© Lee Skaalrud 2018 | Versique Search & Consulting

HOW TO BOOST YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND

IN 4 EASY STEPS

© Lee Skaalrud 2018 | Versique Search & Consulting PG. 3PG. 2

© Lee Skaalrud 2018 | Versique Search & Consulting PG. 3

Hiring talent in today’s labor market is a challenging endeavor. Talent is scarce, demand is high, and there are few indicators that the task will get any less difficult in the near future. So what should Heads of Talent Acquisition do? Throw up their hands and inform their executive teams to lower their expectations? Of course not.

To win the war for talent in today’s highly-competitive market, companies must market themselves as an employer of choice through employer branding. Companies that are perceived as an employer of choice enjoy a significant recruiting advantage.

Companies across a wide range of sectors have a nasty habit of creating a barrier between marketing and employer branding. Today, recruitment is marketing.

86% of HR professionals say recruitment is more like marketing.

Candidates are consumers, and selecting an employer is their equivalent of a buying decision. Your company knows the importance of having the right people to successfully market your product or service to your consumers, why not take the same approach to talent acquisition?

Employee turnover can be reduced

by 28% by investing in

employer brand. (Office Vibe)

80% of talent acquisition managers

believe that employer

branding has a significant

impact on the ability to hire great talent.

(LinkedIn)

9 out of 10 candidates

would apply for a job when

it’s from an employer brand that’s actively maintained. (Workable)

78% of job candidates say

the overall candidate experience

they get is an indicator of how

a company values its people.

(Talent Adore)

“Your employer brand is defined by your company’s values, mission, and culture.

Our Executive Search experience has clearly demonstrated that good companies become

great by hiring employees who align with their core values.“

– Tony Sorensen, CEO, Versique

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CONTENTS:

STEP 1: Assessing the Employer Brand of Your Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PG. 7

STEP 2:Improving Your Employer Brand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PG. 9

STEP 3:Leveraging Your Employer Brandas a Recruiting Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PG. 11

STEP 4:Tracking and Measuring the Efficacy of Your Employer Brand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PG. 13

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In this four-step guide, we’ll give you the blueprint to leveraging your employer brand as an asset for talent acquisition. The four steps include :

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Before you get started on improving, and then marketing your employer brand, you first need to take its temperature. Lucky for you, all you need to do to take the pulse of your employer brand is listen to two specific audiences: your current staff and external candidates.

Start with your team. Create a survey that probes how your staff appraises your employer brand. Discover what your strengths are, and where you need to make improvements. You’ll want to draft the survey in a way that is easy to track and measure over time. Good or bad, you’ll want to administer the survey on an annual basis and see how you’re doing—more on this later.

To get a pulse on what external candidates think of your employer brand, take to the internet. You can scrape candidate reviews of your company on websites like Glassdoor, Comparably, and Indeed.

These employer reviews play a critical role in your applicant pool. Negative reviews of products & services are the #1 factor damaging employer brand (rated as “damaging” by 95% of workers and “very damaging” or “extremely damaging” by 80% of workers).

While there are some obvious responses or reviews that can safely be categorized as either positive or negative, it’s important to keep in mind that employer brand is not binary. A positive employer brand for one company, and for one type of candidate, can be observed as negative for another type of company or candidate.

Let’s think about two hypothetical companies. Behind door number 1 is Company A, an on-the-rise marketing startup and behind door number 2 is Company B, a long-established public accounting firm. Here are the pieces of feedback that each received when they surveyed their employees and studied online reviews.

Company AThe most popular benefit that employees cited was ‘Work From Home Flexibility’.“Company A has an extremely employee-friendly culture complete with all the perks and benefits you could want.”48% of employees cited career development as an area that needed improvement.

Company B83% of employees cited that they have trust in upper management.“One of the core values at Company B is ‘integrity’, and this is not just a platitude on the wall. The company truly demonstrates integrity.”60% of employees cited ‘Work-Life Balance’ as an area that needed improvement.

Based on the industry and standing of the two companies, one could make an argument that both Company A and Company B have strong employer brands. But if you flip the feedback, you have a serious employer branding issue.

STEP 1: HOW TO ASSESS YOUR ORGANIZATION’S EMPLOYER BRAND

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When digging into the status of their employer brand, companies usually find themselves in one of two buckets: they’re either surprised that their employer brand is as strong as they found, or as poor as they discovered. If you’re the former, there is always room for improvement!

If your company is struggling with employer brand, it’s either because you have cultural issues that you need to address (your employee survey didn’t go well) or you’re failing to broadcast your employer brand to external candidates (online reviews and research didn’t present your company in the best light)

Here are a few quick steps you can take to improve both:

Address the Company with Survey ResultsThe responses you received to your survey will provide you with a number of action items. Your employees will be eager to hear about the results. Put together a presentation and show your team the results, or at least the highlights, and call out the elements you’re working to improve. By involving your team, you’re demonstrating that you’re taking it seriously.

Assemble a Culture CommitteeWith everything on your plate as the head of talent acquisition, you don’t have the time to transform your company culture all on your own. Do what all great leaders do and delegate. A culture committee is tasked with the directive of putting together events and company culture programs that increase job satisfaction and employee engagement.

Rework the Careers Section on Your WebsiteCandidates behave like consumers in today’s job market. Before they apply to your company, they’re doing their research, and your website is a prime destination. Make sure your website represents your employer brand and features content that engages with potential applicants.

Speak to Candidates on Your Social Media PlatformsYour social media platforms present tremendous opportunities to attract applicants, as 79% of applicants visit them during their job search. Mix in posts that promote your employer brand into your social publishing calendar to show prospective candidates that your organization is a fun place to work.

Living Your Company ValuesCompanies put a lot of thought and effort into constructing their company values. But if you’re not living them out day in and day out, they become empty platitudes adorning your walls and company website. Living out company values starts at the top of an organization, and trickles down. Whatever your company values are, make sure that everyone on your team is embracing them.

Align Across All of Your Marketing MaterialsMake sure that the employer branding messaging you’re using on social media and your website align with all of your marketing materials. Business cards, trade show banners, pamphlets, fact sheets—anything material that has your company name on it should be on message.

STEP 2: HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND

Your social media platforms present

tremendous opportunities to

attract applicants, as 79% of

applicants visit them during their

job search.

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If your company is not taking steps to stoke your employer brand, its recruiting impact will be muted—no matter how strong your employer brand is. In order to begin leveraging your employer brand as an asset in recruiting, your company must first integrate it into your talent acquisition strategy. To get the results you want, employer brand can’t be an afterthought, and instead must be a central component to HR operations. How can Heads of Talent Acquisition achieve those results?

The same way you drive results across all of your business operations, leverage technology and ensure brand consistency.

Utilize the power of technology, and especially social media, to put your employer brand to work. Share employee-centric content across your social media platforms. Employee birthdays and anniversaries, milestones and achievements, company get togethers—all of these things are prime employer branding content that your company should be broadcasting.

As far as brand consistency goes, make sure that everyone on the talent acquisition team is on the same page. Your interview team should be using the same employer brand talking points when they’re sitting down with candidates. If a candidate is getting different impressions of what it is like to work for your company from different people they interview with, those mixed signals can be damaging.

STEP 3: HOW TO USE YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND AS A RECRUITING TOOL

Social media channels serve as a “window into company culture”, with

Facebook being used by 21% of candidates

who want to get a sense of

company culture based on

browsing photos and content on

the site. (Jobvite)

Companies believe that social media

marketing will be the most

in-demand HR skill by 2020,

2nd being data analysis,

followed by predictive

modeling skills. (CareerArc)

76% of companies

choose social media to

communicate employer brand.

(TalentLyft)

Job seekers rank social media

and professional networks as the most useful job search resource

compared to job boards, job ads, recruiting agencies, and

recruiting events.

(CareerArc)

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While 96% of companies believe that employer brand and reputation impact revenue, only 44% monitor its impact.

You need to treat your employer brand the way you would treat any other element of your business: by actively measuring its effectiveness.

Once you have a baseline for how external candidates and your staff appraise your employer brand, you’re ready to take the next step and begin measuring the impact your employer brand is having on your ability to attract and retain talent. Measuring the impact of your employer brand is critical to preserving a competitive edge in talent acquisition.

At the end of the day, you need your investment into promoting your employer brand to deliver a return—and that return is attracting top talent. To measure the return, you simply need to set up a few KPIs, establish measuring practices, and commit to monitoring them.

Some common KPIs that our partners have used to measure and monitor the effectiveness of their employer brand include:

• Employee Retention

• Cost of hire

• Time to hire

• Interview to offer ratio

• Candidate withdrawal rate

• Quality of hire

• Source of hire

STEP 4: TRACKING THE IMPACT OF YOUR EMPLOYER BRAND

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(952) 373-8521

versique.com

ABOUT VERSIQUEVersique is one of the largest talent acquisition firms in the Midwest

and specializes in both consulting and permanent placement.

The recruiting and consulting team specializes in the following practice areas: information technology, human resources, digital marketing, engineering/operations, finance/accounting, sales, CPG (consumer packaged

goods), and executive retained search. Versique also has an internal digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO, PPC, inbound marketing, and more.

Versique has filled thousands of positions and its network of connections is one of the strongest in the industry. We create amazing relationships.

Versique is one of the largest talent acquisition firms in the Midwest, specializing in three core areas: Executive Search, Direct Hire, and HR Consulting.

Our team of recruiters specialize in the following practice areas: Information Technology,

Human Resources, Digital Marketing, Engineering/Operations, Finance/Accounting, Sales, Banking and Finance, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Executive Retained Search.

Versique also has an internal digital marketing agency, Parqa Marketing.

Versique was recently listed as a Top 150 Workplace by the Star Tribune.