Attraction 101. Your Employer Brand is Crucial
Are you looking to bring in any new people in 2020? New roles? Restructuring? Replacements? In the business of building teams via recruitment, active headhunting, and coaching, there’s a phrase that comes to mind more often than ideal. Actually, I’d like to never have it rise up again: Some play hard to get, some play hard to want. And this applies both ways.
Having the highly desirable but hard to get branding and reputation as an employer doesn’t happen accidentally. It takes planning, creating, growing and maintaining your brand.
Just before the Christmas break, I was talking with one of the partners of a professional services firm in the Sydney CBD about his plans for 2020. I’d never met him before — we’d conversed via phone and email a couple of times — and I went to that meeting with some knowledge about his firm and an impression of “what they’re like”. These impressions were formed by my experiences of their phone interactions, from front desk to Managing Partner, comments by the client who referred them to me, their website, social media, even their office location — and its (quite beautiful) décor that I discovered upon arrival. A lot of touch points.
We form impressions subconsciously; we don’t even realise this is happening. If we are actively aware of this, and we consciously keep an open mind, we can make logical and fact-based assessments of employees, employer, roles and opportunities. This is not always how the world works though. How many times have you heard, or even said, “First impressions count” or “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” Lots probably! Given this, it’s essential to have a clear vision of your ideal brand at take continuous steps to build and maintain it.
In that meeting in mid-December, the prospective client was keen to tell me about the firm’s history, structure, areas of specialisation, recent successes and future growth plans and what he would like me to do for them. After he’d finished, and several pages of notes later, I asked him three questions:
1. What are the things about your firm that make it different to or better than others?
2. If I was to ask others who work in this field what they think of your firm, what do you think they would say?
3. If I was to gather half a dozen of your clients, recent and long term, to participate in a focus group about the firm, what sort of things do you think they’d? What recommendations do you think they would make?
The responses to those questions were as expected, consistent with most of the answers I receive whenever I ask them — Hmmm, good questions, but I really don’t know. Right, so let’s get working on that. It’s paramount to attracting the best people. Let’s get down to business…
Very often the best candidates are busy. They may not be looking for your job. They may not be looking for any new job. Some of the greatest people I’ve worked with around Australia and headhunted into new roles had no intention of leaving where they were. The best and most beautiful fruit is often not low hanging but at the top of the tree, so harder to get.
People now have many competing sources of information, advice and networking, and are choosy — often cynical — about what they read and hear. Thus, reaching your best potential candidates requires finding and entering the world they live and work in, and inviting them into yours. And that requires creating your employer brand, just as you do for branding your products and services.
Your employer brand must be consciously built, nurtured, promoted and reinforced in all the ways and places your potential employees access and are exposed to information — general interest media, business-to-business press, social media, special-interest websites and networks, word-of-mouth, and on smartphones, mobile devices and computers.
8 Considerations:
Be clear about what you want to accomplish.
There’s been a lot of buzz around employer branding as the war for talent has heated up. Before embarking on the employer branding journey, ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to scope, objectives and success metrics.
Don’t assume you know how employees feel.
Would you go with your gut when it comes to understanding your customer wants and mind-set? That’s a high-priced gamble. Strong employment brands are derived from research that gets to the heart of what makes working for your organisation special.
One size does not fit all.
Design your employer brand research and methodology to address your organisation’s specific needs and culture. An off-the-shelf, “one size fits all” approach will, most likely, result in generic outcomes.
Employer branding is not only an HR initiative.
While it’s often driven by Talent Acquisition and the need to attract top talent to your organization, defining your employment value proposition and crafting your brand should be viewed as a business imperative. Active involvement from key stakeholders across the organization and in the C-suite is critical for success.
Become the employer of choice.
Always a lofty goal, in the grand scheme of things it comes down to the fact that you can’t be all things to all people. That just leads to generic positioning that doesn’t differentiate your organization from your competitor down the street.
The experience is the message.
Building brand loyalty requires every brand to live up to its promise. So if perception doesn’t match the reality, you’re in trouble. Your employer brand builds trust when it’s anchored in your core strengths as an employer, but also needs to speak to where the organization is headed.
Do you have Brand Ambassadors?
Do managers understand and embrace the employer brand? Do their behaviours reflect and support the brand promise? Having managers and employees fully engaged brings the brand to life.
What’s in it for me?
A common mistake of many organizations is to speak from the company perspective. Your employment brand is designed to set mutual expectations, telling candidates what you expect, and what they can expect in return.
Employer brands aren’t built and maintained with scattered efforts and isolated job postings. It takes careful positioning promoted with systematic and thoughtful content and messaging. It takes a compelling story, distributed in effective ways that surround potential employees, creating awareness and attracting interest.
If I asked some of your clients and some of your competitors what they think of your firm, what do you think they would say?
Are you hard to want or hard to get?
Finally, thanks for reading, and I have a small favour to ask: Our beautiful country Australia is on fire. The Red Cross charity is seeking donations, and you can read more about this and donate here. Please do help: https://www.redcross.org.au/campaigns/disaster-relief-and-recovery-donate
David Imrie is a consultant recruiter, headhunter, team builder and coach based in Sydney, Australia.
