Employer Branding ideas are essential for building a strong and attractive employer brand. Many firms have started investing more in their employer branding strategy so I decided write about some real-life employer branding ideas and strategies. HubSpot and Facebook have mastered their employer branding and recruitment marketing efforts, and here is how!

Why is employer branding important?

The concept of employer branding has become one of the most popular topics in the world of Talent Acquisition. Demand for talent is getting bigger, and supply is getting smaller every day. Naturally, the market is suffering from a big talent shortage, which has resulted in the “War for Talent”.

Because all the changes in the HR and tech industries, the way we recruit has changed. Still, many companies are still sitting steal thinking that there is nothing to be done to attract talent.

Wrong!

Employer branding ideas and methods

To make employer branding as a recruiting strategy clearer, I decided to give you some real-life examples and ideas from the industry leaders. Use these brilliant employer branding ideas, and try them out in your own recruiting strategies.

Employer branding through social media

Social Media is a simple, fast and affordable way to target the right people and spread the word out. Similarly to product and service marketing efforts, social media can be used in Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing strategies.

HubSpot on Instagram

This is Hubspot’s post that grabbed people's attention just a few hours after it was posted. Why is this post so special? Why is it considered a part of their Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing strategy?

First of all, right below the business name, there is a tag line “My Happy Place” that immediately sends a positive message about the workplace. If you read what the post is about, you will find out that it is all about making their employees feel better.

Looking at their hashtags, you can see that they really made sure that this post gets to the right people- sales people and marketers. Finally, they encourage other candidates to engage and give them tips for staying motivated. In just one post, HubSpot used some of the best recruitment marketing strategies.

Look at this post!

I know that not all of you have games and beer at work! However, many modern workplaces encourage fun times and games at work.

Even though you may not offer the same thing, I believe, and hope that, there is something your employees love doing besides sitting at the table and working. If so, capture the moment and share it on social media. Don’t forget to encourage your employees to do the same. They are your best brand ambassadors.

When promoting on social media, it is important to know who your candidate persona is. This way, you can make vetz targeted messages towards your ideal candidates.

Need help defining your ideal candidate, here is our guide to define a candidate persona.

Employer branding through Glassdoor

Websites such as Glassdoor are a great source of information about employers from all over the world. People go there to learn more about companies, their cultures, pay, positions, job descriptions, and most importantly, current employees’ opinions and reviews.

If you are struggling to find the right candidates, get a listing on websites such as Glassdoor and encourage your employees to write about you. At the end of the day, your current employees are your best brand advocates!

To understand the importantce of employer branding on Glassdoor, let me share a few stats from surveys done by Glassdoor and Allegis Group:

69% are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand (e.g., responds to reviews, updates their profile, shares updates on the culture and work environment). -Glassdoor

76% want details on what makes the company an attractive place to work. -Glassdoor

Top five pieces of information job seekers want employers to provide as they research where to work: 1) Salary/compensation, 2) Benefits, 3) Basic company information, 4) What makes it an attractive place to work, 5) Company mission, vision, values. -Glassdoor

69% would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed! -Allegis Group Services Study

84% would consider leaving their current jobs if offered another role with a company that had an excellent corporate reputation. And most in $75-100K salary range would only require a 1-10% salary increase to consider such a move -Allegis Group Services Study

84% of companies believe a clearly defined strategy is key to achieving employer branding objectives -Employer Brand International Global Research Study

Facebook on Glassdoor

What is great about this job ad is that candidates can find tons of useful information about the company and position. This is one of their current employee’s testimonials. It is completely transparent. This is important because, to find the perfect job candidate, both pros and cons should be disclosed.

This particular employee says: “If you don’t like data, don’t come here!” If you are looking for a perfect match for your company and job opening, let the candidates know what would make them your candidate persona.

Employer branding through referrals

When looking for good employer branding and recruitment marketing ideas, always start with your own employees. Employee referrals are structured programs in which companies use existing employees’ talent networks.  

Research has proved many times that employee referral programs help improve many recruiting KPIs.

But why is a referral program considered employer branding and recruitment marketing method?

The answer is simple- they strengthen your employer brand and reputation. When your employee wants to recommend someone for an open position, they talk to those candidates first. Trust me, these are mostly nice words about you as an employer and your Employee Value Proposition.

On their ‘Refer a Dev‘ webpage, HubSpot explains how much they love and need awesome software developers. If you refer such a developer to them, and HubSpot ends up hiring them, you’ll be rewarded with a paycheck or some other type of referral bonuses.

Already have a referral program? Check out these referral reward ideas!

Employer branding through inbound recruiting

Inbound recruiting is one of the newest HR strategies used to attract talented people. The main purpose of an inbound recruiting strategy is to, through relevant and useful content, get to the people that would best fit your company’s jobs and culture.

Inbound strategy is a long-term solution for filling hard-to-fill roles. In the example below, you can see a blog post of an interview with 3 data scientists at Facebook. This blog is posted in Facebook’s career site, and it talks about their personal experiences as data scientists at Facebook.

Do you have interesting projects your company is working on? If so, these are likely to attract passionate and motivated people who want to grow their careers. You just have to have a strategic way to communicate your story with them.

Employer branding through career site

Your career page isn’t just a place to post your jobs – it is a place to attract high-quality applicants and sell them your job opportunities.

Candidates don’t apply immediately after hearing about a job. Instead, 59% look up the company’s website. Sixty six percent want to know about your company’s culture and values, 54% about perks and benefits, and 50% about mission and vision. -2016 Global Talent Trends

Check out Facebook’s career site.

Do you see how their career site is used to attract ambitious people who want to make a difference? They really make their site a goldmine of meaningful content attractive to many job seekers.

Here are some more ideas for career site optimization.

Employer branding through video advertising

As video is the best way for delivering messages in marketing, it is now also widely used in recruitment marketing. Social media and internet users are just more likely to watch videos than read. Use video to record employee testimonials, and put them on your career site.

Make a video of your workplace, and share it on social media. Include videos on your job ads and on job boards. Since Google likes videos, these will reach much more audience than images and plain text.

I know that this blog is about Facebook and HubSpot, but I had to add this Dropbox video. 

Employer branding through job descriptions

There are no words to explain how important your job descriptions are for attracting high-quality job applicants. The goal of every job description is to mirror your candidate personas’ dream jobs, cultures and workplaces.

Same as you want to attract people with best fit, candidates want to find their perfect jobs. Explaining your company culture, EVP should be part of every job description. Precise requirement, duties, skills and characteristics should be listed.

Before writing a job description, do a research on which keywords people are using when looking for job opportunities. Use these keywords and include them in your job descriptions as Google will award you for that by ranking you higher on job search results.

To save time, we have made some editable job description templates for you.

Employer branding through talent community and recruiting events

Another great way for building your talent pool with high-quality job candidates is through talent community and recruiting events. Many employers have found this one of the best ways for finding people with the perfect match for their companies.

In a recent conversation with a few HR managers from fast growing companies, I found out about a few interesting ways to organize talent community events.

If you, for example, struggle to hire people with certain IT skills, think about creating a workshop where your IT professionals will educate students or anyone else interested in this area. Share your event on social media platforms, your career sites, do some paid advertising to increase your ad impressions and do a highly-targeted campaign.

HubSpot has a great strategy for building their talent community. For example, they have live online webinars about New Hire Training at HubSpot. Anyone can join the live event, and learn about how does the onboarding and training look at HubSpot. They are well known for having great training programs, and this is what attracts people.

Talent communities and events are great ways to meet people interested in your company. This way you can find out about their skills, personalities and knowledge.

Employer branding through Candidate Relationship Management

Connecting with candidates at the point when you have a new job opening is an old an inefficient recruiting strategy. Today, it is necessary to engage with talent way before that.

This is one of the most productive ways for building your talent pool with high-quality job candidates. Companies that use this approach are much more successful in reducing their time and cost per hire, improving quality of hire and reducing employee turnover rates.

Why?

Talent that ends up in your talent pool through candidate relationship management and inbound recruiting methods, are candidates with the best cultural fit. They are your ideal candidates or candidate personas.

If you have a career blog, don’t just finish there. Allow your readers to opt in to a newsletter. Share useful tips and stories from your company through targeted email campaigns. Even if they are not ready to apply yet, you have the opportunity to connect with them and convert them into applicants later.

Remember, candidates are like customers. It takes as much research and touch-point for candidates to apply as it takes for customers to purchase. You need to make sure that you are delivering an exceptional and unique experience through all these touch-points.

Using a recruitment marketing platform for employer branding

All these steps seem complicated and very time consuming. They are, if you are not using the right tools. Recruitment marketing tools such as TalentLyft can help you implement your recruitment marketing and employer branding strategies.

With tools like this, you can easily create a well optimized career site, optimize your job descriptions, streamline your referral programs, and significantly improve relationships with candidates and improve candidate experience and candidate engagement.