Building a Successful Employer Branding Strategy

A successful business needs great employees. That’s why employer branding is so important. An amazing candidate might have to choose between you and another business, and your reputation as an employer is going to influence their decision. That’s where an employer branding strategy comes in. 

The war for talent is getting bigger and bigger as candidates are taking an increasing interest in the culture and values of their potential employers. Because of this, businesses need to invest more in their employer branding strategies. Wondering where to start? We’ve got you covered. We’re going to explain the basics of employer branding and show you how to build a successful employer branding strategy.

What is employer branding?

Employer branding is everything an organisation does to promote their employer values. Here’s some examples:

• Sharing employee testimonials 
• Creating compelling job descriptions
• Building an attractive career site
• Using employer review sites
• Attending career fairs and events

Why is employer branding important?

If you’re not convinced so far that employer branding is crucial to a great business, we’ve put together a list of reasons why it’s so important:

• Increase in high-quality job applicants

84% of job seekers state that a company’s reputation is important to them.

• Lower hiring costs

 Attracting more, better quality candidates means you won’t have to spend as much on your recruiting efforts.

• Business growth

High-quality employees will benefit your business. A better rep means access to the best talent, and your employees are the key to your success.

• Increased diversity and inclusion

Companies with strong employer reputations do better at attracting diverse talent. A diverse workforce equips your business with a variety of experience and skills. 

How to build a successful employer branding strategy

You can’t build a brilliant employer rep overnight. Your reputation is something you must continuously manage. But, there are some essential steps you can take to help you get there:

Define your EVP

An employee value proposition is what your company stands for. It’s comprised of:

• Core values
• Mission
• Vision
• Culture

The point of an EVP is to define your company’s essence, and what makes it unique from the rest.

Understand your challenges

Recognising your company’s recruitment challenges will help you identify its future needs so you know where to focus your efforts.

Define your company’s goals

It’s important that you’re able to measure the success of your employer branding efforts, to do this you’ll need to identify the goals you’re aiming to achieve. Examples of these are:

• Increase number of high-quality applicants
• Improve offer acceptance rate
• Decrease hiring costs
• Improve candidate experience

Create candidate personas

If you can get inside the mind of your dream candidate, you’ll be able to tailor your employer branding efforts to them. 

A candidate persona is a fictional representation of the perfect candidates. To define your candidate persona, think about:

• The generation they belong to
• Where they search for jobs
• The content they respond to
• The values that are important to them

Engage your current employees

Who better to promote your company than your existing employees? Ask them to share their own stories on social media, for example they could create a ‘day in the life’ style post on LinkedIn. 

Involve the leadership team

A company’s culture and brand message will be much more believable coming from the C-suite executives. Involve them as much as you can in your social media strategies. 

Measure and optimise 

If you want to keep improving your employer branding activities it’s essential that you measure your efforts. Refer back to your initial goals so you can work out how much you’ve achieved so far, and where to focus your future efforts. 

Every business has its own employer brand, naturally, but if you want to compete for the best talent you’ll need to establish a strong branding strategy. It’s the way that successful businesses engage, recruit and retain the best candidates. Following these 7 steps will put you on the right track for recruitment success. 

Good luck!