Are the following situations familiar to you? You launch a job vacation campaign and when it is finished, you realize that: A) applicant insufficiently meet your criteria; B) A large number of people applied but you are not satisfied with the quality of applications; C) A small number of people applied, therefore you do not have a great opportunity to choose for the first round, let alone something more.

What can be the causes of these situations?

A) Poor of wrongly built reputation for your company or even a lack of it; B) Competition is doing an excellent job for itself and a large number of quality candidates is applying to them, wanting to work there; C) lack of quality candidates.

What can you do about it?

On the third reason we can not influence much, unless we are an academic institution or we work closely with one 🙂 For the first two there is a solution: to position yourself as a desirable employer. To offer a working environment in which a lot of people would like to work.

The Employer Brand represents the perceived characteristics and attributes which are connected to that employer. This perception is the result of numerous factors, therefore the most successful companies in this field work on multiple fronts to make the overall impression of the company as best as possible. In conditions of increased brain drain and high demand for quality candidates, brand strength and positive perception of the employer are a big plus for him. Because, if they are perceived as desirable, employers will have easier way to reach quality candidates.

There are a lot of questions and doubts which employers have before they start working on employer branding, and we will cover in this text several points which we consider may be useful.

What can all be the employer’s adverts?

If the organization has anything to “praise for” it is socially responsible it has good interpersonal relations, there is a great work atmosphere, and the salary is competitive, it has internship programs and excellent talent management, employees are important to it, it produces a strong brand, there are opportunities for promotion, travel abroad or any other benefits such as health insurance, additional education, team buildings, flexible working hours- it has a great chance to be perceived as a desirable employer. All the above mentioned benefits are definitively material for creating content, however it is very important to articulate them, without sounding like we are bragging. Also, if an employer can praise with some of the above items, it does not necessarily rank among the most desirable, but it is certainly a good start.

Internet. Opportunity or a “Necessary evil”?

On the other hand, as the internet has influenced the way of getting information, employers should take care of how they will be presented online, not only on their own (website, social networks) and paid media (employment portals), but also what kind of reputation it will have on channels that are not under their jurisdiction (forums, private profiles on social networks) – the so-called shared media. The situation in the first two cases is somewhat easier for employers, because they can “control” the content they place, and there we can see different campaigns and ads that aim to promote and communicate the values of the company in the right way. The third case is the result of experience that the user had with the employer. The user can be anyone: current, potential or former employee, family member or friend of those people or even “random passer” who has heard or seen something about the employer.

Suma sumarum, the internet has brought us transparency. Everything can be known, therefore do not try to show yourself in the wrong light, because this can come back to you in many ways: you will attract the wrong candidates or you will, in the least, be declared fog sellers.

Who will if not their own?

In general, people have tendency to believe more in the content that is created and shared by the user– in this case employee (the so-called User Generated Content- UGC) or comments on forums (the so-called Word of Mouth promotion), rather then in the dull sentences that can be read daily on websites of companies. Therefore it is important to have ambassadors among your employees. And in order to have the employees authentically engaged, it is very important that the content which the employee will create or share, and which relates to the value of you as an employer, is in accordance with his personal values. To have loyal and highly integrated employees is a big plus and therefore there are special strategies (the so-called Employee Engagement), which in adequate manner are engaging them as ambassadors of the company.

Marketing or Human Resources?

What is interesting is that we had the chance while working on campaigns whose goal was to brand the employer, to work with people from more sectors, not just marketing and corporate communications. Most often those were people from human resources (HR). It is not only HR’s job to deal with employer branding, because they are doing the recruitment, nor is it a task solely for the marketing or PR sectors concerned with branding and reputation. They should work in synergy for the common goal, because the challenges of Internet First daily life are infinite and we come to the situation that it is easier to sell the product than to find a quality employee.

And for the end:

The plan is nothing, (strategic) planning is everything.

There are employers who have strategically made the decision to invest in their brand, because it is really important for them to attract quality candidates, but also to retain the existing employees. They recognized in time this paradigm and they are considered to be in the line of the best employers in Serbia, and it is our pleasure to have the opportunity to work with them on employer branding strategies and campaigns. This is one of them, and in the following texts we will go through more examples.
These are just some of the aspects of employer branding. There are many more and we will update them periodically. In the following text we will deal with the current trends in the employer branding, and at any moment you can contact us, to work together on successful employer branding stories.

Milka and Mia