Read the latest iCIMS blog post from Erin Smith:

I recently read an article titled “Our Employees Are Our Most Valuable Asset”, which was proceeded by the sentence “This (standard) cliché is repeated over and over by the world’s public employers in their most valuable marketing piece, their annual report. We know it’s B.S. You know it’s B.S. … and so does everyone else.”

Which got me thinking – could this really be true? As a person lucky enough to have landed a job at a company with a truly fantastic work environment that values its employees, and encourages them to grow, the idea that I’m not my company’s most valuable asset seems a bit foreign to me. When companies like iCIMS and their

1,000+ clients seem to truly take pride in creating fully branded, engaging career sites, I can’t help but wonder why these companies would go through all that trouble

if they don’t really care about their employees?  Of course I know that iCIMS would still thrive without me sitting in my - still heavily decorated with “Happy Birthday” decorations thanks to my co-workers (one month later) - cubicle in the marketing department, but from day one you could have had me believing otherwise.

Now in getting to my point, hopefully, besides being in awe that I am not the single reason that iCIMS continues to be a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition software solutions, it made me wonder why more companies don’t take advantage of branding their career sites to showcase what sets their company apart from others. One of the main reasons I decided to apply for a position at iCIMS was absolutely because of the culture they promoted on their career site. Not only does having a branded career site help potential candidates identify with your company before even applying, but you can also give them a Realistic Job Preview (RJP), if you will, of the culture of your company.

Career sites enable you to easily show potential candidates upfront what type of work environment they would be entering, the qualities your employees must possess, and so much more. If an RJP can greatly reduce turnover for individual jobs by showing potential candidates exactly what they can expect in their new position, why not give them a realistic preview of the work environment they can expect to enter as well?

While the recent economy has made it harder to find a job, it’s also made it even harder to find and retain top talent – we can’t afford to have high turnover (30-50% of the annual salary of entry-level employees, 150% of middle level employees, and up to 400% for specialized, high level employees) especially if there are simple ways to decrease it. If you want to grab the attention of the best possible candidates, you need to be able to quickly show them why your company should be their company, and what better way to do that than branding the career site provided to you through your ATS. Candidates can easily learn all about your company, and then go straight to applying – growing your talent pipeline seamlessly, and showing employees what the standards at your company are before they even walk through the door.