Written by

Frank Aneke

In this concluding part of ten strategies to boost your reputation as an employer, it’s important we once again define employer brand to give us further insight into the subject matter. Employer brand can be defined as what people say about your business as an employer when you are not around. It can be further described as what your current and former employees tell their friends, family members and peers about their experience or impression of what your company is like as an employer. That is how a company’s reputation as an employer is developed and sustained for years, sometimes without the knowledge of the business owner(s).

Here are the remaining five strategies that could help boost your employer brand.

1. Engagement via social media: Once you establish social media platforms where your target talent hang-out or where they go for job hunting, then you should focus on how to engage them with distinctive and valuable contents designed to attract their attention. Depending on your target talent preferred social media platform(s), you can start with one platform (probably LinkedIn or Glassdoor) and use it as your pilot platform. As you gain traction on one platform, you can expand your out-reach to other social platforms.

2. Harvesting Current and Former Employees Connections: Depending on your workplace culture, your current and former employees can be incredibly valuable to your employer branding campaign. These two groups know what is like to work at your company and can share their positive experience with other talented prospects within their network. On the flip side, same group of people could become massive albatross to your employer’s branding campaign if their experience were overtly negative. Having said that, former employees can be great sources of referrals and some of them can even return back to your company as valuable boomerang hires.

3. Embrace Referral program: Data shows that referral candidates can be five times likely to get hired than other candidates. Adding to that, a candidate experience research report by the Talent Board stated that 42.7 percent of referred candidates were more likely to increase their relationship with a potential employer (apply again, refer others, make purchases) than if they conducted their own search or received unsolicited outreach from a recruiter. With your employer branding campaign in mind, it makes sense to have active and incentive-driven referral program in your business.

4. Boosting Your Employer Brand Profile in Search Engines: The importance of SEO and SEM in recruiting candidates is becoming more important as Google increasingly becomes the hub of preference for job seekers. Many candidates rely on Google and other search engines to track down information and resources they need when they are hunting for a new job. So, it is important to consider SEO and SEM as key tools in your employer branding campaign.

5. Building Alumni Talent Network: Submitting job application and selection process can be  very emotional experience for candidates. For every candidate recruited , there are dozens or even hundreds of candidates rejected. So, the question is how can you make the most of rejected candidates in your hiring process? Generally speaking, every rejected candidate is a potential brand advocate or detractor. For these two reasons, you must invest more time, effort and resources in creating positive candidate experience. Express your appreciation for the time and effort they invested in applying for the job, answer any questions they might have and respond from a position of empathy. The dividends for your company reputation as an employer could be priceless.

Moving forward, ignoring your employer brand doesn’t make it go away as much as you may want it to be the case. People will still interact with your business and form opinions, employees will still leave and share their experience with their peers, family and friends, your growing online reviews will still be available for prospective candidates to read and form judgement. The combination of these variables outside your control converge as your employer brand. So, the earlier you take actions to boost and maintain a healthy employer reputation, the better your chance to attract top talents that could help you build your business. The decision is all yours to make. Thanks for reading my blog.

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In the next edition, we will examine: Six Keys to Create Authentic Employer Value Prepositions (EVP): Watch this space!!