talent marketing solved: employer brand: your secret ...€¦ · and does it match reality? look at...

Talent Marketing Solved:

Employer brand: your secret weapon to attracting and converting quality candidates

[email protected] | 623.215.0645 | talentmarketingsolved.com | s2esolutions.com

Table of Contents

Introduction: Your employer brand is a secret weapon

Chapter 1: How to uncover your employer brand

Chapter 2: The key players

Chapter 3: Investing in technology to amp up your brand

Conclusion

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It’s the subtle means by which you convince your ideal candidate that they want to work at your organization. In fact, companies with effective brand messaging often don’t need to pay as much as their competitors to attract the right candidates.

They don’t need to rely as heavily on marketing tools because people already know that they want to work there. In fact, according to a study by Indeed, a well-executed employment brand can lead to a 28% reduction in the organization’s turnover rate, a 50% cost per hire reduction, and 50% more qualified applications. An employer brand is an investment you make into bettering your entire organization.

The good news is that you already have an employer brand, whether or not you’re aware of it.

Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. When your employees are sitting with their friends at a coffee shop or chatting with their partner at the end of the day, what are they saying about your organization? Those candid conversations about work-life balance, benefits, and company culture shape the public perception of your company and define your employer brand.

So, you’re probably getting a pretty good idea now of what an employer brand is, but before we go much further, let’s take a moment to discuss what an employer brand is not.

An employer brand IS NOT what your organization says your brand is. It cannot be crafted within the confines of a boardroom. Instead, it needs to come from all corners of your organization. Honesty—telling candidates what your organization is actually like (not just what you think they want to hear)—is the best policy when it comes to employer branding.

This guide is designed to walk you through the process of uncovering your own employer brand. We’ve included information on how to get the most accurate information to inform your brand, who to include in the process, and what technology you may want to consider in order to enhance your brand messaging.

By the time you reach the end of this eBook, you’ll have a step-by-step plan that your organization can implement to develop its brand.

Introduction

Your employer brand is a secret weapon.

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Chapter 1: How to uncover your employer brand

An employer brand is never created. That would imply that it was pulled from nothing into existence. No, an employer brand is always uncovered through research and genuine conversations with the people who know the inner workings of your organization.

In this section, you’ll take on the role of an archaeologist, digging up information and piecing it together to tell your organization’s story, and as the archaeologist, it’s your duty to remain objective. You may discover some unflattering information, but that’s all part of the process. The most important thing you can do, especially in the first couple steps of this journey, is listen. Only by listening will you be able to discover the truth.

Your first step in unearthing your employer brand is to do your research, specifically competitor analysis.

What are your competitors saying about their own organization? What are their value propositions? Your goal is to attract the best candidates, to differentiate yourself from the other available options. You can’t do that if you are doing and saying the exact same thing as your competitors.

Questions to Consider:Who are my competitors?First, you want to figure out exactly who it is that you are competing against to attract top talent to your organization. A “competitor,” in this case, is a term that encompasses more than just the organizations in your industry niche. It also includes anyone who competes for the same target audience of candidates. If you are hiring for a minimum wage job in the retail industry, you are not just competing for candidates against other retailers. You’re competing against anyone hiring for a minimum wage job that requires similar skills, which may also include competitors in the food service and hospitality industries.


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What are those competitors saying about their organizations, and does it match reality?

Look at your competitors’ career sites and their social media. How do they characterize the employee experience? Compare that messaging to how others are describing those companies on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. Do those descriptions match up? Consider how you might position your company to take advantage of where others fall short.

Do my competitors offer a positive candidate experience?

Candidate experience is a large part of your employer brand. If it’s too difficult or unpleasant to apply for a job, that will affect public perception. Take a look at your competitors’ career websites, and put yourself in the shoes of an average jobseeker. What stands out to you? Does the site offer a clear explanation of the application process? What, as a jobseeker, are you left wondering? Examine both the positives and negatives, and think about how your organization can set itself apart to attract those jobseekers.

Questions to Consider:What are employees saying about the company?

Usually, there’s a distinct difference between how the C-Suite executives perceive their employer brand and how the lower-level employees would describe the organization to their friends and family. Even between departments, you’re likely to encounter a number of different perspectives.

The best way to start collecting those perspectives is through a focus group or one-on-one conversations. There’s no substitution for just sitting face-to-face in a room with a group of people to identify what they think and what they’ve experienced.

Step 2: Get some

perspective(s)

This step is where you’ll spend the bulk of your time. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. In fact, you should try to get as many different perspectives as possible.

Your employer brand, as we’ve mentioned, already exists in the way your employees perceive and talk about your organization, so naturally, you’ll want to bring those employees into the process of uncovering that brand.


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What sources of information do I currently have?A focus group isn’t your only tool for uncovering the information you need. You can also find some great information sitting in your filing cabinet. Resources like exit surveys, onboarding feedback, and employee testimonials all hold valuable information that you can evaluate to find commonalities and trends in the way employees view your organization.

What are the common themes?Combining everything you’ve learned from your focus groups, one-on-one conversations, surveys, and any other resource you can get your hands on, figure out your commonalities. What words are the majority of people using to describe your company culture? As a whole, what do people most enjoy about working at your organization?

The truth won’t always be flattering. What do you do, for example, when you find out that employees think that your company doesn’t actually offer a good work-life balance? In that case, you’ll want to highlight the positives of working in such an environment. If you frame the work as fast-paced and challenging but also rewarding and exciting, you’ll attract candidates who will thrive in your organization.

You’ve spent months in focus groups, and you’ve finally emerged from your pile of notes with a cohesive, comprehensive document outlining your newly excavated brand identity. Now it’s time to share it with the world.

Keep in mind that the way you roll your new messaging out internally will be just as important as how you present it externally. If a candidate’s first face-to-face interaction with a company is drastically different from what they’ve experienced online through your career site and social media, you may lose that candidate early in the hiring process. That’s why you need to make sure that your employees, especially key figures within the organization, are informed and on board.

Questions to Consider:How will we communicate our messaging to current employees?Your employees act as brand ambassadors for your company. They’re the boots on the ground spreading your message, so it’s important to consider how key figures within the organization are communicating your employer brand. Whether your hiring manager is interviewing candidates for a new position or your CEO is leading a Lunch & Learn for current employees, people should hear a consistent message across your organization.

Step 3: Spread the Word


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What media will we use to convey our brand messaging to external audiences?In addition to internal consistency, you’ll also need to ensure that your brand is consistent within the media you produce—including hiring documents, marketing collateral, and website copy—and across your content distribution platforms.

While the core principles of your brand identity will stay the same, you will need to consider how you’ll tailor that messaging based on your audience. You won’t necessarily be using the same copy on LinkedIn as you will on Instagram. Consider the person who is likely reading a particular piece of content. What is their intention? If they’ve landed on your career site, they’re likely further along in the funnel than someone who just happens to see your sponsored Facebook post. Consider your audience’s perspective; then tailor the message to match.

As with any new initiative, you’ll want to see the difference it makes to your organization over time—not just in the short-term but also well into the future.

So, before you roll out your brand externally, figure out what success looks like to you. Does it mean lower employee turnover rate? Better quality of hires? Schedule check-ins at the 30-, 60-, and 90-day marks to gauge your progress in the initial months; then return to those metrics at least once every year to see how far you’ve come and find ways to improve. Employee exit surveys are an especially helpful resource in measuring whether or not you’ve been successful at uncovering and conveying your employer brand.

Questions to Consider:What metrics will we use to gauge success?While it may feel good to see those initial impression metrics trend upward as you start to share your new message, those numbers aren’t an accurate indicator of the long-term success of your initiative.

However, that’s not to say you can’t draw some conclusions from short-term metrics. You should, for example, keep a close eye on how people are interacting with your website. Are they staying on the site longer? Are they looking at more pages? Is the site acting as an effective tool to draw people in and help them find the information they’re looking for?

In the long-term, however, you’ll want to examine the concrete impact that your employer brand has had on your organization by evaluating metrics such as turnover rate and quality of hires.

Step 4: Keep track

of your performance


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What’s our baseline?

Before you roll out your new brand messaging, you’ll want to take the time to evaluate and record any current metrics you may find useful. These facts and figures will allow you to compare your results against a baseline and view the overall impact that your initiative has had on the organization. Keep a record of this progress and evaluate it periodically to evaluate whether or not you’ve achieved your objectives.

Be forewarned, the process of uncovering your employer brand is not something you can complete in a week, or even a month. It will be several months until you’re ready to roll out your new brand identity, and it may take longer depending on how many people (and opinions) are involved in the project. While the rewards are far worth the effort, you should plan for the entire process to take around 3-4 months.

Chapter 2:

The key players“Who should be involved in the employer branding process?” The answer to this question will, in large part, determine the success of your employer branding project.

We’ve already discussed the importance of bringing in personnel from all departments and levels within your organization. We haven’t discussed,

however, who should lead the charge in uncovering and implementing your new employer brand. Making that decision and appointing your key players in this

process can be tricky. Do we bring in an agency to handle the marketing side of things? Who should lead the focus group? Who should get the final say in determining our new brand identity?

These are not easy questions to answer, and you’re likely to hear competing opinions from different people within the organization. From our experience, however, we’ve found that the best results come from following these guidelines:

Use an Objective Third-PartyEmployees may be hesitant to share their opinions, especially negative opinions, when they’re in a room with people who they perceive as having power over them. They won’t necessarily trust that the information they share will remain confidential, and you’re unlikely to get the answers you need. That’s why it’s best to bring in a neutral third-party.

We may be biased, but we believe that an external resource can help you to uncover the truth in a way that makes employees feel comfortable and protected.


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Don’t Let the Corner Office Hijack Your Employer BrandYou’re probably used to hearing the phrase “employer of choice.” Everyone wants to be the employer of choice, and oftentimes, those in the upper level of the company will insist on portraying the company in this light in order to bring in more candidates.

However, if that’s not the reality for the average employee within the organization, candidates will likely not stick around for long after the wool has been pulled from their eyes.

Bring the Marketing Department into the ConversationThe corporate brand is a close cousin to the employer brand. While they’re not one in the same, they’ll share some common characteristics.

The main difference between the two brands is the audience to which each one is conveying its message. There will, however, be commonalities in tone and brand standards. You may even be able to save a great deal of time by collaborating with your organization’s marketing team and borrowing some of their templates and techniques.

Don’t Hire a Marketing Agency This may seem like we’re contradicting ourselves, but hear us out. While you’d benefit from considering the marketing perspective, it shouldn’t overpower the discussion.

It’s not uncommon for companies to bring in a marketing agency to revamp their employer brand. However, these agencies often fail to delve deeply into the employee experience. They tend to focus more closely on improving content distribution and creating appealing messaging. As a result, that brand identity tends to become more aspirational than accurate.

As we’ve said, we want you to bring in as many different perspectives as possible. You should, however, only have a small group of key stakeholders leading the project. When you have too many people pushing the process in different directions, it slows everything down and muddies the results.

Chapter 3:

Investing in technology to amp up your employer brand If you’re working in the talent aquisition industry, it’s a safe bet to say you get your fair share of calls from vendors pitching their one-of-a-kind, fool-proof tech that’s guaranteed to solve each and every one of your talent marketing problems.

In that pitch, you’ll likely hear how this awesome technology will strengthen your employer brand and deliver top-quality candidates to your door. The truth, however, is a little more complicated than that. While there will certainly be times when your organization could benefit from implementing a new high-tech solution, these services are not a silver bullet.

Buyer BewareTechnology will not fix your employer branding. It will only amplify it.Most available tech is focused around spreading your message to your target audience in the most efficient way possible. If you don’t have a coherent and effective brand, however, that amplification may do more harm than good.

When your employer brand does not reflect your actual workplace culture, you attract the wrong type of candidate. For example, if you espouse the benefits of your fantastic work-life balance (when, in actuality, your employees spend long hours at the office), you’re going to receive a number of applications from candidates who want a job where they can clock out as soon as 5 p.m. rolls around. When that expectation doesn’t match with reality, you’re going to see your turnover rate increase. By bringing in new technology to amplify this ineffective messaging, you’re only making the problem worse.

With that in mind, you need to make sure your brand is well-crafted before buying into a new technology. At that point (and no sooner), your organization may actually benefit from that investment.


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Let’s assume you’ve already read and implemented all the steps in Chapter 1. You’ve talked with all your employees, and you’ve incorporated their feedback into a cohesive and attractive message. Now it’s time to amp it up.This is the stage where you’ll find these technological solutions to be the most useful. We’ve already outlined all the things technology can’t do for your employer brand, but there are ways that it can actually benefit your organization:

Segment your audience to deliver customized content: Depending on the software, some technology can make it easier to segment your audience into specific groups, allowing you to personalize your message to appeal to each group.

When evaluating any potential technology purchase, you need to first consider the message you want to convey. If your goal is simply to cast a wide net and broadcast your employment opportunities to more people, that’s one thing. However, in many cases, you don’t just want more applications overall. You want more quality applications from candidates who will fit easily into your company culture.

The truth is that you can buy all the new “revolutionary” employer brand products that come to market, but if you don’t have an effective brand to start, none of those tools will give you the results you need. It would be like going to an art supply store as an amateur painter and buying all the top-of-the-line paints, brushes, and canvases. Just like expensive tools won’t make you a better painter, technology won’t fix a substandard employer brand.

10Turn it up to 11Join the conversation: Most candidates do their research prior to applying for a job, scouring social media and employer review sites to get a full picture of that organization. To combat any negative reviews, you want to get you own brand messaging in front of as many of those candidates as possible.

Improve candidate experience: During the research process, candidates should be able to find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily so they can decide if the job is the right fit for them. Amplifying your employer brand through content distribution software streamlines that research process for the candidate by making your brand messaging more readily available.

Retention efforts need to start before your ideal candidate ever steps through the door for their first interview. At the moment that candidate first hears about your employer brand — whether that’s through social media, your career site, or a friend who works at the company — they should be able to tell if your company would be a good fit for them.

That’s why we call employer branding a secret weapon. If you are able to tap into what others are saying about you and subtly control that conversation, you’ll attract the people who will bring value to your organization for years to come.

However, in order to craft an authentic and effective employer brand, you need to start by being honest with yourself. You have to be willing to take a hard look in the mirror.

Or, you may find it useful to bring in an outside perspective, not only to take some of the work off your plate but also to get to the real truth of your company’s employee experience. That’s where our talent management experts at S2E Solutions can lend their knowledge and insight. We uncover your true employer brand and bring it to life. Our approach is completely client-driven, meaning we adapt to your organization’s needs and budget. To see what S2E Solutions can do for you, contact us today!

[email protected]

talentmarketingsolved.com • s2esolutions.com

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talent marketing solved: employer brand: your secret ...€¦ · and does it match reality? look at...

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