Three Ways to Brand Your Company for Hiring
First, do no harm. It’s the oath every doctor lives by.
It’s also what marketers, business owners, and hiring managers live by. Do no harm to the company’s online presence. Do no harm to reputation. Because reputation means everything, especially when it comes hiring. In the competitive landscape of SaaS, B2B Services and Data companies, it’s important to be mindful of how to brand your company for hiring. We want to offer the ways to brand your company for hiring.
According to LinkedIn research, 75% of job seekers research a company’s reputation before applying. A negative review on Glassdoor or a disgruntled employee rant on social media can sway a candidate to look elsewhere.
While employers cannot prevent negative reviews, there ARE many ways to brand a company to attract employees and make them more confident to say “yes” to a position.
#1 Brand by Creating a Social Media Narrative
“Employment branding is storytelling–and you are the author,” says David Windley of Forbes. “If you do not proactively create your employment brand, that brand will be defined by others, and often the loudest voices are usually the least satisfied, even if they are in the minority.”
Write regular posts on social media that reveal your company as the living, breathing entity it is. The body of posts should answer these questions:
- What does the company value?
- What drives employees to do their best work?
- How is the company culture?
Pay close attention to images that can tell your company’s story of diversity, earned awards, or growth over time.
Check sites like Glassdoor regularly and actively respond to negative posts with care and understanding. If a potential new hire discovers a negative review, he/she will pay attention to how the company handles adversity.
#2 Brand by Considering the Candidate’s Point of View
Companies must consider what employees value to create an employer brand. Neil Verma of LinkedIn defines employer brand as “an organization’s reputation and popularity as an employer, and its employee value proposition, as opposed to its more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers.” In other words, it should be abundantly clear why someone would want to work for your company.
This answer to this “why” should come across to candidates in multiple ways. Pay attention to the tone of your website’s career page, your company mission descriptions, and how your website is seen by a candidate. Pour over job descriptions to make them attractive to potential hires. View everything a candidate may view through an objective lens.
#3 Brand the LinkedIn Company Page
A company’s LinkedIn page is often where a candidate makes a first impression, so make sure yours speaks to new hires. According to Hootsuite, here are some ways to make your company page stand out:
- Use Images: your company logo should be resized according to LinkedIn’s requirements. The profile banner picture can be something creative or even a collage.
- “About Us” section: The “About Us” section should be optimized and carefully written to tell the company story in words anyone can understand. Include ways to contact the company to learn more.
- Post regularly with articles (500-1,000 words). Include images or videos in your posts. Consider writing behind the scenes stories with images of employees to showcase culture.
- Promote your page through paid promotion or sharing.
Take intentional steps to better brand your company to a potential hire, but keep in mind that the biggest employment brand influencers are employees themselves. “Your employer brand is built primarily by employees. They talk, they post, they decide. Don’t leave this to chance or assume you know what they are thinking,” advises Windley of Forbes. “Talk to employees, improve their experience, and value what they do.”
Another idea is to foster personal meaning to work. Every company cannot have the mission of a nonprofit, but any business can connect its profits to a social mission that helps build a brand
Artemis Consultants is an elite recruiting firm with expert knowledge in employment branding. We help companies find and retain highly qualified talent for their Sales, Marketing, Product, Technology, General Management and C-level Leadership openings.
-Written exclusively for Artemis Consultants by Content Writer Mellody Melville
