Building your employer brand? Here’s how.

Start by mapping out your organization’s identity.

Candidates and employees are increasingly seeking workplaces that match their personality and aspirations.

When communicating about your culture and identity, you’re increasing the likelihood to attract and hire right-fit talent for your organization.

If you haven’t defined your company’s culture and identity yet, it’s time to have a conversation with your colleagues to pinpoint what best describes your organization and what makes it stand out on the job market.

The following questions should help you better understand your corporate culture:

– What are the most common values among your colleagues?
– What makes your company’s culture special?
– What are the values your company stands for?
– Another important aspect of your organizational identity is your story.

Top employer brands are partly successful because of their compelling stories.

You don’t need to be a worldwide business to leverage storytelling. In fact, many startups successfully rely on storytelling to attract talent.

In fact, you can use your organizations inception as the starting point of your story.

Here are a few more questions to ask when writing the story:

– Did you overcome exceptional challenges that define who you are today as an organization?
– What are your colleagues saying about working at your company?
– Do you have unique anecdotes about how your products and/or services came about?

Prospective candidates want to know what your business is all about.

In this section, take the time to describe what your company does.

– What problems do you help solve?
– What do your products and/or services do?
– Why would the future employees want to take part in creating, improving, and selling your product or services?

Why should the best talent on the market join your company, instead of the competition?

Simply write down a list of reasons why your organization stands out.

Of course, those reasons will vary a lot from a business unit to another. I believe that the best way to gather a complete and accurate list is to sit down and ask your colleagues about it.

Candidates are more likely to be attracted to organizations that have received recognized distinctions such as Great Place to Work or received awards for successful projects and initiatives.

So, forget about modesty, and display your successes and awards in your employer brand messaging.

Your EVP represents your values, your culture, and all the benefits and support your organization offers to its employees.

When presented with multiple opportunities, great candidates will run benchmarks and be naturally driven towards organizations with strong EVP that can guarantee their well-being and personal development.

Employees are 5x more likely to be highly engaged if their organization has a strong EVP. High engagement that you can then leverage to show prospective candidates how motivated and involved your employees are.

Your EVP should provide answers to the following questions, “why should I work here” & “in what ways can this company meet (or exceed) my needs as an employee?“

Employees’ needs can be divided into four categories: Functional, Emotional, Self-development, and Social.

Functional Needs:

Functional needs describe tools (such as computers, desks, company phone, etc.) or other concrete benefits (such as salary, food vouchers, etc.) that are necessary for employees to complete their daily tasks to the best of their abilities.

Emotional Needs:

Do your employees feel engaged at work? What makes your colleagues particularly happy or proud? What makes them feel connected to one another? Are they comfortable sharing emotional needs with you?

Self-development Needs:

What do you do to support employees’ growth and professional development? Employees want to know how they can grow with you.

Social needs

No one wants to work in an organization where they don’t feel appreciated and valued by their coworkers. Such feelings affect communication, project management, productivity, and, in some cases, it can turn a healthy work environment into a living hell.

On the other hand, fulfilling your colleagues’ social needs will strengthen employee advocacy and, therefore, contribute to supporting your employer branding efforts.

Defining your ideal candidate profile will help you create and distribute your employer branding content. Of course, the ideal candidate profile will vary depending on the vacant job. This is why you shouldn’t solely focus on demographics and the needed qualifications. 

Instead, try to describe the emotional features or specific personality traits that you think are necessary to be a part of your organization.

You have many communication channels at your disposal including your career site, specialist employer branding platforms, social media channels, and most importantly your employees, the brand ambassadors.

Candidate Experience describes how candidates feel about your organization once they enter your hiring process. The easier you make it for them to discover your world and communicate with you, the more they’ll like what they see, thus increasing your chances to attract and hire talented people.

This could be anything from a brand new, responsive career page to attract new employees, access to your organization’s social accounts to spread your employer branding related messaging, assistance from your recruitment marketing or marketing team to produce relevant content or video material to support the employer brand, etc…