7 Mistakes You Are Making When Building an Employer Brand

When it comes to the term ‘’employer brand’’ many seem to assume that it falls under the marketing umbrella. However, it’s much more than just the logo, brand messaging, or the way your brand is perceived by customers.

Today, employer branding is an integral part of recruitment. Your recruitment process and candidate experience play a huge role in shaping your employer brand.

With a strong employer brand, it becomes relatively easier to attract top notch candidates, convert them and peak their interest in your company. Sometimes, however, HR professionals take a few missteps when building and showcasing the employer brand.

In this blog, we’re going to spill some common mistakes made when building an employer brand, and some awesome ways to rectify them.

Poor communication with candidates

Let’s admit it, no one likes to feel ghosted. Especially candidates who spend a large amount of time filling in job applications. Instead, candidates want to hear back from you in a reasonable timeframe.

When talent acquisition teams don’t get back to rejected candidates, don’t review all resumes, and don’t keep candidates informed, they risk impairing the candidate experience which in tow negatively affects the employer brand.

So in the eyes of the candidates, your beautifully branded career page and all the marketing work you’ve done on your brand won’t matter, if you let them down during the application process. Always remember that!

Luckily, a hiring platform like ours can help you keep communication with candidates consistent and fast. Where you can send them automated follow-up emails and keep them in the loop on their application status. As a result, this can help you move them faster through the hiring process, boost their experience, and consequently polish your employer brand.

Failing to make a great first impression

The same way candidates like to dress professionally to create a lasting first impression, you should make sure your job descriptions are doing the same. Meaning, unattractive and inaccurate job descriptions with no flavor, will surely drive away top talent. So instead of using your job descriptions as an asset to support your employer brand, they’re doing the complete opposite.

Therefore, make sure your job descriptions are beautifully crafted, lay out all the important details, and are relevant to the job role. In fact, you can even link your branded career page to the job description so candidates can see for themselves what you have to offer. Not only will this leave them with a great first impression, but it will also ensure that what they read in the job description is valid! So make sure your values are aligned across both; your job descriptions and career page. Whether it’s the perks and benefits, employee testimonials, or company culture – make sure candidates won’t feel like you’re contradicting yourself by relaying different value propositions in different places.

Playing it too safe with your employer brand

You might have heard this quote before “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” The same goes for your employer brand!

If you’re trying to grow your employer brand by following the crowd and playing it too safe, you might be making a grave mistake.

Remember, a boring employer brand is a forgotten employer brand. In today’s candidate-driven market, you want your employer brand to grip the candidate’s attention. So you want to show them why they should choose you as an employer instead of the competition. And you can’t exactly do that when your employer brand is too mediocre.

So think outside the box, and try to understand the candidates. What kind of organization do they want to be part of? An innovative, agile, and modern one? Then make sure your employer brand reflects the same exact thing!

Not monitoring your brand image

Let’s say you spend months (if not years) painstakingly building an employer brand that you can be proud of. Only to find a fair number of former employees leaving very bad reviews about your company on Glassdoor. Or even worse, a few allegations that you did not see coming. This is what happens when you don’t make it a habit to regularly observe and monitor your employer brand! So be sure to setup a brand monitoring strategy in advance.

In fact, you can use several online tools to keep track of the times people mention your brand, and you can then take the right initiatives. So if you see that former employees were unhappy at your company, you can go the extra mile to make sure your current employees are content, happy, and recognized for their hard work.

The point is, you want to always increase engagement with current and potential employees to enhance your employer brand. So take some strides to improve your current employee experience. This way, your team will leave authentic and great reviews about your company, which will further entice potential candidates to join your team.

Forgetting about current employees

As we mentioned earlier, your employee experience can play a huge role in making or breaking your employer brand. Very often, recruiters forget that the employer brand isn’t only tethered to the hiring process or candidates. It’s about the current employees as well.

Your existing employees are the experts who know all about the employment experience at your company. So make sure to keep communication lines open and check in on them regularly. Give them a window to talk about their day-to-day working life and vent out on anything if necessary. Be attentive and listen carefully to what they have to say. You might find that you have a few timid employees who are too afraid to speak up about a toxic work environment or heavy workloads.

So make sure to spend enough time listening to and addressing your employee’s needs. It will also be great to create reward programs and employee activities that will help you boost and enhance your employer brand.

Lack of planning for the long term

When planning for your employer brand, don’t just focus on the short-term. Look at the long-term as well. It’s simple to create a branded career page, publish job openings and post an awesome video about your company. But are these sustainable in the long run? Sure they can attract top talent now, but will they be powerful when your brand evolves over time?

In the years to come, there’s no doubt that your brand will change. Your company’s image is constantly evolving, so you have to plan for the future. How do you plan on demonstrating your employer brand when your organization grows and expands? You’re going to have to create a thorough employer brand strategy that will prepare you for the long-term, and not only the short-term.

Treating employer-brand like a one-time thing

Your employer brand isn’t a project. It’s a lifetime thing! In fact, it requires consistent effort. You can’t use the same branded career page for the rest of your life. The same way you can’t always use the same job descriptions for the next 10 years to come. Life is changing. So is the labor market. Year after year, candidates are starting to have different needs and expectations. So make sure you and your talent acquisition teammates are taking the right initiatives to keep an eye out on the market, learn more about current candidates, and devote some valuable time to refresh and reboot the employer brand when necessary.

In conclusion

Henry Ford once said “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
The same thing goes for your employer brand. You have to work on your employer brand now if you want to see fruitful results. We know that building a great employer brand takes time, and it’s an evolutionary process. But by avoiding these common mistakes, you can be one step ahead, shape the narrative, and fuel talented employees and candidates.

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