How to strengthen your Employer Brand

What is an Employer Brand?

An Employer Brand is how you are perceived as an employer by potential candidates, existing employees, former employees and consumers. In short, you can think of your Employer Brand as the rumour about you as an employer. Like a rumour, the perception of your Employer Brand has the ability to spread quickly. On average, having a strong Employer Brand as an organization contributes to more relevant applications, faster recruitment process, reduced recruitment costs and a lower turnover. A weak employer brand, on the other hand, can contribute to difficulties in filling vacant positions – something that often leads to increased workloads for existing staff, having to turn down assignments or missing out on a planned expansion. By working with Employer Branding – actively influencing the perception of you as an employer – you can strengthen your Employer Brand and create a long-term recruitment strategy.

Why is a strong Employer Brand important?

Your reputation as an employer will exist - whether you actively work to influence it or not. Today, more and more employers are using social media for successful recruitment. The digitalization of the recruitment process has contributed to the fact that the company's employer brand is now more and more visible to potential candidates in the market. However, competition for the best candidates has also increased. According to a report from the employers' organization the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, 7 out of 10 Swedish companies experience difficulties in recruiting and 3 out of 10 recruitment attempts fail completely. A strong employer brand is therefore crucial for you:

Succeed with your recruitment
Be able to continue to grow and reach your business goals
Attract passive candidates who are not actively searching for jobs on job sites

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How to strengthen your employer brand

To become an attractive employer and attract top candidates who are a perfect fit for your workplace, you need to actively work on strengthening your Employer Brand. Here are our 7 best tips for strengthening your Employer Brand:

Define your unique offer: To ensure that you attract top candidates that match your workplace, it is important to identify what makes you an attractive employer. This is often referred to as your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) - your unique value proposition to candidates in the market. By clearly distinguishing yourself from other employers, you increase the chance that the top candidate who fits your workplace will choose to apply for your vacancy.

Create a consistent Employer Brand experience: Make sure that the employer Brand experience you want to convey is available in all places where potential candidates and employees come into contact with you. For example, through your career site, your job vacancies, your social media and your internal communication channels.

Communicate your employer brand on social media: The most important way to strengthen your employer brand is to make it visible - this is where you have the opportunity to influence the "reputation" of your company. By strategically communicating your employer brand to your chosen audience, you can influence the perception of your workplace and learn what engages the candidates you want to reach.

Create a great candidate experience: To strengthen the perception of your Employer Brand, it is important that you create a positive candidate experience – from application to hiring. This includes providing clear feedback, having a consistently positive and welcoming tone, and thanking candidates appropriately. By focusing on these things, you can create a candidate experience that really strengthens the candidate's experience of your recruitment process.

Employees as ambassadors: Encourage your employees to share their experience of your workplace and the best things about working for you. Letting your employees talk about your workplace increases credibility by 3X. Want to know more about how you can turn your employees into ambassadors? Read more about Employee Branding here!

Be open to feedback and improvement opportunities: To keep strengthening your Employer Brand, you can regularly collect feedback from candidates and employees. This way, you can identify areas where you can improve your offer or perhaps things that you should highlight more in your communication.

Learn from data and insights: When working with data-driven social media advertising, you are constantly gathering valuable insights into what engages and attracts candidates within your target audience. By analyzing this data, you can improve your employer brand and your digital recruitment strategy.

Employer Brand vs Employer Branding - what is the difference?

Although Employer Brand and Employer Branding are two concepts that are very close to each other, they are quite different. Employer Brand is the perception of you as an employer by:

Employees currently working with you
Employees who were previously part of your organization
The potential candidates you want to attract and recruit
Any customers or partners

The perception of your employer brand can be influenced by a number of factors such as your values, your culture, your benefits or your working environment. But above all, it is affected by how you communicate internally and externally - that's where employer branding comes in. Employer Branding is the process of how you can actively influence the perception of your employer brand. By strategically communicating your values, benefits or career opportunities, you can increase your chances of attracting and recruiting top talent.

Employer branding is the perception or reputation of you as an employer and employer branding is how you strategically work to change, reinforce or improve how your company is perceived.

The Employer Brand of the future

The recruitment landscape is constantly changing with the rise of digitalization contributing to new ways of attracting and recruiting talent. Social media is now the main place where passive candidates search for jobs and evaluate potential employers. It is therefore increasingly important for companies to prioritize their digital presence and use social media as part of the recruitment process. By implementing a data-driven Employer Branding strategy, you can actively influence your reputation as an employer. Working to influence the perception of your employer brand is essential to positioning yourself as an attractive employer in the candidate market and attracting top candidates to your workplace.
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