4 Tips To improving Your Employer Branding

Good afternoon everyone – how are we today 🙂

Ok, there are tons of stuff you can do when it comes to employer branding because it’s simply a marketing exercise and no marketer in the world will ever tell you (they shouldn’t either) that they’re doing enough nor they would say they have enough budget to do enough.

So in this blog, I decided to focus on the 4 items that I consider as quick wins and if done well, they could put your employer brand in the top 10%.

Tip # 1 – Your Career Site

Tip # 2 – The Application Process And The Application Form

Reading why your target candidate should work for you, is only the top of the funnel – for your career site to be an effective funnel that converts visitors into applicants… the entire site has to be beautiful, responsive (works on all devices), relevant and up to date.

So, they read how great you are as an employer, they read your job ad that’s perfect for them, they start the application process… only to realise that the application form experience is the worst thing they’ve ever seen.

And as you’ve already guessed… THEY DROP OFF!

Make sure your Application Form:

• Works on all devices especially mobiles
• Works on all browsers
• Is relevant – don’t ask questions that are not relevant to the job
• Is Simple – keep it as simple as possible – of course, it’s ok to ask screening questions, just make sure they are relevant, succinct and don’t have too many of them
• Give them guidance of what they’re doing and why
• Provides clear confirmation when the application is completed

 

So, to summarise this section, your career site not only needs to have the full list of your current job opportunities, but candidates need to be able to apply for them right then and there too… and from any device.

I know that this sounds like too much but, if you’re using a modern recruitment software platform or Applicant Tracking System, then all this and more will just come for free with the platform you’re using (be careful though, as not all products come with a career site, a multi-posting tool and a customisable application process, and so if you’re currently looking for a new recruitment software, then ask the right questions about this capability).

Tip # 3 – Social Media Presence (Connected With Career Site)

 

As we said at the beginning employer branding is marketing – you’re marketing your job opportunities to a particular candidate target market, and so social media is clearly an important marketing channel (channels – more than one when you dive into it) for marketing any product and your brand no different.  So you could be reading 1000s of pages about this topic but I’m going to explain to you the bare minimum that I think you should do and in my opinion… (don’t be offended) you should be doing:

Have a company page (account) on the social media sites that are relevant for your brand:

You need to decide which social media sites are relevant to your brand and your target candidates, but here are some examples and tips

• Have a Facebook page for your career – consider having a separate page to the main one that’s run by marketing – because in some cases, you’ll never be able to have enough room and focus nor you’d have enough freedom over the content
• Have a LinkedIn company page
• Have a Twitter presence
• Instagram and even Snapchat presence in some cases – you need to decide on what the most relevant social sites for your target market

At a minimum make sure your company page does the following:

• On those social sites that are relevant for you, as a minimum explain why your business is a good place to work and for whom and list your current opportunities
• Link your social sites with your career site and job-board – so your applicant tracking system or recruitment software platform should allow you to post your job (and link them) to your career site as well as those social sites in a single click
• A Modern Recruitment Software Platform or Applicant Tracking System should allow you to post your current positions onto any social site accounts, but what’s important here, is that they should direct the applicants back to your career site.  This not only will bring eyeballs and clicks back to your site but will also, create less maintenance.  So when you update your ad or the screening questions of the ad, no matter where the candidate found your ad (job-boards, social sites or your own career site) they will see the latest version of both the ad and its corresponding application form.

Tip # 4 – Keep ALL applicants ‘up to date’ about the recruitment process

(See at the end of this section why “ALL” is in capital letters, bolded and underlined!  This 3-letter word is key to this tip)

The # 1 complaint from candidates(this is the nice way of saying “what candidates hate the most”) about recruiters, both internal and external is the fact that:  “They never get back to me” – “They never let me know what they think about my application and where it’s at in the process? – or any other 55405 variations of this same complaint.

 

So how do you solve this problem – ok, to your defence though (the HR/recruiter person), you can be dealing with a large number of applications and sometimes it’s literally impossible to find the time to get back to each person.So how do we solve this problem – well you use a 10-year old technology now called Marketing Automation – or in this case Recruitment Automation!  Any modern Recruitment Software Platform should have Recruitment Automation as an integral part of the platform, use it allow you to set up an automated workflow that allows you to send personable and branded emails to applicants at various stages of the recruitment process.

For example:

Touchpoint # 1 – We’ve received your application – a professional, personable and branded email to the candidate, let them know that you’ve received their application and preferably letting also know, what to expect next.

Touchpoint # 2 – You’ve progressed or unfortunately you’re unsuccessful – PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE… let people know they’ve been unsuccessful – so this is the biggest one because almost, 99% of every application is unsuccessful – you need to get this one right if you’re going to build a positive perception of your employer brand (but even when building talent pools as a matter of fact, because 20% of the unsuccessful candidates for one role could be great for other roles in your organisation)

Now… why the word “ALL” from the heading of this tip, why is it in capital letters, bolded and underlined?

OK, do you remember how we said employer branding is a marketing activity?  Well, every applicant either becomes an employee or if impressed with the way you’ve treated them, spreads a positive word of mouth, and leads to someone they told becoming an employee.  Your professionalism, common courtesy and appreciation of their time and willingness to work for you (instead of taking it for granted), is a form of powerful viral marketing.