Employer Branding: A Strategic HR Tool

Employer branding is a tool which is used by every organisation be it small, midsized or a transnational organisation. The organisations need to market themselves as the best place to work for if they want to get the right talent in this competitive market. Employer Branding is like Sales where you have to sell your practices, culture and your USP to the prospective candidates. You have to differentiate yourself form what the competitors are already offering.

The process of creating your brand in the talent market starts right from how you do the onboarding, what are your practices and procedures in the organisation till the employee exits from the organisation. The employer brand is not created in a single day or through a single advertisement. It’s a long process that is built step by step. Organisations often believe that by simply having the best entrance and stringent recruitment processes they will create their brand in the market. However, the employer brand is built on the basis of what you are going to offer him/her on a daily work day and through his/her career path.

Trust and Transparency in the organisation plays a vital role in creating a strong employer brand as the rewards and recognition does. The Gen Y specifically believes in this theory where they want that the organisation should have a total trust in them and in their work, a place where there is transparency in the system and processes. If the organisations can place themselves a transparent organisation Gen Y employees will flock that place. 

Many organisations design catchy slogans and advertisements to attract the right talent. But they forget that every organisation is doing the same in some other way. They have to search within themselves and analyse their own respective strengths and weaknesses. They have to identify their own distinguishing feature that separates them from the rest of the crowd. Based on that USP they can sell their brand to the prospective candidates.

Organisations have to constantly sell their brand to the candidates as it takes time to build brand as an employer. When the time comes for recruitment an organisation cannot build its brand in a week or two, they have to constantly keep on building it even though there have been instances where they have to give pink slips.

The best way to build the employer brand in today’s scenario is the social media where the organisations can post the testimonials from the employees on how their every day of work is which will help the candidates to understand better about the organisational culture and would make them a better fit.

By making a flashy recruitment process and showing candidates descriptive JD’s where there is every possible task to be performed for that role will not build the company’s brand. They can get the candidates for that opening but very soon such candidates after coming inside the organisation will start sending the resumes again !!!