The truth about employer branding.
Posted by Joanne Brent on 06 Mar 2009 at 11:59 am | Tagged as: Direct recruitment strategies, Employer Branding, HR Strategy
These days you hear a lot about ‘Employer Brands’ and ‘Employer Branding’. Many organisations promote their brands through sparkling ads, new logos, recruitment brochures and glossy websites. This tends to create an impression of falsity around an employer brand.
Each of the above mentioned mediums has its own selection of photos of beautiful people in modern, inner-city offices with skyscraper backdrops. In the images and with the main copy, these employers imply that they’re caring and welcoming. They might claim that there are great employment opportunities; that the organisation is an exciting and a go-getting kind of place; and that career success comes easily.
Done successfully, a powerful Employer Brand can help attract the best to the organisation. Jobseekers will be attracted to what they see and what they feel in the images and copy that you use. However if this is misrepresented it won’t be long before your staff retention rate falls dismally, and bad word of mouth will ruin any future branding and marketing efforts sincerely pitched at the job market. So how do employers attract and coax quality candidates into applying, without bending the truth or using a bit of marketing savvy to feed into romantic ideals?
Well, even employers that do ‘ordinary’ things can be great places to work. Places that value and respect people, treat them properly, use their talents and encourage them to make their contribution. These principles can be branded into a welcoming and appealing place to work, by using the truth and targeted methods of attracting relevant candidates to encounter your brand first hand.
If you’re going to (re-)create an Employer Brand, then it should match the reality of working at your organisation. Your organisation should live up to the high ideals of its brand image. This is not easy. It’s not simple. And it takes time. Yet if the organisation doesn’t try and live by the image it creates, then your branding would’ve been a waste of time.
New employees will quickly realise that the employer’s branding implied a false reality. That is, of course, if they don’t smell a rat when they arrive for an interview. Existing employees will also see the branding images. Messages that are so far removed from the truth will make existing staff feel cheated. In the worst cases, they will simply spread the word that the employer is untruthful in its marketing.
For more advice on employer branding and how employersjobs.com and HR-seo can give your organisation a search and brand rehaul to better your recruitment results - contact us today!
