To attract top candidates, improve retention and foster a positive company culture, you have to invest in your employer brand.
The Review-led Talent Acquisitions & Employer Branding Series is designed to guide human resources professionals in thinking about how to capitalize on the power of the employee voice by capturing and distributing their thoughts effectively in forward-thinking recruitment marketing tactics.
In part 7, we’ll discuss ways you can recruit top talent and promote your employer brand without sending a lot of money. If you missed part 6, check out Real World Examples of Employer Branding.
Employer branding matters, no matter the size of your company. According to Careerarc, 96% of companies believe employer brand and reputation can impact revenue.
Still, only 44% of those companies monitor that impact. Why? Because employer branding is perceived as expensive. Creating hiring content and launching recruitment campaigns takes valuable time, effort, and resources from your team.
But curating a successful employer branding strategy, specifically following the Trust Marketing framework, is critical to a company’s growth, and investing in it doesn’t have to blow up your budget.
You’ve already got access to the foundational assets for an effective recruitment marketing strategy – your employees’ voices. You just need a strategy to collect and distribute their testimonials to build a campaign that earns the trust of job seekers.
We’ve gathered some effective and low-cost strategies recruiters can use to hire better-qualified employees, strengthen your company culture, and build an employer brand.
User-generated content, especially in the form of video, is the key to boosting engagement on a budget. It’s an inexpensive and proven strategy for expanding your reach. 67% of marketers say sharing marketing videos on social media has the most significant ROI.
The best part is - that when it comes to employer branding, generating the right type of video content is simple. Ask your employees to record short videos of themselves (no more than 60 seconds) describing what it’s like to work at your company. Share those videos on your website and social media pages. Send them to prospective employees in your candidate pipeline. The more work you do to promote your employee’s voices, the stronger your employer brand will be.
Keep in mind that the videos you collect don’t have to be perfect. The more authentic your employees are in their testimonials, the more trustworthy and credible they will come across to applicants.
Getting videos from your team doesn’t have to be a painstaking cycle of begging and waiting. With video testimonial collection software like Invite Video, you can:
Streamlining the process in an app like Invite Video makes employee-generated content an accessible and budget-friendly tool you can use to increase brand awareness and draw the best candidates.
Your social media pages are for more than just your customers. 68% of millennials visit a company’s social media pages to evaluate an employer’s brand when job hunting.
Candidates want to know that they’ll be happy at their new job. If you aren’t utilizing your social media pages to promote your company culture and the voices of your happy employees, you’re missing out on top talent.
Some easy and budget-friendly examples of leveraging your employees’ voices to build trust with job seekers include posting happy photos of your team, updates about your employee’s achievements and activities, promotion/anniversary announcements, and job openings.
Tip: Ask your current employees (especially recruitment managers and talent acquisition specialists) to engage with your social posts on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, etc. This will expand the reach of your posts while reinforcing their trustworthiness.
Your careers page is the home base for your recruitment marketing. It’s where you can connect directly with candidates and show them exactly what your company has to offer. Once again, this is a perfect place to showcase the sentiment of your existing employees to win over prospective applicants.
Some key components to include on your careers page to highlight your employer brand are:
Showcasing your employee awards costs nothing and has an immeasurable impact on your employer brand. Recognition from an impartial third party legitimizes your company in the eyes of the public. It confirms your employees feel valued from a more trustworthy perspective than your own. It is a form of earned content that offers valuable media exposure and brand visibility for free.
Internally, awards are just as impactful. When your company receives an award, it boosts morale and employee retention and reassures employees that they’re in the right place.
Referral campaigns are an extremely effective way to build your employer brand and attract new hires. They’re a low-budget and easy way for recruiters to access an untapped candidate pipeline. Plus, according to a survey from Indeed, 74% of employers said candidates sourced from employee referrals were extremely qualified for the role.
Aside from drawing top talent and saving you money in your recruitment efforts, referral campaigns make your employees feel involved in the future growth and success of the company. This establishes a shared trust between you and your current/prospective employees.
Tip: Your referral campaigns should feel like a part of the company culture. An easy way to achieve this is by offering incentives to your employees. Whether monetary or not, incentives motivate employees to participate and tap their networks for qualified candidates - saving you a lot of time and money.
Whether you’re just starting or want to optimize your employer branding strategy without overhauling your budget, investing your time in these trust-building tactics will increase retention and help you attract the best candidates.
If you’re interested in benefiting your business through recruitment marketing or want to learn more about what to do with company reviews by your employees, check out the rest of the Review-led Talent Acquisitions & Employer Branding series.