Imagine you’re in a store and you want to buy yourself an energy drink, you’re strolling down the beverage side of the area and you find yourself looking at multiple energy drinks from various brands. There’s one of them who sticks out – Red Bull. Why would it stick out? Chances are you’re the most familiar with that brand of an energy drink because they’ve been quite successful over the years and are specially known for their good marketing and quality of the drink itself. In layman’s terms, they have an amazing Employer Branding strategy. Now what do I mean by that?

I’m not going to be throwing out some fancy terms and definitions, after all, this blog isn’t about that way of transferring info. Basically, a company has a good Employer Branding strategy if they know how to sell themselves well, either to potential consumers, or in our case, candidates. What Red Bull did is creating a very good reputation for themselves as a company. Their unique storytelling had a profound impact through their marketing ads, again, from consumers to job seekers. 

Employer Branding strategy influences the market’s and candidate’s perception of a company. That means anything, from the way they communicate with you to benefits they have on offer. In a today’s warring state for talents, each company has to have their Employer Branding in place, otherwise they lose good potential candidates and in the long term, potential company profit. 

Reputation of a company

How often do you think a candidate does an online reputation check on a company? Rest assured, in most cases the company would be researched to the bone before the time of the first interview. They will read online reviews, check the company’s background, ask an acquaintance who works in the prospect company about their opinion, check the financial status of the company, look for the buzz words in conversations, anything to see if said company is worth their time. This is why companies need to look after numerous things in their organization in order to keep up the standards of today’s market demand. 

It’s extremely sensitive in terms of higher graded positions. One small detail which is not up to par with developer’s expectations and you can forget about their faint interest over the phone. A company has to thoroughly check the candidate’s profile they’re interested in general and tailor it to their image in order to keep them interested. Reputation is king and a good company will keep their Employer Branding strategy as competitive as ever.

Engagement

One of the most important aspects of the Employer Branding strategy is how you engage both your employees and external, potential candidates. Today’s generations are especially sensitive to that because of their short attention span. Not to sound rude or say anything bad about it, the fact is that today’s candidates are bombarded with multiple sources of information and the most engaging ones will grab their attention, even if it’s just couple of seconds. That’s why companies have to be very creative with their job descriptions, active on their social media pages, giving relevant and frequent feedback etc. This means going back to learning everything about the specific profile of candidates which companies look for. 

Employer Branding strategy benefits

What other benefits are there? Well, there are multiple benefits, in fact. A good Employer Branding strategy can significantly decrease a company’s turnover rate, cost-per-hire metrics and much more. With it, you can also influence their behavior because there is a high possibility of candidate stopping to buy company’s products because of a bad interview or not getting a feedback response (this dives into Candidate Experience but that’s for a different article). A company has complete control of their external perception by defining their overall image. 

Takeaway

See the image above? That’s the takeaway. A company has to offer all these things and much more in order for them to build a reputation for the external candidates and, incidentally, the loyalty of their existing employees. It is a crucial point that any project in an Employer Branding strategy is constantly worked on because otherwise, the chances are that the competition is just one step ahead of you and that could be the reason you lost an awesome candidate.