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Employer Branding

3 tips to help you build your employer brand

3 tips to help you build your employer brand – The Business Journals

As a business leader, you know that having a strong brand can help you connect to your ideal customers. And your company probably invests considerable marketing dollars to build that brand and attract new prospects. But what kind of investment are you making in your employer brand to ensure your team continues to grow in step with your sales goals?

 

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These Are the 20 Hottest Emerging Jobs, According to New LinkedIn Research

These Are the 20 Hottest Emerging Jobs, According to New LinkedIn Research

Demand for technical skills like big data analysis and coding is exploding, driven by rapid advances in AI and the need to make sense of the vast quantities of data generated today. But for job-seekers that lack these heavily technical skills, don’t despair: Jobs that rely on “soft” people skills like communication, empathy, and interpersonal finesse are also witnessing explosive growth, according to new research by LinkedIn.

 

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Article on How To Build An Employer Brand

How To Build An Employer Brand

Welcome to the exciting world of building an employer brand! If you are just beginning on your EB journey, let’s lay a solid foundation and start with the basics.

So what is an employer brand anyways?

An employer brand is the organizational identity related to the employee experience. It is what you are known for as an employer.

“Brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.” Marty Neumeier

While this quote is absolutely true, an organization continues to have the ability to shape its brand. Brand is built through a variety of tools, stories, and experiences. The practice of employer brand management is the art and science of helping to share an organization’s story and shape its reputation. The first step in employer brand management is getting at the helm. Brand or be branded!

Gone are the days when employer branding was optional. Today, 59% of organizations are investing more in their employer brand (LinkedIn). This is because employer branding is more than a talent attraction tool that helps create a pull strategy. An employer brand can also unite an organization.

So how do you get started in employer branding?

  • Understand your business objectives. Where are you going as an organization? What are your critical talent populations? This step is fundamental in creating a brand that will hit the mark and attract the talent that the organization requires now, as well as in the future. The practice of employer branding is a strategic endeavour. Plant the seeds now for the harvest your organization will need in the future.
  • Understand your employee value proposition. Who are you as an employer? What are the critical attraction and retention drivers for your talent population? This is discovered through your people. Talk to talent you wish you could clone in order to find the magic in your organization.
  • Determine your brand personality, visual identity, market positioning, key messages, etc. A brand matures through the stories we share and the experiences we create. Consistency creates brand trust. Once you determine your visual identity, brand personality, and key messages, it is important to train your ambassadors. There is no point in investing time, money, and energy in brand management only to have a hiring manager erode it through a poor candidate experience or inconsistent messaging. Train your team to deliver the brand experience.
  • Get your employees involved! At Powerhouse Talent, our Brand Foundation Program is as much an exercise in employee engagement and organizational self-discovery, as it is in employer branding. Making this a top down exercise will not deliver the desired outcome. Having employees aware and participating at every stage helps with authenticity and employee advocacy.
  • Select ideal channels for your target talent population. You don’t need to be everywhere. Be where it matters and consistently show up. Channel selection is critical.
  • Use real images. Sorry stock image lovers, but if you are looking for authenticity and to ignite employee pride, glossy stock images will not do your brand justice. Get your employees involved! Capture the real you!

Remember that employer branding is a journey. This is crawl, walk, and run! Through consistent steps, your team will be EB rock stars soon enough!

 

Looking for more employer branding help. We have tools, programs, and resources to help you get your EB game on. Give us a shout today.

#HumanBeforeResources

 

 

 

 

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How to build an EPIC careers site video #3

Have you ever wondered how to build an epic careers site for your company? For those who prefer to watch over read, we have put together our top career site tips in 3 videos. You can read the article here.  Wonder no longer and check out this video!

Learn more about Powerhouse Talent’s full-service branding engagements and our POWER UP Brand Accelerator here.

Have you been thinking about investing time and energy in your employer brand but don’t know where to start? Check out our LAND YOUR BRAND- Employer Branding Training & Blueprint here.

Join the Powerhouse Community on social…

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

#HumanBeforeResources

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Tech giants are fighting to hire the best AI talent at the NIPS conference in LA this week

Tech giants are fighting to hire the best AI talent at the NIPS conference in LA this week

The NIPS conference has become the AI hiring event of the year Big tech firms like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft send armies of people to try to find machine learning experts to join their ranks Salaries on offer often run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

 

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How to build an EPIC careers site video #2

Have you ever wondered how to build an epic careers site for your company? For those who prefer to watch over read, we have put together our top career site tips in 3 videos. You can read the article here.  Wonder no longer and check out this video!

Learn more about Powerhouse Talent’s full-service branding engagements and our POWER UP Brand Accelerator here.

Have you been thinking about investing time and energy in your employer brand but don’t know where to start? Check out our LAND YOUR BRAND- Employer Branding Training & Blueprint here.

Join the Powerhouse Community on social…

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

#HumanBeforeResources

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Employer brands need as much attention as consumer brands

PepsiCo: ‘Employer brands need as much attention as consumer brands’

Companies need to put as much thought and care into their employer brand strategy as that of their consumer brands, or they will miss out on talent as well as long-term growth, says PepsiCo’s Rebecca Gloyne. Tech companies have pioneered new ways of doing business – not least in their approach to the workforce.

 

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Star wars image for an article on building an great careers site

How To Build An Epic Careers Site

A long time ago in a job market far, far away, the candidate pool was plentiful, job seekers eagerly awaited the calls of search professionals, and there was greater balance in the universe. Fast forward to today’s war for talent and you will find many disciplines suffering massive global shortfalls of qualified professionals. Information security is one extreme example of the talent imbalance that exists in today’s marketplace. This specific skillset is expected to experience a global shortfall of approximately two million professionals by 2019 (UK House of Lords Digital Skills Committee).

What does that have to do with your careers site? Many employers are not reaping the benefits of this prime storytelling medium (their careers site). Some may integrate an applicant tracking system (ATS), post some generic copy, stock photos, and call it a day. The problem with this approach is what should be a powerful branding tool has left no impression on the job seeker. With no distinct visual identification, candidates will struggle to recall what generic stock photo they were looking at. There was an opportunity to impact every stage in the recruitment funnel, however this opportunity was sadly missed.

A great test to see if your site has limited distinctiveness, thus poor brand recall, is swapping out your logo for a competitor. Could you interchange logos with ease? If so, your site lacks personality and an identity of its own.

“Always pass on what you have learned” Yoda. Below you will find 10 tips for an EPIC careers site:

  1. Know your “why”– I often say, the foundation of your Employer Brand is your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Your career site is simply the paper (or kindle) to your Employer Brand story. (you can read more about this mindset here). If you don’t know your “why” and have carved out a comprehensive Employer Brand strategy, then you are missing critical foundational elements that yield trust, as well as an almost instant storyboard and natural flow of your site design.
  2. Lose the corporate speak– Do you sound like a corporate drone? If candidates wanted an executive summary, they would read your annual report or check out a press release. It’s time to speak “human”. The degree to which you “humanize” your careers site copy will depend on your industry and brand personality. Regardless of sector, the tone needs to be people centric.
  3. Be memorable and show personality- “In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible” – Seth Godin. Many organizations stay in a more neutral position for fear of making waves. Bold positioning does not necessarily mean being controversial. What it does mean is that you are more likely to have your message truly resonate with your target audience and push them further down the recruitment funnel. Take a stand, have a voice, wackiness and all. Show what makes you…you.
  4. No stock images– Since we are being so authentic, let’s use images of your actual employees. Not models or stock images that are as artificial as the tooth fairy (don’t tell my kids). There is a time and a place for stock photography. A careers site is not it. This is a human experience. Show your humans.
  5. Ensure responsive design– Did you know that 50% of smartphone job seekers completed their application on their phone? If you are not building responsive design into your plan, you are being short-sighted as this number will only increase.
  6. Consider single page scrolling vs a multipage environment– Single page career sites are great for storytelling and sharing the visual narrative. 37Signals found that a single page design led to 37.5% higher conversions. Applying the same logic to application conversions, one could argue the simplicity and “one stop shop” for candidates can translate into more submissions.
  7. UX leads to amazing CX– While that sentence almost sounds dirty, we are talking about candidate experience. A great candidate experience begins with a well-designed user experience, as the career site is a material stop on the candidate journey. Having a user centric approach to the design will help you to delight your user and continue the momentum as the candidate journey advances.
  8. Add a blog- Blogs are a great way to humanize the careers site if the content is employee generated. Blogs not only foster employee advocacy but also help from an SEO perspective. Each back end optimized blog post with keywords, tags, etc. amps up your SEO juice helping the site rank higher in searches.
  9. Integrate an Instagram feed– This adds instant humanization and spirit to your site. Integrating visual social feeds like Instagram provide you with instant and timely photos documenting the employee experience. They quickly build the “know, like, and trust” and it helps keep visual content current.
  10. Power to the people– Have your employees help with content contribution. Employee testimonials are powerful storytelling tools. Keep the quotes short (use long form content in blogs). Ask employees to share their favourite part of working for your company or a fun fact about their team. You will get a mixed bag of responses ranging from professional growth to a little-known competition for an ugly frog trophy. Share the spirit of the company, the rituals, and the wackiness. Place the content on a rotating testimonial carousel for added visual interest.

There are TALENT WARS out there.  Your careers site can be your lightsaber, your most powerful and trusted tool.

Need help designing an EPIC career site? Let us be your Yoda. Hit us up at Powerhouse Talent Inc. www.powerhousetalent.ca

May the force be with you…

 

 

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image of employees at work

POWER UP! Employer Branding Tip

Employer Branding Tip: Build employee advocacy! Employees are three times more credible than your CEO when discussing working conditions.  (Edelman Trust Barometer)

Many organization like to control and approve every message.  Build a culture of employee pride and good judgement, liberating your employees to share the journey through their eyes. The development of an employee advocacy plan can help ease concerns of leaders and ensure effective systems are in place for an authentic voice to be heard while mitigating the fear of needing to do “damage control”.

For more information on employee advocacy planning, hit us up at 416 333-4907 or [email protected]. We love sharing our knowledge.

Peace, Love, & Meaningful Careers!

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