Candidate Experience is Your Employer Brand

Candidate Experience is Your Employer Brand

“A brand is not made by accident, but it is the outcome of carefully complete successfully either directly or indirectly- a series of reasonable connected steps with consumers”(Keller 2011, p 125).

People make the brand. That is a simple yet, very powerful statement. Because it also reads; your brand is as good as your talent pool; not a function of your marketing budget but the whole sum of all the actions that your workforce take everyday.

So, it is not a coincidence that an engaged and highly motivated workforce is key to winning the competition game. Gallup’s Engagement survey clearly shows that organizations in the top quartile in employee engagement outperformed bottom-quartile ones by 10% on customer ratings, 22% in profitability, and 21% in productivity. Your talent matters for your brand, matters a lot.

Quite interestingly, a great place to start driving higher employee engagement and motivation turns out to be your brand. It may sound like round logic but it is true. Not only people make the brand, but the brand makes the people, as well. Yes. We are talking about employer branding!

THE TERM

Popularity of employer branding has increased with the help of global talent shortage. The term “employer brand” was first coined in the mid 1990’s. Then it was called simply the company’s reputation as an employer. It was between 2004 and 2008, when building a stronger employer brand became a major driver and a key advantage in the competition for talent. This approach was led by companies like Unilever, Shell and P&G who began to invest in their employer brand with the same level of effort and consistency as they did with their consumer brands. Thanks to their pioneering efforts, today we have the concept of Employee Value Proposition (EVP); is the promise you make as an employer to your employees in return for their commitment, engagement and high motivation. According to research by Gartner, organizations that effectively deliver on their EVP can decrease their annual employee turnover as much as 69%.

WHERE TO START

Naturally, talent acquisition is a great and first place to start building a strong employer brand. It is a great opportunity to introduce and help your new talent internalize what is unique about your company, what differentiates you from others, and what you offer as your EVP.

Some important tactics to consider in building an effective employer brand with your new prospective talent:

1 - Experience your own requisition

Apply as a candidate, go through the motion. Not just application but all the steps! See how well you are in communicating and realizing your EVP in the experience of a real prospective talent. Find the missing links, gaps and eliminate them.

2 - Build engaging Micro-sites

Marketing folks have been using landing sites for a long time. Why not use the same idea. It works. Create engaging, informational and beneficial microsites for your job posts, instead of wordy and confusing job descriptions. No one reads boring job descriptions and it is very difficult to make a mark of your EVP with a dull format. Many smart ATS’s like Peoplise, offer easy to build microsites without the need of IT help. Easy, fast and very effective to get your message across.

3 - Talk about Benefits

Talk about benefits, a lot. Tangible and intangible benefits that a talent will acquire working for your company must be clearly communicated, many times over. Selling the benefits of being a part of your culture is much more effective and easier than selling a job posting.

4 - Testimonials

People don’t like someone to sell something to them. But people love buying things. Testimonials of your existing talent, employees who have gone through similar career choices, their experiences and what they have to say about your brand and EVP are very powerful ways a new talent can explore your brand. It takes half an hour to make a video of your engaged talent talking about your EVP but that 3 minute video will go a long way to attract and engage new talent.

5 - Digitize your experience

Long waits. No information or feedback. Travel. Uncertainty… These are not good for your talent acquisition or EVP. Today’s talent, ever more after the pandemic, demands an easy, fast, mobile and digital experience. Days of 4-6 week recruitment cycles and series of on-site interviews are over. Utilize the power of digital ATSs and other best practice solutions to offer a much better talent experience and ensure that it is also part of your EVP that you are employing latest technologies to the great benefit of your talent.


We; Peoplise, are here to help you during this journey. Check out Analyse . We bring our expertise to improve your candidate experience and help you to attract best talent. Don’t forget People make brand and brand brings talent.