Using Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing to Attract Employees

Using employer branding and recruitment marketing are cornerstones to any successful hiring strategy. However, there is a subtle difference between the two strategies, and both need to be used together in order to attract your ideal candidate.

In this article, we will explore the difference between the two and give you helpful tips on how to leverage both to bring the talent you’re looking for to your company.

What Is Employer Branding?

To put it simply, employer branding is your company’s reputation as an employer. As the definition indicates, this isn’t something that you can build overnight. Instead, it requires a complex strategy that helps build and develop your company’s reputation as an employer.

And why is this important? It’s not only important, but it’s also vital to successfully recruit desirable candidates. According to a LinkedIn survey, 75% of respondents say they check out the company’s reputation before they even apply. If they don’t like what they see, 69% won’t apply at all, even if they are currently unemployed.

Your employer brand defines who you are as a company and how your reputation can bring value to an employee who joins your organization. Some factors that help comprise your reputation as an employer include:

• Compensation

• Benefits

• Opportunities for Advancement

• Company Culture

With a solid brand, you will be more desirable to work for and attract the most desirable candidates. In essence, having a strong brand does a lot of the work for you in terms of recruitment.

Building Your Employer Brand

Building your brand is not going to magically happen overnight. Building trust in your brand among prospective employees requires a clear strategy to help you communicate your employee value proposition or the benefits an employee with your company can come to expect by working with you.

 Some strategies you can use to help build your employee brand include:

 1.   Know What Sets You Apart

It may have been a while since your leadership team reviewed your company’s mission statement, values, vision, and culture. If that’s the case, it’s time to dust those off and get to know them well. Identifying these things clearly will help you decide what your needs are in an ideal candidate. Who do you want to attract that is going to match your mission and vision? Working backward from the answer can help you decide what you want your employer brand to say about you as a company.

 2.   Use Employee Feedback

There’s no one better to communicate the benefits and downsides of being a part of your company than those who are currently part of the team. Using a simple, confidential survey, ask your employees what they consider to be the best aspects of working for your company. Ask them what they would tell their friends about your company keeping in mind that word of mouth is often a powerful tool.

 Using their feedback, you can build your employee value proposition and delineate the monetary and non-monetary benefits that come with being your employee.

 3.   Create a Strong Onboarding Process

Your onboarding process begins with a candidate filling out an application. Look at your current process for this and ask: Is this a positive or negative first impression. If your onboarding process is clunky and uninformative, know that it is part of your employer brand. Creating a positive first impression and then continuing a positive experience throughout the onboarding process after they are hired will build your company’s brand.

What Is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is using marketing techniques to spread your employer brand across a variety of channels to reach candidates. That means that recruitment marketing can’t happen until your employer brand is solidified.

In today’s hiring world, it simply isn’t enough to post a list of job openings and wait for the right candidate to come to you. There’s more competition than ever to attract the best and brightest, so you need a strategy to get your message out to the right people at the right time. That’s why marketing strategies are essential to get the attention of candidates whom you want to apply for your open positions.

Creating a Recruitment Marketing Plan

Getting the attention of candidates and getting them to apply is not so different than how marketers convert customers. With a team-wide effort toward marketing the employer brand you’ve built for yourself, you will get the attention of just the right people and inspire them to apply and become part of your team.

 Some marketing strategies that will help you get their attention include:

 1.   Make Your Candidate Experience Positive

Never forget that your journey to finding the right candidate starts long before someone even applies for the open position. Things to consider when looking at your candidate experience include:

• Job Descriptions: Are they clear and easy to understand? Can a candidate easily identify what will be expected of them and what they will get in return?

• Applications: Does it get to the heart of what you’re looking for without being overly complex? According to Recruiting Brief, 60% of job seekers have quit an application in the middle because it was unnecessarily long or involved.

• Interview Process: How and when you interview a candidate can make a huge impression. According to Recruiting Brief, 83% of talent say that a negative interview experience can change their mind about a role or company they once liked.

Make sure your candidate experience is a positive one so that word of mouth doesn’t hurt all the hard work you’re putting into creating your employer brand.

 2.   Make Your Website More Visible

It’s vital that your website is put before as many candidates as possible in places where they may be looking for a job. To draw more traffic to your website:

• Register your company with online job search platforms: Make sure you are a clear and prominent presence on the most used platforms such as Indeed, Monster, and Glassdoor. Millions of potential candidates search these platforms looking for the best fit, so you want to make sure you’re part of that.

• Use SEO and PPC to your advantage: Just like anything else you may be marketing, utilizing SEO and PPC will drive traffic to your job openings site. Invest in professional keyword creations that will help potential candidates find you organically.

 3.   Harness the Power of Social Media

A recent survey reported that there are over 3.5 billion people who use social media. Getting the attention of potential candidates where they frequent on social media can help get the perfect candidate. After you’ve identified who your ideal candidate is, research what social media they are most likely to use and find them there. Create content that not only shows job openings but also gives a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to work for your company. Social media can help you create a connection with someone before they ever even apply for a position.

Employer branding and recruitment marketing need to work closely together in order to draw the talent to your company. Following some of these tips will help you strengthen your employer brand so that your marketing team has an easier job converting job seekers into employees.

This article was a guest submission by CJ Maurer from The Gist, a B2B inbound marketing agency and HubSpot Solutions Partner based in Buffalo, New York.