Using employer branding to hire top talent

75% of job-seekers consider an employer's brand before even applying for a job, so why are some companies still hesitant to make this a priority? Companies that prioritise their employer branding benefit from an increase in quality talent, an easier recruitment process and a decrease in time to hire. 

In our latest edition of The Breakfast Club, we sat down with Oscar Sadler (Client Strategy Lead at Wiser), Alex Bennett (Head of Early Careers & Employer Branding at L'Oreal), Molly Johnson-Jones (CEO & Co-Founder at Flexa Careers) and Leo Harrison (CEO & Founder at Chapter 2) to discuss the impact of employer branding on the recruitment process. Here are our top takeaways from the discussion 🚀

Hiring should be treated like marketing 👀

Hiring nowadays is so much more than just posting a job description and waiting for applications. 79% of job seekers check you on social media before they apply to a role, so it's important to make sure you're leveraging this to generate reach and as a way to drive traffic to your career site. If you're only just starting out, consistency is key to grow traction!

Employee stories and company culture are a great way of promoting your company as a place people want to work. People buy from people, so it's important to have fun, be human and be personable. You can also use social media to find out where your ideal candidates are spending their time—whether it's Facebook groups, Twitter or TikTok, make sure you're present on the right channels.

This concept doesn't end when a candidate has been hired, but carries on right through to the onboarding process. Make sure your onboarding is exactly what the candidate has bought into and be honest about what that process is like. Promising them one thing and offering them another is a guaranteed way to lose that new hire very quickly.

Build your employer branding framework first 🔨

Different candidates will be looking at your brand from different perspectives depending on where they are in their career and what they're looking for in a role. A good first step in your employer branding strategy is to narrow down the reasons candidates would want to join your company, and the reasons why they would stay. Try to remove your own bias when it comes to narrowing down the reasons. Ask your employees for feedback! What do they love about your company? What could be improved on? What works and what doesn't? Use this feedback to build your framework and make changes for the better. 

Once your framework is ready to go and you know the important aspects of your culture, make sure it's present in all of your communication touch points—from your job descriptions to your onboarding. Ensure your candidates are interacting with it as frequently as possible.

You don't need a huge budget—just transparency 🙅

If you're in the beginning of your employer branding journey, you don't need to fork out a ton of money to be successful. Being transparent and communicative is key.

Make sure your career page, what you post on LinkedIn, your job descriptions and any other communication channels are clear, concise, consistent and honest. As we mentioned in the previous point, you don't want to sell something to your candidates if it doesn't reflect the experience they will have once they actually start.

Transparency is also extremely important from a DE&I perspective. Your candidates might have certain accessibility issues or working environments that just aren't suitable for them—5 full days on site might not work for them. Knowing this information before applying will save both the candidate and hiring manager a lot of time and energy. Surprisingly, a lot of companies omit their flexibility and benefits until during the recruitment process, but if you're fully transparent from the get go, it benefits everyone involved.

A strong employer brand strengthens employee retention 💪

Employer branding isn't just an external exercise, try using it for internal communication as well!

When we say to be fully transparent and communicative, this doesn't just go for your candidates, but for your current employees as well. Surprisingly, a huge amount of employees don't actually know what's on offer at their own company and wouldn't be able to tell you their benefits, hours or values.

Your employees are there to help build your employer brand with you. Any changes you make to your employer branding or employer value proposition, don't just shout about it externally but do an internal launch as well. You can even host workshops or sessions to give your employees the tools they need to feel confident in your company and to shout about you to their peers. 

Leverage your career site to improve your employer branding 💥

One of the main places a candidate will go when trying to decide if your company is the right fit for them is your career site, so it's crucial to include all the relevant information on there to make it easy to find.

If we take all our previous points, there's a lot of things you can be doing on your career site to boost your employer brand. Shout about your brand! What makes you unique? Why would someone want to apply? What's your culture like? Make sure you have all of that there for your candidates to see. Don't forget the importance of employee advocacy and include testimonials and stories from your current employees—you can use video to make this more engaging. 

A top tip from from our panel is to use analytics to understand how your candidates are interacting with your career site. Look at who's landing on your page, what they're looking at most, how long they're on there and make adjustments accordingly. Make your career site work for your candidates.

Thank you to everyone who joined The Breakfast Club! If you'd like to connect with our speakers, you can find their details below.

Oscar Sadler, Client Strategy Lead at Wiser
Alex Bennett, Head of Early Careers & Employer Branding at L'Oreal
Molly Johnson-Jones, CEO & Co-Founder at Flexa Careers
Leo Harrison, CEO & Founder at Chapter 2

A peak into the latest Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club is a quarterly event, hosted in London, for like-minded creatives, thought leaders and people within the HR space to get together and be inspired. If you'd like to join our next event, click here! ✨