Two terms that have grown in popularity in the recruitment industry in recent years are Employer Branding & Recruitment Marketing . The terms are often confused and many people ask: What is the difference between Employer Branding & Recruitment Marketing? In this post, we will clarify how these two concepts differ - and why it is important for companies to work with both strategies. 

Employer branding - building a strong employer brand

To understand how you can use employer branding, it is first important to understand what an employer brand is. Your employer brand is how you are perceived as an employer among potential candidates, existing employees, former employees and consumers. It is the image that exists of you as an employer and workplace. To be perceived as an attractive workplace both internally and externally, it is sometimes necessary for companies to work to improve, change or strengthen their Employer Brand - this is done through Employer Branding.

Employer branding is how you actively work to influence the image of you as an employer and workplace - among potential candidates, existing employees, former employees and consumers. In today's competitive candidate market, it has become increasingly important to reach out with a strong employer brand. This is to continuously process top candidates in your target group with why they match your workplace. By strategically working with Employer Branding, you can, among other things, strengthen your culture and your commitment internally, but also increase the interest and awareness of the best things about your workplace externally. When you also work data-driven in every step of your Employer Branding strategy, you have the opportunity to measure what your target group is engaged by and draw conclusions to continuously improve your work. 

Recruitment Marketing - promoting your job vacancies

Recruitment Marketing is a proactive strategy based on using marketing as part of the recruitment process. By selling both the employer and the vacancy, you increase the chances of attracting and recruiting the top candidates in your target group. Recruitment Marketing is based on traditional marketing methods and aims to facilitate future recruitment by targeting candidates with both your employer brand and your vacancies.

Now you might be thinking: "But by working with Employer Branding, we also address the target group with our Employer Brand?". And yes, that's right. Both Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing are used to proactively approach candidates with why they should choose you as an employer. But Recruitment Marketing, unlike Employer Branding, focuses solely on your external work and aims to also sell the vacant job. This part of Recruitment Marketing is called Job Advertising. Job advertising means that you actively advertise your vacancy on, for example, job sites and social media - in order to increase the number of applications. 

Recruitment marketing can thus be seen as a combination of employer brand-strengthening advertising and job advertising. The strategy aims to externally process and inform potential candidates about you as an employer and your vacancies. 

The difference between Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing

Thus, the main differences between Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing are how far the strategy extends in the recruitment process and where the focus lies. While Employer Branding focuses on continuously influencing the perception of your employer brand both internally and externally, Recruitment Marketing focuses on informing and encouraging interested candidates to take action by applying for your vacancies. Employer Branding is a long-term strategy that builds a solid foundation for your proactive recruitment efforts. Recruitment Marketing then builds on this foundation by selling your vacancies to already interested candidates. By combining the two strategies, you can ensure that you sell both yourself as an employer and your vacancies. 

Summary

In this blog post, we have reviewed two popular concepts in the recruitment industry: Employer Branding & Recruitment Marketing. Employer Branding is about continuously working to be perceived as an attractive employer - internally and externally. Employer Branding aims to both attract top candidates and retain current employees. Recruitment Marketing, on the other hand, is a proactive recruitment method where targeted marketing is used to attract top candidates. Recruitment Marketing aims to externally market the employer and the vacancy - to facilitate the recruitment process.

By continuously working on Employer Branding and using Recruitment Marketing to advertise your vacancies, you can create a stable and modern recruitment strategy.
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