The One Thing Every Successful EB Strategy Has in Common

Put yourself in a candidate’s shoes for a moment. You are browsing a company’s careers site, reading their reviews on Glassdoor, stalking their social media channels. Yet when you start talking with a recruiter during the interview process, what you’re hearing is misaligned to what you’ve read online. Frustrating, right? This might immediately create a negative perception of the company for you.

This is the heart of employer branding. What it’s like to work at a company, why people choose to apply and stay, what they read online. It’s the feeling and perception both candidates and employees have. Choosing where to work is more than just a job - it’s where you learn, grow, get to be challenged, build friendships and earn money.

So if candidates are getting an inconsistent message at different touchpoints of their journey, they stop trusting that you’ll provide all of the above.

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This is why leadership, talent acquisition, marketing and HR must all be aligned on a cohesive employer brand strategy and messaging.

Connecting company strategy with the lived candidate and employee experience

In this highly competitive job market, an authentic EB strategy can be a huge competitive advantage that sets you apart from your competitors. There is really only one way to approach this: make sure that the actual experiences of your candidates and employees match the values and culture your company claims to have.

For example, if your company’s values are Innovation, Speed and Quality but the candidate's experience is slow and outdated, this will likely lead to a disconnect with the potential candidate. Similarly, if your values are Fun, Flexible and Family-Oriented but the employee experience is inflexible and anything but fun, there’s likely to be heavy disengagement from potential candidates and a high turnover of existing employees, too.

A big part of all of this is simply communicating your values clearly to all internal stakeholders from each experience: TA, HR and Leadership. When everyone is on the same page, it’s like one big happy family. Everyone gets along because they are aligned in deep-rooted values and messaging to external candidates and communications with internal talent are driven by strong, cohesive business decisions.

One more thing about delivering a successful EB strategy

Empowered employees empower employees. When someone is happy and loves their job, you'll quickly see how contagious this effect is on both your employees and candidates. While I’m far from the first person to advise leveraging your people to champion your brand, truthfully I don’t think it can be said enough. Employees are your most powerful asset: amplify their voices to attract similar, high-performing talent.

However, I admit I see a lot of businesses still making this mistake – getting people in the door just to fill recruitment quotas. The fact is, you should be focusing on quality over quantity at all times. It’s no longer about putting ‘butts in seats’ to drive a business forward. You should be focusing on developing an EVP that is so authentic and effective that it doesn’t feel like ‘work’ because it’s so ingrained into everything the business does. This will organically attract the top quality talent you’re aiming for.

Make it your DNA

Remember, an employer brand strategy is the heart of a company's culture. It's the people, culture, mission, messaging, values and vision all wrapped up in one. If they aren’t all aligned, it affects every step of the talent lifecycle from attraction and engagement, to onboarding and retention.

A sustainable and successful employer brand strategy unites and delivers on the company strategy, employee experience and candidate experience. It all just naturally becomes part of your DNA.