High salaries. Unlimited time off. Healthcare. These perks once enticed job seekers to join companies. But today's candidates no longer only prioritize great pay and benefits when deciding on employment.
Instead, they’re drawn to employers with a healthy work culture and work-life balance. They're looking for places where they can feel proud to work.
Now that employees' priorities and needs have changed, what is your company doing to keep up with demand? Maybe you're making moves behind the scenes — but it only works if candidates know about it.
This is where employer branding proves effective in attracting and engaging with top talent. In fact, companies with successful employer branding experience a 50% reduction in wages in cost-per-hire, 1-2x faster recruitments and 50% more qualified candidates, according to LinkedIn's Employer Branding statistics.
Putting an employer branding strategy in place is an opportunity to communicate what you offer and enhance your recruiting efforts. Let's take a closer look at employer branding and how it benefits your recruitment process.
What is employer branding?
Employer branding is a company's reputation as an employer and what makes it attractive to prospective candidates. It's tied to recruitment marketing, which is a proactive method to market your company as a top place to work. But to achieve this, you need more than a positive corporate brand reputation. You also need positive:
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Company culture
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Employee reviews & shared experiences
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Candidate feedback
Once you've established the above, you can start communicating it to the world. You can do this by:
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Showcasing how you invest in workers' education and professional development
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Sharing sustainability initiatives (like HotJar does)
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Publishing photos of employee gatherings
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Having a high rating on sites like Glassdoor
It's the small things that add up, giving your company a competitive advantage.
It extends beyond telling candidates about your workplace and instead shows it. Employer branding weaves the company's work culture and values into every story shared through the company's blog, social media, and PR channels.
And when done right, employer branding answers the common candidate question, "why is your organization a great place to work?"
What are the benefits of employer branding for company recruiting?
Talent acquisition is all about finding the best candidates for a role. But what if there was a way to get leading candidates to come to you instead? With effective employer branding, this is possible.
In fact, many businesses already use it to build their reputations as top employers to work for. This is the purpose behind employer review sites like Glassdoor.
In 2020, Glassdoor published the results of a survey emphasizing the importance of employer branding. Here's an overview of the findings (and a few of our own).
Bring top candidates to you
Imagine having the perfect candidate for a role drop on your proverbial lap. Sounds miraculous in a time where The Great Resignation is causing worker shortages—but it's the reality for companies investing in employer branding.
According to Glassdoor, 75% of people say they're more likely to apply to a role if the potential employer is on Glassdoor. Why is this important? Because it provides transparency into what past and current employees think about your company.
Over 65% of Glassdoor users say they read at least five reviews before forming an opinion of a company. This means your credibility is on the line if you're not proactively building a positive workplace culture.
"Since we started promoting our employer brand, we saw a sharp increase in applications," said Gino Louise Reichert from LSAT Prep Hero.
"Last year we received 50% more applications than the year before, a higher percentage of them were from qualified applicants. Of course, employer branding isn't just about numbers—it's also about attracting high-quality job candidates. By aligning your employer brand with your company values and culture, you attract people who are a good fit for your organization."
Get a leg up on competitors
Employees want to be paid well, but not if it means sacrificing peace of mind. This is why job seekers need to know what it's like to work in your company before applying. Glassdoor's report shows 86% of employees and candidates conduct research on a company before sending an application.
Your competitors are undoubtedly reaching out to top talent as well. Candidates have plenty of information at their fingertips to get an idea of which companies have happy employees. If your employer branding is strong, it'll be easier to persuade job candidates to join your company over competitors.
Save time (and money)
When your employer branding efforts are on point, the candidate journey is smoother and faster. That's because future employees are self-qualifying for roles and removing legwork for TAs. Not only does it save time — it prevents wasting money on excessively long (and unrewarding) recruitment.
"Our recruitment process was a tiresome process that took away more (time and energy) than it benefited our company," said Gisera Matanda from WeLoans. "Since using employer branding, the recruitment process has been more efficient and with better results overall. Our talent pool is more qualified and we're improving our recruitment time by up to 15%. We also see new hires blend in with the rest of the team quickly."
It's also an investment that has long-term payoffs: employees are happier, and companies with successful employee branding efforts experience a 28% reduction in their organization’s turnover annually.
Improve access to quality talent
You publish a job description on a popular platform. Two hundred applications hit your inbox, but only a handful are suitable to pursue. It happens to the best of us, which is why using employee branding is key. It'll drive even more applications and resumes, but you'll also attract top talent that wants to work with your company, based on its reputation.
You can also proactively promote your employer brand using automated sourcing tools like Fetcher. Fetcher identifies the best candidates based on your criteria, and prevents you from having to filter through an overwhelming amount of unqualified applicants.
Here's how employer branding enhanced the talent pool quality for CocoSign:
"Employer branding helped us increase the talent accessibility and talent pool for hiring," said Caroline Lee, CocoSign's Co-founder. "On average, we have 30% higher accessibility to quality talent after using employer branding. It's a proven fact that top talent isn't after money — they're after a peaceful work environment where enough freedom is provided. Employer branding was our chance to show that we offer the same."
Build an employer brand to attract the right talent for your team
Building a positive employer brand image that's empathetic, impactful, and forward-thinking naturally attracts more active candidates, and garners more interest from passive candidates. But it's not just about getting top talent — it's about finding the right people to match your company's culture.
And by showing the world what it's like to work in your company, you're helping candidates decide they're the perfect match. This cuts down on recruiting time and increases employee engagement and retention rates. So how do you actually plan and implement a successful employer branding strategy? Stay tuned next week for employer branding best practics and examples of employer branding from top teams.
Building an employer's reputation as a great place to work takes a lot of time and energy. With Fetcher, you can build automated email sequences to reach out to candidates quickly and consistently, so that can promote your employer brand and stay top of mind. Automating these repetitive, time-consuming processes frees TA teams' to focus more time on brand building.
About Fetcher
Our mission is to help you engage talent that will transform your business aspirations into reality. Great talent is hard to find - that's why we offer a talent sourcing platform that not only gets your brand in front of the right candidates but also gives you a competitive edge in talent acquisition.
Begin building a relationship with your next great hire today and let Fetcher handle the rest. Learn more.
