Who doesn´t want to work for a company which has a good reputation, great vision and strategy, clear purpose, sustainable business and committed employees? We believe the answer is evident: everyone wants to work for the best companies.
Many companies invest enormous amount of time and effort when defining their Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding Strategies. These strategies usually include Employer Value Proposition (or simpler: Promise to prospective and current employees) and Employer Marketing activities. It is common that these projects in defining these fundamental elements are time-consuming and engage both internal HR, Senior Managers, and the Board level. The benefits of successful Employer Branding are hardly contested: lower cost of recruitment through a larger qualified talent pool and lower employee turnover, just to name a few.
We claim, based on our experience, that the true challenge is not to what and how to define and express ourselves in various marketing tools. A big-time challenge is rather to demonstrate we live up to some fundamental principles in interacting with our talent, internal and external, and show the genuine commitment to company values and Employer Branding related statements that we make towards our Candidates and Employees.
We have seen that the way how the recruitment practice is functioning sets the company branding related statements on test. There are number of articles in Social Media where candidates share stories on how negative they felt after the recruitment process. This is usually not only related to the outcome but rather the way they were treated during the recruitment process.
To our point, here comes our TOP 5 advice how to strengthen your Employer Brand when recruiting:
- Make sure your Recruiters, Line Managers and external Recruitment Partners share same view on expectations and can represent the company brand. Having a good teamwork between employer branding specialists, recruiters and line managers will be essential part of your success.
- Treat the candidates with a great amount of respect and be prepared when interacting with them. A professional and well-structured interview is a MUST and ensures candidates are correctly assessed. You might have a look at a great article written by Torsten Miland, AIMS Partner in Denmark, on recommended interview process and questions.
- Every Candidate you have connected with needs clear feedback, during the process and after the recruitment decision has been made. The in-depthness of feedback must relate to how much time the Candidate spends in the process. Simply expressed: if you interview and then dismiss the Candidate, you need to give detailed reasons for doing that.
- After hiring the Candidate make sure your onboarding process is proactive and introduces the new employee into the company, it´s culture and people, in a structured way.
- After On-Boarding measure if the introduction period has been successful and develop the process based on feedback. This means that you need to set objectives for the onboarding and find ways to measure how well your organization performed.
The common nominator is that you communicate openly with your candidates and new employees. After all, they have chosen your company as an employer and are worth some extraordinary attention.
Here one concrete example how long-lasting impact the right kind of behavior might have. Please, check out the great story on Lego (and on, at the time 7-year-old, Zachary Ledford wrote a letter to Lego and the response he got. The response letter the manager wrote to him tells a lot about Legos culture.The letter has created, after being written 25 years ago, a wide Social Media exposure and strengthened Legos Employer Brand in a way which many companies would only dream of.
Our experience is that if you follow the 5 advices mentioned above you will already most likely outperform some of your competitors.
We, at AIMS International Sweden, ensure major focus on supporting that our clients live up to their Employer Branding statements and that the candidates are treated well during the process. We are always transparent on what kind of feedback we get from our candidates and aim to develop and strengthen our client´s employer attractiveness. Through our Talent Management Solutions, we put extra focus on supporting onboarding and making sure that our candidates will perform in their new assignments.
More articles that could be of interest:
Strategic Talent Management not only for large corporates
Sex sätt att boosta ditt ledarskap – (in Swedish)
Mikko Taipale – Göran Arvidson
Mikko has more than 20 years of experience in international roles within large global organisations. He has hold Senior HR leadership roles and specialist positions within both telecom and automotive electronics and worked in Sweden, Finland and Germany. Mikko has a Master of Law degree and he has practised in the City Court of Helsinki. Before transitioning to HR Mikko worked several years within legal consultancy.
