Employer brand is the reputation your company has with the targeted talent community that your company needs/wants to draw from. If you are losing candidates to your competitors, and getting frustrated that you are not the employer of choice with your targeted talent community, there are things you can do to change that.
Let’s start with what makes up your employer brand and then explore areas that impact it and suggestions to improve. Employer brand includes 3 key components:
- Values, Culture and Mission
- Candidate and Employee Experience
- Salaries, Perk and Benefits
From understanding these key factors and where your competitors are succeeding with them, you can begin to build and/or improve your employer brand.
Values, Culture and Mission
The Values, Culture and Mission of any organization flow directly from the CEO and Executive Leadership. The most common complaints regarding this area of employer brand include the overall mission/direction of the organization is not clearly defined and that the CEO and Executive Team are not committed to the talent within the organization. As a result the culture is one of confusion and internal competition rather than an outward focus on moving the company forward.
Sites like Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com are great places to get a read on your digital footprint regarding your employer brand as well as to research your primary competitors to see how you stack up. While any review site needs to be understood in context, these sites offer some insight into how your company’s Values, Culture and Mission is perceived internally. And as these reviews are easily accessed by potential team members, they can be helpful (or harmful) in promoting your employer brand. If there are derogatory comments on Glassdoor or other employer brand platforms, don’t shy away from them but handle and address issues so future candidates can see your dedication to your employees and commitment to your company’s employer brand.
Candidate and Employee experience
Glassdoor and Indeed can give you some valuable insight into how your current team members feel about your company. But another key component is a bit harder to ascertain. Similar to User Experience, Candidate experience relates specifically to the process a candidate experiences throughout your interview process from the first contact through offer acceptance. But there are many steps from beginning to end that need to be made seamless to get the best talent to join your team.
One of the most common complaints regarding candidate experience is the length/duration of the interview process. It’s admirable to want to build consensus among your hiring team and involve multiple viewpoints on a potential new team member; it can in fact strengthen your Employer Brand with your current team as they will know that their opinion is valued with regards to growing the team. But having too many people within an organization take part in the interview process can cause more problems than it solves.
Submitting a potential candidate (and especially passive high level executive talent) to endless rounds of interviews can quickly result in interview fatigue. There’s little to be learned from interview number 12 that couldn’t have been learned in interview number 3. It also sends some messages to that potential team member that you want to avoid, namely that you aren’t clear on the objectives of the role and unclear on what you are hiring for. It may also communicate that your culture is not so “fast paced and entrepreneurial” as it is plagued by “paralysis by analysis”. Know what you are looking for before you start interviewing, lest a strong talent become disenchanted while you’re still trying to find out your objectives. Every potential hire presents a risk and there’s no such thing as a “sure thing”. Scheduling one more interview to ask one more question isn’t going to help.
Another Candidate experience challenge is a lack of communication throughout the hiring process. Sometimes during the interview process for an important role, more immediate business needs require the hiring team to focus on their work, delaying what might have begun as a strong relationship between the team and a potential new team member. Simply communicating the status of their candidacy can assuage any concerns a good candidate might have and keep you from losing them to other potential opportunities.
And if your team decides that a potential talent isn’t quite a fit, communicate that with kindness to them rather than letting them languish. The way you treat the talent you don’t hire can also affect your employer brand and as you may desperately need that talent 6 months later it’s best to keep your employer brand sound.
Salaries, Perk and Benefits
And of course Salaries, Perk and Benefits also play an important role in your employer brand. Many companies offer perks like free food and ping pong tables and while those are fun, very few high level candidates are going to join an organization based solely on Pizza Fridays.
Some companies seem to be stuck in the mindset they developed in the previous economic downturn and believe that they can get a “deal” on talent joining their team. Sites like Salary.com and Payscale.com can offer some basic ideas as to how competitive you need to be with regard to salary in hiring a particular talent/skill set.
Benefits like strong health insurance programs and paid time off also add value beyond the basic weekly paycheck, as do things like flexible commute times or occasional work from home options. If you have lost candidates to your competitors, find out what they are doing and offering that you are not to ensure your offering is solid prior to presenting an offer. And Pizza Fridays and Taco Tuesdays don’t hurt either.
One more factor to consider
Also understand that any external search partners you choose to engage also affect your employer brand. Executive recruiters often serve as the point of first contact for your employer brand and it amazes us that companies are not more aware of this and are not monitoring what the external search partner is doing. This is especially true of contingent firms where often an inexperienced recruiter is asked to communicate with very high level talent and can leave a very unfavorable impression of your firm as a result.
Several clients we’ve spoken with regarding their experiences with contingent recruiters shows the lack of care these contingent recruiters are taking, recruiting from organizations that don’t represent a good potential culture fit or failing entirely to understand the organization’s needs and recruiting inappropriate talent. Some end up recruiting from your friends and colleagues and a few will even recruit out of their own clients on behalf of other clients.
If you choose to engage an outside source for talent, it’s best to ensure that your Employer Brand is trusted to an experienced Executive Search consultant.
Just like you can research candidates to make sure they are a fit, so too can candidates research you to make sure you are a fit for them as well. All this adds up to how well your employer brand attracts talent and should not be ignored.