful co-workers and an encouraging boss, over and above a high salary and job satisfaction. Can your cultural values play a role here?
Use your core values to tell the world why you are a great place to work at. When prospective candidates will feel that their personal goals are aligned with your core values and philosophy, they would not want to go elsewhere.
Develop a Mobile Responsive Careers Site
It is important to have a mobile responsive careers site that loads on every device in less than 5 seconds (because first impressions are everything). Integrating popular social networking sites in your careers site makes the entire application process quick and easy. Keep the application process short and specific – don’t waste their time.
Brand your automated emails with company logo and corporate videos. Keep the candidate notified at every stage of the sourcing funnel right from sourcing to onboarding. Finally, replace standard questions and cookie-cutter interviews with a personalized interview session.
Make the Employee Onboarding Process as Smooth as Possible
Making the employee onboarding process seamless for new hires will not only work to strengthen your brand but also increase your retention rate. You can also socialize your employee onboarding program through your branded careers site. This will give your potential employees a glimpse of your company culture.
Design a Meaningful Career Ladder with Training Programs
Bringing top talent onboard is just half the battle. So, if you want them to stay with you and be productive, then design a lucrative career path. You can start with planning your training programs in a manner that helps employees develop their knowledge and skills.
If you cannot promote them, train them on using new tools. You can have them attend workshops that further enhance their professional portfolio. In addition to this, you can also provide them with e-learning courses or let them be a part of special projects. You should help them with something that adds value to their professional career.
All of this will work to keep your employees happy with their progress and in turn reduce your attrition rate.
Revamp Performance Management
Research shows that you can increase employee retention through effective performance management. Transform your annual performance management system into a daily discussion that offers prompt feedback. In short, help your employees to set career goals that get results.
A simplified performance management process that aims to continuously improve performance and productivity while integrating the personal development of employees is sure to boost retention in the long run.
Recognize the Efforts of your Employees with Tangible Rewards
Perks don’t have to be extravagant like ping-pong tables, free food, exotic vacations or on-site gyms. You can also provide inexpensive perks to motivate your employees. Conduct a poll to know what your employees value and design a rewards and recognition program accordingly. You can offer them rewards they really want. You can also introduce employee-friendly policies like work from home or flexible work hours. This will help you to keep your employees happy and highly productive.
Integrate Technology to Uniquely Position Your Brand as an Employer
Any forward-thinking company consistently adapts to change and keeps pace with advancing technology. In recent years, recruitment has also reached a new level of sophistication. With the advent of applicant tracking systems, employers are now optimizing their application procedures for mobile devices.
It allows recruiters to customize and streamline the entire sourcing funnel from start to finish. An ATS automates every single procedure right from keeping in touch with candidates and scheduling interviews to sharing candidate reviews with team members and filtering the right fit.
In a tight job market, an ATS helps you clear the clutter and gain a competitive advantage. It is empowering progressive companies to enhance productivity and reduce costs even as the ongoing war for talent gets fierce. You too can become an employer of choice with this innovation in technology!
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