Why Employment Brand Is About the Candidates — Not the Company

Recruiting is becoming increasingly integrated with marketing, and some even predict that recruiting will eventually become a marketing role. As much as companies focus on the consumer-facing brand, they're dedicating more attention and energy to their employment brand. This means recruiters need to have a new mindset along with a new set of tools in their repertoire, writes Matt Charney on Human Capitalist.

Charney pinpoints three fundamentals for navigating the changing landscape of recruitment marketing.

Employees Shape Employment Branding

In the past, companies shaped how prospective candidates and in-house employees viewed the brand with help from outside agencies, notes Charney. Today, as much as employers try to guide the conversation around employment branding, it's time to face the reality: employees and candidates have the microphone.

Charney adds: "People are talking about your brand, whether you like it or not. That means ditching the generic smiling stock photos and platitudes about people being your greatest asset on your career site and actually developing a brand that shows what it is really like to work at your organization — warts and all."

Leads Aren't Just About Inbound — They're Outbound Too

While recruiting top talent is important, being able to retain those employees is just as important. HR managers are steering their focus to inbound and outbound leads. "Success at recruiting, like marketing, has become incumbent not only to being able to create a pipeline of the right leads, but also the ability to nurture them," writes Charney. To address this shift, CRM and applicant tracking systems are integrating inbound and outbound leads into their technology.

Recruiting is a Two-Way Channel

Talent networks are great for notifying candidates about company news and nurturing leads — but it's not as easy as just creating a network and checking it off the list. The glaring reality is that many companies don't even have talent networks even though there's a use case. Three in four candidates would join a talent network, yet only 19 percent of companies actually have one, according to a recent poll by Talemetry.

Once a talent network is in place, companies need to provide added value for candidates, notes Charney. "That means not only blasting job postings, but also sharing information and insights on your company, the hiring process, and general job search best practices which create not only more engaged leads, but better — and more viable — candidates."

Read more at Human Capitalist.

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