Comprehensive Guide to Employer Branding
Every company has a reputation . It reflects the company’s take on their products, services, employees, and everything that they do. Just as a company’s reputation is important, so is its employer brand.
It reflects your reputation as an employer and speaks volumes for your workplace culture. A favorable employer brand is a powerful asset for a company. It reflects how you are viewed as an employer by your former, current, and prospective employees. Clients also consider your brand as an employer as they select who to work with.
It serves as a powerful tool to recruit and retain employees. 84% of job seekers place importance on the reputation of a company as an employer when making a decision on where to apply for a job. As the race for talent continues, it has become more important for companies to have a great employer brand.
In this guide you will learn:
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- What is employer branding?
- Why does your company need to focus on employer branding?
- The impact of employer branding on your overall business performance.
- Defining your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
- What are some of the channels you can leverage to increase your employer brand?
- Case study: Employer Branding at Hubspot and Google
What is Employer Branding?
Employer Branding is the key to attracting and engaging qualified job seekers. Every company has this , whether it’s constructed or not. An employer brand is nothing but a sub-segment of your larger brand identity, aimed at your new coworkers.
Employer Branding is the key to finding and retaining employees in today’s highly competitive labor market.
A lot of companies like Google, Starbucks or Mindvalley work hard to build their employer brand, making them quite likable for job seekers. But what’s the secret behind this desirability? Employer Branding is the way companies sell themselves to potential employees. It’s the way they position themselves as an “Employer of Choice” – that its their company that springs to mind when somebody thinks of working in that industry.
Why does your company need to focus on employer branding?
As per the latest study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total hires per job opening has decreased since 2001.
Hiring today is hard, expensive and very time-consuming. The number of applicants is not keeping pace with the increase in the number of jobs. This is especially true for IT roles. For instance, according to this report, there will be a predicted 36% growth in the App Developer roles by 2026. While the supply of workers will not follow. The talent gap is now a global issue, making it all the more necessary for your company to enable strong strategies to attract available talent.
Depending on the country, seniority, position, industry; hiring a new employee will cost you anywhere between $4000 to $7000.
The process of recruitment has many steps- right from gathering the candidates, filtering , interviewing , choosing the right fit to onboarding him or her. This becomes very tedious as every step is time-consuming, incurs a high cost, is very effort oriented, and full of hassles.
Besides all of this, one should also work hard to keep great employees from quitting. According to various estimates, losing a middle manager might set you back up to 100% of their annual salary.
All of these issues can at least partially be solved with great employer branding.
Impact Of Employer Brand On Overall Business Performance
An increase in employer brand increases the volume and quality of internal referrals
The benefits of Employer Branding are obvious for candidates. They get a look inside your company, see your team in action, and get an overall feel of the work environment. It is the way your business is perceived in the job market.
Here are 5 ways a good employer branding can directly help your organization:
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Cheaper hiring:
It improves the 3 most essential hiring metrics: time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and quality-of-hire. A company with a strong employer brand can also successfully attract passive candidates, which represents up to 60% of the available workforce. A strong employer brand will also help you attract a higher number of qualified candidates, reduce the time to hire, and decrease the cost of hiring.
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Higher performance of the hired employees:
Employees working at a company with a good employer brand are three times as productive as a company with a bad one. Engaged employees show up more often, stay longer, and are more productive overall.
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Increase in positive ratings on Glassdoor and other social media:
Whether you are looking to raise a round of funding or hiring a potential employee, if your Glassdoor or Google page is in bad shape, it might affect your chances of grabbing the right opportunities. In fact, the average company rating on Glassdoor is 3.3 out of 5.
A strong employer brand fosters a great work environment and makes your brand more attractive to potential candidates. This means that your employees will be more inclined to give good ratings to your organization and that you may have a ready-made talent community to draw from.
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Increase in volume and quality of internal referrals:
Candidates tend to trust a company’s employees 3 times more than the company to provide credible information on what it’s like to work there.
By investing in employer branding and encouraging your current employees to share their own experiences online, you’re giving candidates the information they crave and making your brand significantly more attractive, hence attracting more applicants.
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Higher Retention Rates:
A strong employer brand is not only good for attracting potential candidates, but also for retaining your best assets. Leveraging it to create a bond with prospective employees before and during the recruitment and on-boarding process can go a long way towards retaining key employees.
Defining your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
The importance of crafting a great employer brand is particularly felt in a competitive market where the best candidates have a lot of options to choose from when considering where to work. It can set you apart.
To avail the benefits of this brand, you need to first define your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Your EVP is a set of differentiators that set you apart from other companies and that makes you an attractive and great place to work. A strong EVP can help you attract good talent, boost engagement, and reduce compensation premium by 50%. So how do you define your EVP? Check out this post and answer the questions shared in it to find out!
Communicating your employer brand
Now that you have defined your Employee Value Proposition, how do you share it with the candidates applying for jobs in your company and to your employees? Here are 3 easy ways to do so:
Employees are crucial in defining the culture of your organization and they live the values and vision of the company. By portraying them and increasing their engagement, employees can make the best recruitment brand ambassadors. One in four jobseekers views employee profiles after finding out about a job opening. Positive reviews about your company by your current employees help boost your employer brand and plays a key role in attracting the right candidates.
Over half the candidates use job descriptions to learn more about what it’s like to work at a company. Never have effective, engaging job descriptions been more important. A few tips to ensure your job descriptions are inclusive and engaging include: keep it gender-neutral and use the right job title, explain the role’s purpose and future prospects, and show off your work culture and office.
Improving your company’s careers page and ensuring a great user experience goes a long way in building your employer brand with candidates. Get your candidates excited about applying for a job at your company by highlighting employee experiences and showcasing it as a great place to work. Here are a few ways to do that: highlight employee experiences and company events on your blog, show off your workspace or showcase a regular day at the office (more tips here).
Platforms that matter for employer brand
Here are some top-performing platforms for reaching and influencing prospective applicants.
For more insights on these platforms, check out our report on building an employer brand. We launched a survey of professionals in our database to learn more about what candidates care about in an employer, where they seek information about a company when they are considering a career move, and which companies are known as the best employers in our markets (Kenya and India).
The insights in the report are from a survey conducted with over 1200 companies in Kenya.
Case Study: Employer Branding at Hubspot and Google
Now that we are all caught up with the whats, whys, and how-tos of employer brand, let us take a look at some companies with exceptional employer brands and how they are doing it:
Hubspot
Hubspot topped Glassdoor’s ‘Best Places to Work 2020 in the US (voted on by employees). The marketing and sales software company is renowned for its inclusive, cohesive, supportive, and distributed work environment.
It also knows how to get its employer branding right. Followers get a peek into life at Hubspot through its Instagram account -, which features its employees and exclusive behind-the-scenes content from its various teams distributed across the world.
One of the most sought-after brands in the world, Google is known for its great culture. Its exemplary employer brand serves as a talent magnet, inviting over 3 million resumes every year.
Google also invests a lot in researching culture and its impact on the work environment, which has helped to provide a psychologically safe workplace to its teams across the globe. Its commitment to growth, learning, and autonomy (not to mention amazing perks – think gourmet meals, onsite wellness services, etc.) keep stellar talents coming in its way.
Employer branding is going to be a key part of the long-term recruiting strategy for most teams and will see more investment in years to come. With small tweaks in your careers page, the way job descriptions are written, or your social media platforms, it is possible to convey a positive employer brand. A great employer brand will be the differentiating factor for companies when it comes to the race for the best talent. The good news is that your brand and culture are constantly evolving. So you can start working on your employer brand (and how you share it with candidates) today.
Do you want to take your employer brand to the next level? Create and share your company page with Shortlist Connect: show your brand to candidates, share content, build your talent pipeline & engage your audience. You can also post unlimited job offers & manage your candidates directly from the app.
