Employer Branding 101The best HR professionals are becoming marketers. Find out why,
what your employer brand means, how to inspire current and future
employees, and how it can help you achieve your core KPIs.
We’ll cover that and more in this ebook, along with actionable next steps, and
other resources to continue your research on this increasingly important topic.
Catalyzed by the rise of the millennial professional,
candidates are increasingly focused on researching
companies before applying for a job, doing extensive
diligence on potential career paths, and generally being
picky about what’s next in their professional lives.
Let’s use a thought experiment to understand this new
behavior. Let’s say you’re deciding which restaurant you
and your friends should choose for dinner tonight. Before
making a decision, you’ll probably look at menus online,
and peruse Yelp reviews. You spend 20 minutes before
committing to a restaurant, and that’s for taco night!
Similarly, the job seeker’s decision making process now
mirrors typical consumer behavior. Everyone looking at a
job will do their diligence on a given company before
applying for a role.
A new talent acquisition paradigm
It’s just like Taco Night
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What is employer branding?
Why does it matter? What are the best companies doing to address
this key part of the talent acquisition equation? How do you document
your employee experience, so that company culture is clearly
communicated and existing employees can act as ambassadors?
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According to CareerBuilder, 68% of candidates are
spending more than 2 hours BEFORE applying for a job!
This is an incredible amount of time and effort, but makes
sense if put in the context of the impact a new job will
have on your life (remember how much time you spent
researching for taco night??).
The scary part here is that job seekers are doing their
research for a reason. If they don’t find interesting
aspects of your company or role, or they find disparaging
reviews online, they will move on. Ask yourself, if
someone researches my company for 2 hours, what will
they find? If someone asks a friend or contact about you,
what will they hear? Does the employee experience align
with your stated values? Do you have company values?
The rise in popularity of Glassdoor
means that companies need to be more
vigilant than ever in protecting their
employer brands online. 1 in 3
employees who are laid off will leave a
Glassdoor review. Just like Yelp, the
desire to leave a review is usually
triggered by a negative experience.
That said, there are many companies
who’ve done a great job in proactively
building their brands by telling their own
story (as opposed to allowing their most
disgruntled employees tell it for them)
via authentic employee authored
content that lives all over the internet.
The best of this content shows off what
it’s like to work at their company. Many
top companies are doing just that
through software like NextWave which
allows for easy content creation and
distribution.
Candidates are researching your company
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What is employer branding and why does it matter?
Perhaps you’ve heard that HR and talent professionals
are now expected to think like marketers. Your
employer brand is defined by how the world perceives
what it’s like to work for your company. It's your job to
proactively influence this by providing candidates with
the information they need to form an opinion of you,
the same way your marketing teams provide your
potential customers with all of the information they
need to form an opinion of your product and company.
It’s also critical to give existing employees guidance on
the kind of company you’re building, so that they know
how to be effective ambassadors.
Employer branding efforts yield immediate results
when you put this rich information in all of the places
candidates are finding out about your job opportunities.
Given candidates’ propensity to research your
business before applying, you’ll positively shape their
gut reactions on what working at your company looks
like. If they're the right fit for the job, this increases the
likelihood of applying for your open position which
lowers your time to fill and cost per hire.
Imagine a candidate considering Google. What will she
find during the course of her preliminary research? On
their careers page, there are specific examples of what
the day-to-day culture is like from real employees.
Looking at social media, their message and
commitment to employees is consistent with the
information on the careers page. Employees currently
in these positions are speaking directly about why this
is a unique opportunity. Candidates appreciate seeing
a clear, consistent company identity.
For Google, their content and the corroborated stories
on other platforms paid off in the the short term by
getting a new candidate into the hiring funnel. It also
builds a brand over time. The gut reaction for
candidates is strong, positive and aligns with all of the
things Google prides themselves on. This sort of long
term brand building creates a pipeline of interested
professionals who are right for the job.
“Candidates think hard about the impact an employer’s name is going to have on their resume. So as an
employer, it’s important to invest in your brand, so people can easily answer that question. You want to a
candidate to say “Working for this company is going to make my resume really stand out in the future.”
-Molly Howard, VP of Operations at Ovia Health
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“A uniquely collaborative culture”
If you are continuously hearing from
your colleagues about how they work
together, and have never been in a work
environment where people supported
one another like this, then you can very
credibly add this to your EVP.
“True autonomy”
Perhaps you’re recruiting engineers or
other ‘deep thinkers’ who value alone
time to work on problems. Or, maybe
you are targeting self starters in sales
roles. Whatever the case, this sort of
messaging can be quite powerful in
your EVP.
A few EVP Examples
Your employee value proposition is composed of the answers to the
following questions: “Why do I, and other employees, appreciate
working at my company?” AND “What makes working for my
company a unique experience compared to all of the other
places I could work or have worked in the past?”
Your answers can come in a variety of forms—from employees’
anecdotal stories, to phrases you hear around the water cooler, or
even from the excitement an employee gets when referring a friend.
If you ask your current employees what got their attention in the first
place and what keeps them here, what do they say? How do you
then communicate this to candidates? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that
later with some best practices.
Ideally, the employee value proposition aligns with your company’s
mission, values, and culture, as defined on the website and in an
internal knowledge hub like Tettra. This alignment will help foster
and maintain the best elements of your employee value proposition.
It also makes it easier for existing employees to tell others about
their experience working at your company.
What is an employee value proposition?
“This generation is looking for authentic, meaningful
places to work. You've got to convince them you’re the
best fit for their goals and lifestyle. They’re not convinced
by benefits and perks anymore. That's why tools like
Glassdoor incentivize employers to add photos of their
company events and showcase their commitment to
things like equal pay and diversity. Show them your story.
That's the only way to find the right candidates anymore.”
- Aaron Wheeler, Director of HR at Wistia
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A Unique Opportunity
HR has been slow to adopt marketing principles to attract
talent. It’s not surprising. Imagine if we asked marketers to
learn how to do payroll, or background checks, or deal
with compliance issues. It would take them a while to put
down what they were doing already, which was working
‘well enough,’ and get them to learn a new skill set.
This means there is a unique opportunity for the
companies who approach branding correctly to reap
massive rewards over the coming years as their
competition struggles to adapt.
On average, candidates are
researching your company for 2
hours before deciding whether or
not to apply. If they don’t find
information about the role and why
they should care, they move on.
This means your cost per hire
rises, time to fill increases, and
your quality of hire decreases.
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As a newly minted marketer, you now need to make the
information available to candidates about your work
culture. This means the good and the bad. Be honest. If
you have a tough sales culture, you want people coming
in who are ok with that. A startup without any process?
Definitely say that upfront so the wrong people can find
their way to larger companies.
We all want more candidates in the funnel, but the best
companies want the RIGHT candidates in the funnel. If
someone is not right for the job and will never be
interested in it, why spend your company’s time and
resources taking them through the interview process?
It's better to give them this insight upfront so they don't
waste anyone’s time.
What are candidates looking for?
Talented professionals want to work
alongside the best people—and want to
find out in the process who they're going
to be working with.
They also want to understand:
• The company culture and values
• What’s unique or interesting about a
given role
• What skills they’ll acquire
• The career path stemming from this
opportunity
• How to prepare for interviews
• How they’ll be mentored
• Benefits and compensation
• What excites others about the
company
• What people don’t like about the
company
The Right Candidates
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The Power of Data
Pay attention to what the data is telling you. If candidates reference a particular blog your CEO wrote, for example,
get your CEO writing and publishing more often. One key insight: authenticity (not overly produced content and
videos) wins on the internet – webcams and iPhones are great ways to get content.
There are various consultants that can give you tips of
employee value proposition planning, collateral
creation, etc. There are also marketing firms that can
help you think through these core facets of building
your brand. Hopefully, you can also partner with your
own internal marketing team on some level (although
don’t be surprised if they are focused on revenue
related activities).
Take the time to map out your core message in an
internal knowledge management tool like Tettra. It will
ensure that your messaging and marketing material
are consistent over time and across members of your
people operations team. Shop this material around the
larger company, and seek input from other people.
This will help you generate new ideas and will
generate buy-in from colleagues.
It's important to always make sure the information you
distribute promotes an authentic and human
interaction with candidates while also providing the key
information that they’d care about. We like to think of
it in terms of a coffee chat. If someone sat down with
one of your account executives today, what would that
experience be like?
Power of D
ata
How to determine what message to send
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Worst Practices
Here are a list of (anonymous) worst practices
that we’ve heard from various companies in the
marketplace. These aren’t meant to belittle
anyone, but simply to show what not to do and
why.
“We sell candidates once we are in the room with
them through the interview process” – You may
very well have a strong sales pitch once a
candidate is in the room with you…so why not
broadcast this online? Otherwise you’re going to
lose half of your talent funnel because your
careers page is devoid of information, your job
postings are 5 years old, and your social media
has no “life at our company” related content. And
if that candidate isn’t moved by the things your
company is proud of, they’re not right for you and
you've already wasted a lot of time getting them
to the point of being in that room with you.
“We have a 2 min video that an agency put
together which shows off our company’s culture”
– Some of these videos are great, like the new
GE careers commercials. But, 90% are terrible.
Ask your employees if they’d believe them.
Typically, these videos lack authenticity, details
on what a job is like, and are full of quick cuts
and stock background music. 10 people
repeating “this is a great company” is not a
compelling pitch.
Define the Employee Experience You’re Creating
Use a knowledge hub like Tettra to define the experience
you seek to create. Managers and employees may think
they all share the same viewpoint, but if it’s not written
down, there’s room for confusion. Additionally, by placing
this information alongside policies and benefits in Tettra,
existing employees can see how you live your values,
and then communicate that to candidates.
Employee Authored Content
Check out the careers pages for top brands like Goldman
Sachs, and you’ll find content directly from the mouths of
employees embedded into the pages with relevant job
listings. Sites like Glassdoor exist because talent is
desperate to understand what employees do, and what
they think of their employer. It’s not a coincidence that
one of LinkedIn’s core use cases is networking for the
purposes of getting a “coffee chat” with an employee at a
company you’re interested in. Give employees guidance
on how to be a good advocate if they choose to do so.
Social Media Presence
75% of talent will research your company through social
media. Make sure that you’re giving employees guidance
on how to promote the company on social channels.
Many companies use Tettra to share brand guidelines
with the team. At the very least you can push HR content
through your company’s existing social channels.
Best Practices from Top Companies
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Microsites
Engineers want to learn about the technology you’re
using. Sales people want to know about your training
program. Marketing wants to know about your marketing
stack. Blending this content together in one page can
dilute the messaging.
Companies addressing this correctly have dedicated
webpages with content for each of the key roles.
www.acme.com/careers/sales will have the information
for sales people so that they don’t get lost in the content
hosted on www.acme.com/careers/engineering that talks
about JavaScript programming.
Search Optimized Content
85% of candidates Google your company. Typically, this
means they find Glassdoor reviews, and perhaps some
other information you can’t control. The best companies
understand search engine optimization (SEO) and how to
get the right content/messaging in the right results. Enlist
the help of your marketing team to make sure you’re
ranking for the right terms.
Career pages that shine
This is an obvious one. 90% of candidates go to your
careers page. If it’s a static listing of job openings (or
worse, a hard to navigate job search and application
process), you are losing candidates every hour of every
day.
Worst Practices Continued…
“We only want candidates who understand that
we are a great place to work from our current
site” – If your current site is a maze that lacks
any real information around your EVP, please
don’t delude yourself into thinking it’s a fun
challenge for talent to decipher. You are losing
the best people.
“Branding is important, but we need to source
candidates ASAP and are focused there” – All of
the efforts you are conducting via job boards,
direct outreach to candidates, on campus
recruiting, etc are all AMPLIFIED by a strong
brand. The person who sees your job post, or
gets your Inmail is going to research your
company. The right branding means they are
now a candidate in your funnel instead of another
person ignoring you…now you can fill that req!
“This is something we’re thinking about for 2018
and are developing a strategy over the next few
quarters” – We get it, telling your story is
overwhelming and this is a new skill set. This
means that the companies who figure out their
talent brand and how to promote it will win while
other struggle to adapt.
Job postings that communicate
Most job postings are 10 year old amalgamations of various older job reqs. They lose all meaning, and don’t do anything
to sell candidates. On the contrary, check out HubSpot’s job listings. They have video and unique descriptions that
sound like a human wrote them. Use a model like this in your industry, or a tool like Textio to help you upgrade your
listings. You can also link to your best content from job postings.
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Company Brand, Mission, and Values
This is the foundation that drives your employee
experience. Make sure you’ve defined these, gained
agreement from stakeholders, and documented
information in a central place like Tettra. If you have
disagreement on the company’s identity, this
misalignment is going to cascade down through all other
parts of your recruitment and hiring processes.
Team
First off, who on your team cares about employer
branding? According to iCims, 46% of companies either
have a dedicated employer branding professional, or
plan to hire one. Perhaps there is someone in marketing
who’s willing to lend a hand, or a c-suite colleague who
cares about finding the right people.
Goals, Planning, and Timeline
Get started as soon as possible: you’ll decrease cost of
hiring by nearly 50% and increase retention by nearly
30% (LinkedIn). What do you want to accomplish in the
next 3 months? 6 months? Year? Write down goals,
publish them on a wiki like Tettra, and stick to them. This
step also involves budgeting, the tools you want to use,
and how to execute with those tools (responsibilities,
timelines, measurable results).
Employee Onboarding
Make sure the onboarding experience is consistent with
the experience you give candidates during the
application process. A whopping 20% of turnover
happens in the first 45 days. Give people the information
and tools to succeed, and make it easy for them to
access information. More on this next.
What’s next?
Your Company’s Operating System
Today’s workforce wants to join a company with values
that align wth their own. Make sure you communicate
your organization’s values, as well as the common
practices that uphold those values. If, for example, you
value transparency, you might choose to share all of
your investor decks. Document this in a knowledge hub.
If you hold weekly recap meetings, and monthly
planning sessions, make these cadences and operating
systems clear to new employees, so they never feel
blindsided. Better yet, share the notes from these
meetings in your knowledge hub, so that new
employees can get better context from reviewing past
conversations.
Information and Resources
The more information and context new employees have,
the more empowered they’ll feel to make decisions and
take action. They’ll also be more likely to make good
decisions. Give the new members of your team access
to as much information as possible, and organize it in a
logical way, so they can find what they’re looking for. At
Tettra, we’re bullish on organizing knowledge into
functional categories while also showing which content
has been updated most recently.
Ongoing Support
Make it clear how new employees can get support. If
you have a mentor program or affinity groups, (for
women, minorities, or parents, for example,) tell people
how to get involved. These support mechanisms are a
critical part of the employees experience. No only do
they play a key role in whether existing employees stay,
but they also impact the likelihood that team members
will act as company ambassadors within their personal
networks.
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Extending the Candidate Experience Beyond the Interviews
Continued Research
There are many great resources out there for learning about employer branding, here are a few worth checking out:
Next Wave Hire - Videos and eBooks on employer branding.
Recruiting Daily.com - Great blog for recruiters with lots of content for those interested in Employer Branding.
Smashfly.com - Smashfly has been a leader in the recruitment marketing space for years and has lots of interesting content.
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Tettra makes its easier to communicate and share information with new
and existing employees. We want to help teams operate more effectively,
so that onboarding, collaboration, and planning are a breeze.
We integrate with Slack and other tools you use every day, so that you can
access information more easily without context switching.
If you want to learn more, please visit Tettra.co and we’ll be happy to
continue the conversation.
NextWave Hire provides software that allows your company to
attract top talent through employee authored content showing
off what it’s like to work at your company.
If you want to learn more, please
email [email protected]