The job market has changed radically over the last few years. Today, job seekers demand more than just good wages – they want alignment. Many applicants look for companies that reflect their values, with a workplace culture that puts growth over hierarchy. They want leaders who value workers as people instead of treating them as productivity units. All these make employer branding even more important than ever.
Companies with poor employer branding are currently confronted with a harsh reality: higher cost per hire rates, increased turnover, and a negative reputation. On the other hand, companies that have committed to authentic and compelling employer brands are attracting top talent and building employee loyalty.
If your organization is struggling with employer branding or could use a refresh, here are the top strategies and ideas you can add to your playbook.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Understanding modern employer branding
Your employer brand is the reputation of your organization as a workplace. It encompasses your company culture, leadership style, career development opportunities, and work-life integration. It’s the totality of the experience and perception of both potential employees and existing workers.
The business case is compelling. According to Randstad’s report, companies that have a good employer brand attract 50% more qualified applications and save up to 43% of the cost-per-hire. Another study from Glassdoor shows that 83% of job hunters look at company ratings and reviews, which means your employer brand is a major factor that can influence a job seeker’s decision whether to proceed or not with their application.
Your employer brand is essentially your company’s reputation in the talent market. Companies can strengthen their employer brand by delivering on their promises throughout the recruitment stage and the entire employee lifecycle, in the same way that consumer brands can foster loyalty by consistently providing reliable services.
Strategic approaches to building your employer brand
1. Define an authentic employee value proposition
An Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the company’s unique offer—values, opportunities, a thoughtful benefits and rewards program—in exchange for an employee’s skills, expertise, and commitment. Instead of generic claims of "competitive compensation" and "great culture," the most powerful EVPs will define a more specific offer that sets them apart from other employers.
To create an EVP, you must first figure out what really matters to your employees. Pay close attention to their feedback and concerns. Ask questions:
- Why did you choose this company?
- What makes you stay?
- Is there something you want to change or not change?
- What do you think needs improvement?
Look out for trends. The best things about your company are what should be in your EVP, and if you want to improve it, work on the concerns that you can realistically address to improve employee satisfaction.
2. Transform employees into brand advocates
Corporate recruitment messaging does not have much credibility anymore. In modern recruitment, employee voices hold more truth than what the company claims. Job seekers trust current employee information more than corporate social media account information.
With that said, work on building an effective employee advocacy program that also encourages employees to share their experiences: career milestones, team victories, and workplace culture highlights. Reward employees who are promoting your brand. Above all, prioritize building experiences worth discussing.
3. Build a strong online presence
Job seekers doing research on potential employees will always look for the company’s website first. After that, they’ll most likely check your social media pages. If you don’t have a strong presence online, it’s like leaving it to the public to decide on your reputation.
Building your reputation in the modern job market, which now largely exists online, requires more work on your online presence as a company and employer. Align your social media pages to your company website and make sure they reflect the organization’s values, goals, and culture. Keep it updated and engage with your audience as often as possible so you can take control of the public’s perception of your employer brand.
This also means investing in a well-maintained company website, ideally with a reliable web hosting service. You can start with free web hosting services and move to a paid or even a dedicated web host once you start scaling. GreenGeeks recommends choosing a hosting platform with 99.9% uptime and faster page loading speed for better user experience.
It’s also recommended to choose a professional web design that highlights your organization’s best qualities and makes it easy for visitors to navigate pages.
4. Design a careers page that converts
Your careers page is one of the first things potential employees will see about your branding. However, it’s often treated as an afterthought for many companies—just a list of open positions with generic descriptions. This is such a huge lost opportunity.
Make your careers page immersive. Include real-life employee testimonials (videos work very well), show how much you invest in career development with specific program details, and be open about your culture, including the challenges. Applicants will want to know the real situation in your workplace instead of just seeing an image that’s too good to be true.
Take for example, Shopify’s careers page. It may look simple at first, but it is uniquely structured around career paths instead of open positions. Before applicants can see the job opportunities, they can get a closer look at what it would be like to work as an engineer, designer, or support specialist at Shopify.
4. Reimagine the candidate experience
Each of the touchpoints in the recruitment process can make or break your employer brand. From the moment candidates find your company, you are constantly being judged.
Streamline applications—processes with too many forms to fill out, with repetitive questions, are an indication of bureaucracy. Be proactive in the process; ghosting your candidates at one point may easily tarnish your reputation. Treat rejected applicants respectfully; they can reapply, make referrals, or become customers in the future, and their experience —whether good or bad — will be passed on via word of mouth.
5. Demonstrate tangible investment in growth
Today’s generation of talents tends to be more focused on continuous learning and development as opposed to career ladders. They want skills training, exposure to new technologies, and a chance to push their limits.
Put your development opportunities into practice. Provide learning tours and conference allowances, with clear career progression paths that can guide their goals. Develop real mentorship programs instead of just distributing manuals.
6. Embed authentic diversity, equity, and inclusion
Many of the younger generation of workers, especially Gen Z, have made it a point to evaluate the DEI efforts of companies they’re interested in. They go beyond the statements and review leadership structures, pay equity statistics, and employee reviews from underrepresented groups.
Publicize your DEI efforts by making your employee resource groups visible and accessible. Promote their activities, goals, and outcomes, instead of just giving generic promises.
Measuring what matters
Employer branding is just like any other business initiative that needs rigor. Track metrics that show how your brand grows: application volume and quality, offer acceptance rate, time to fill positions, and cost per hire trends.
Keep track of external perception using Glassdoor ratings and Indeed reviews, and monitor your social media platforms to get a pulse on your company’s image and reputation as an employer. Conduct new hire interviews with new employees to find out what made them join, then run a survey for long-time employees to find out what makes them stay.
Most importantly, measure whether your employer brand promise matches reality. If you get high scores on both employee engagement and the public’s external perception, then there’s an alignment. Waning engagement, even with good external branding, means there’s a disconnect between what you promise and what employees experience in reality.
Building for the long term
The best employer brands are not achieved by campaigns and short-term solutions. They are formed by genuine, consistent care towards employee experience and effective delivery of your EVP.
Companies with the best wins in talent wars are not necessarily the ones with the highest budgets. They’re the ones that have worked hard enough to strategize on what they can offer best, defined it clearly, and delivered on their promises every day.
An employer brand is an image—it’s always there, formed through all the experiences of employees and encounters with candidates. But the question isn’t whether you want to invest in it. It’s a question of what you can do to control the narrative instead of just leaving it to the masses. Just keep in mind that your decision is one of the biggest factors that will also influence the decision of top talents whether they’ll join and stay in your company or not.