Losing Talent? Here are 4 Big Reasons It Could Be Your Employer Branding

Let us tell you a little story. Sarah is a dedicated recruiter who managed to source and find the perfect candidate for a Sales Representative vacancy. The hiring manager was impressed, the recruiting team was happy, and Sarah was thrilled to finally close this job vacancy once and for all. But before she knew it, the candidate went cold turkey and dropped out of the hiring process without even leaving a reason. Sarah never heard back again from that candidate. A tragic, yet very relatable story that almost every recruiter can relate to. But with this recruitment drama comes one brutal truth: your employer branding probably isn’t the best. Times are changing, literally. We live in a candidate-driven market and top talent is now pickier than ever. While investing in your company branding, the color scheme and logo are great – you can’t afford to neglect your employer branding.

So what exactly is your employer branding missing, and how can you secure top talent today?

We break it all down for you with 4 important points.

Your job descriptions are misleading

So you invested a whole lot of time writing your job description, crafting your Boolean string, and posting your vacancy on LinkedIn. The only trouble is, not all candidates seem to be responding to the vacancy as you hoped. We hate to break it to you, but it could be the misleading title or content that is deterring top talent away. In fact, this could be the first thing that is negatively impacting your employer branding. Remember, coming up with a job title that doesn’t even exist in the market, won’t do your vacancy any justice. Candidates don’t want to be misled. So spend some good time searching for similar job titles, making sure that the requirements and responsibilities are well aligned. And above all, accurate. Now, you may not be a job-description wizard, but most applicant tracking systems are. An advanced ATS like EVA-REC can help you ramp up your employer branding by helping you write accurate and relevant job descriptions. The process is super simple. Remember how we mentioned that you should do some research to find the write job title? Okay, great. The next step is to provide the ATS with the job title. The ATS will then autofill the skills and requirements necessary for the job, based on emerging jobs and up-to-date job requirements in the marketplace. Therefore, allowing you to post accurate job descriptions that attract the right candidates for the job. While writing relevant job descriptions is your first step to improving your employer branding, keep in mind that top talent wants to know what they’ll get out of the role too. Now, this is something that you need to add to the job description yourself. Two magical words: compensation and benefits. The reason why you’re losing talent is probably that your job descriptions are vague in those terms. Sure, you nailed the requirements and skills section. But candidates want to know if the job is worth pursuing. So be transparent and offer a salary range if you could. Build trust from the first touchpoint, and see how candidates will stick around to the very end.

Your career page is outdated

A career page is like a shop window. It gives candidates a good glimpse into your company and helps them decide whether or not they should apply to your open vacancies. And who are we kidding? Candidates today don’t want to just join any company. They want to join a company that will help them grow and thrive in their careers. So a career page full of Stock images, perks and benefits from the early 2000s, and vacancies that have been filled years ago, will only do more damage to your employer branding. If the information on your career page is old and not updated, you’ll be misleading top talent. And it won’t be long before they figure out that the heartfelt testimonial they read for Suzan on your career page is pretty old because she left your company years ago. To get candidates to hit on the apply button fast, you need to build a branded career page that puts your employer branding under the spotlight. And the best way to do that is through a modern applicant tracking system like EVA-REC. An ATS like EVA-REC can help you create a branded career page that effortlessly showcases your employer branding and company culture. In fact, it’s so easy to create, you don’t even need to hire a bunch of developers or write a single line of code. Through this career page, candidates get to see team testimonials, perks and benefits, and your company culture through pictures and videos. This way, you can excite top talent to join your company and become part of your team. But remember, strike out the jargon and be upfront with your messaging. Make sure it tells candidates straight up why working for your SaaS business is both fun, and really worth it.

Job applications are being abandoned

If your hiring process is antiquated and you’re abandoning job applications due to the sheer volume of work, you’re doing your employer branding a disservice. Why? Simply put, you’re frustrating top talent with a long, tedious, never-ending hiring process. In fact, it will only show them that your company doesn’t value their time or effort – or worse – employees. Your hiring process says a lot about your employer branding. If you’re not getting back to candidates, respecting their time, or being fully transparent about their applications – they’ll instantly assume that this is how you will treat them as employees too. This essentially means that they won’t mind dropping out of the process because they’re not convinced enough to continue pursuing this opportunity. Whatever the reason is, you can easily amend this by making the hiring process easier for both candidates and recruiters. Start by making the application process easy and simple. There’s no need to create one that takes candidates hours to fill. At the end of the day, you don’t want to waste their time. Instead, include a couple of necessary fields that are enough to let you know whether this candidate is initially qualified for the job or not. Want to boost your employer branding even more? Enable candidates to upload their LinkedIn profiles instead of regurgitating their entire resumes from scratch.

Top talent are left in the dark

If you truly want to improve your employer branding, then don’t leave candidates in the dark. Hearing crickets. Wondering what happened to their applications, or whether they passed on to the next stage or not. So make sure you keep a pulse on this and keep top talent in the loop. Most importantly, ditch the vague messages such as “We’ll be in touch soon.” Many candidates know that’s short for “You’re most likely not getting this job.” To enhance the employer branding you need to set a clear timeline of the hiring process and the next steps. Do you need a couple of days to get back to them? Make that clear from day one. And if you need help communicating with a large number of candidates in a short amount of time, resort to an automated ATS. For example, with our ATS, recruiters can constantly communicate and reach out to candidates throughout the process. With personalized and automated emails, candidates will always be kept in the loop. In fact, since the hiring platform automates the admin and saves more than 90% of the recruiter’s time, it leaves them with more time to communicate and build stronger connections with candidates.

Tying it all together

Candidates dropping out of the hiring process can plague your employer branding. The talent crunch is real, and top talent know they have other options. They’re looking for a company with exceptional employer branding. Looking to secure top talent and not lose them to the competition? We have the perfect solution for you. EVA-REC is an end-to-end ATS that automates and improves the hiring process with AI technology. From small businesses to industry giants – EVA-REC helps companies drive merit-based, objective, and fair hiring practices that minimize bias, without dehumanizing the hiring process. Book a free one-on-one demo today!

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