Do you know how candidates view your company? Are your job descriptions enticing? What do candidates see when they research your website, social media, and company reviews?
In today’s low unemployment market, how a potential candidate perceives your company is more important than ever. Factors like a poorly written job description or slow loading website are reason enough for top candidates to pursue a different opportunity.
For employers, taking advantage of your employer brand is now integral to your hiring process, especially if you want to consistently hire relevant and high-quality candidates.
If you’re not sure how you can improve your own employer branding during a candidate drought, check out the tips below and start attracting the right candidates to your open opportunities.
MAKE EMPLOYER BRANDING TOP OF MIND
Employer branding is essential to your hiring process. Today, 72% of recruiting leaders around the world agree that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring, and even more so has a significant impact on your business’s success.
However, employer branding is not just something that happens by accident. You have to be intentional about all things involving your talent acquisition brand in order to attract talent.
Candidates are going to be judging you throughout your entire recruiting process – from their very first interaction with your brand all the way until the offer stage. You can’t go a minute without thinking about how this impacts recruiting top talent. If candidates even get a sense that your brand is not living up to their expectations, they have plenty of other opportunities at their fingertips.
Ideally, you should have someone on your recruiting team who is focused on creating a cohesive brand throughout your hiring process. This person should actively seek out ways to promote your brand and make sure the right message is being communicated to your candidates.
You should try to incorporate a marketing component to your efforts as well. Your marketing team can help promote your open positions and monitor how your brand is being mentioned on sites like Glassdoor and on social media.
If you don’t make branding top of mind, then you risk having someone else’s comments and opinions define your brand for you.
BE THE TALK OF THE TOWN
In today’s low unemployment market, many talented professionals are often happily employed and not looking for new opportunities. That means top employees are not checking the job boards every day and are not visiting your company website if they’re not familiar with your brand.
However, there are other ways to promote your employer brand and attract top candidates to your website and job openings.
One of the best places to start is on social media. There are a variety of strategies you can use to promote your brand on social media, including enticing visuals, trending hashtags, paid ads, recommended job postings, and great content.
Once you’re able to connect with candidates over social media, the goal is to then bring them to your website.
And that means your website needs to impress. Make sure you’re updating the content on your website and your blog. You should also include information to help your company stand out. Talk about your company culture, why your employees like to work there, your team’s accomplishments and any awards your company has won.
Remember, today’s candidates have their choice of employment opportunities so really sell them on why your company is right for them.
PROACTIVELY MANAGE GLASSDOOR REVIEWS
Today’s top candidates are proactive and like to research companies online before they apply for a new position. One of the most popular sites for employees and candidates to do their research is on Glassdoor.
Glassdoor holds a growing database of millions of company reviews. They have over 55 million unique monthly visitors and 800,000 employers use the site.
While this is great news for companies who have raving reviews on the site, there are many companies who have less than ideal reviews on there as well.
However, just because you have negative reviews doesn’t mean you can fix them. It’s when you don’t respond to the reviews that you destroy your company’s brand.
In fact, 62% of job seekers say their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review. And 90% of job seekers say it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency, according to Glassdoor research.
Before you start managing your Glassdoor reviews, you need to know the best way to do so. We were able to get some great feedback from the experts at Glassdoor about the right way for companies to respond to both positive and negative feedback:
- Be open and appreciative of feedback
- Affirm the positive feedback
- Acknowledge areas for improvement
- Share the plan of action you’re going to take next
- Respond consistently, but you don’t need to respond to every review
- If you’ve just started responding, focus on the most recent reviews
- Assign accountability to your team
And one of the most important takeaways from this advice is to be transparent and consistent with your responses. Assign someone on your team to review and respond on Glassdoor once a week or more.
And don’t just stop after you’ve responded. You should also encourage managers to listen to the feedback and respond accordingly. Make a companywide campaign to address these issues and be transparent with your team. Remember, if you’re able to see the reviews, then your team has access to see them too.
SELL YOUR COMPANY WITH YOUR JOB DESCRIPTIONS
One of the first real interactions a candidate may have with your brand is your job posting. And top candidates won’t read an unappealing job description that looks like an exact copy of every other job description out there. Instead, the job description needs to be unique and stand out from the competition.
Some of the things you should include in a job description include:
- A catchy opening sentence to grab candidates attention
- Company culture and workplace environment
- Perks and benefits
- Responsibilities and key tasks
- Compensation or salary range
- The contribution the employee will make to your team
- Hiring manager’s personality and approach
- Promote the hiring manager’s leadership style and how long people have stayed under that individual
- Use language that embodies your company’s personality
- Use bullet points
- Company name, logo, and contact information
Overall, don’t be afraid to stand out and stray from the norms. You’re trying to attract people who will be the best fit for your company and crafting an appealing job description is one of the best ways to do that.
DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
Your employer branding efforts shouldn’t stop once you find the candidates you want to interview. Top candidates will be observing your every behavior, especially throughout the hiring and interview process.
They will be watching how fast you respond to their emails and communication. If you take too long to respond to them or stop responding completely, this reflects poorly on your employer brand.
Another area to pay attention to is who is on your interview and what they’re telling the candidates. If your interviewers tell candidates conflicting stories or appear to be a drag, then these can be red flags for candidates.
Overall, everyone who interacts with candidates – from the initial phone screen to the in-person interview – is a reflection of your brand. And you need to be aware of how these interactions are affecting your hiring process.
Have you seen any good examples of employers with a strong company brand? If so, let us know who and why their branding is so powerful.
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