Your business is branded to communicate benefits to customers
about your products or services.
But do your prospective employees
know what it is like to work for your
company? Do they know why it is better
to work for your business rather than
your competitor?
If your job applicants are in the dark
about the culture of your company, you
need an effective recruiting brand, says
Ruth McCurdy, vice president of corporate connections with Talent Tree, a
Houston-based staffing company.
“The result of having a good recruitment brand is that prospective employees will seek you out rather than you
doing all the seeking,” says McCurdy.
Smart Business spoke with McCurdy
about why a recruitment brand is important and steps to take to develop a successful one.
Could you give an example of a successful
recruitment brand?
The most successful recruitment campaigns have actual employees doing the
promoting for the company. For example, we all know that Google is a great
place to work. Why? Because there have
been a number of stories in the press
about what it is like to work for Google.
Google Jobs, a section of its Web site, is
dedicated to showing pictures of
employees who give testimonials about
what it is like to work for the company.
Google’s recruitment brand emphasizes
that it encourages creativity and fun in
the workplace.
Not every company has the same
recruitment brand and will attract different kinds of employees. Other companies that do a good job with recruitment
include The Container Store and Macy’s.
These businesses have an entirely different culture than Google, but they do
have a recruitment brand that is
designed to attract precisely the type of
employee that will fit in with the culture.
What is important is that a company clearly communicates to employees
and prospects what it stands for; the
company needs to create a compelling
picture of what it is like to work for the
organization that attracts and retains
employees.
Is attracting and retaining employees the
main goal of creating a strong recruitment
brand?
Yes. It has the added benefit of saving
the company time and money. Businesses that have strong recruitment brands
don’t have to recruit very much since
prospective employers seek the company out.
The byproduct of creating a recruitment brand is tenure, loyalty, increased
productivity and happy employees.
What are the steps to creating a good
recruitment brand?
- Build an appealing brand. Make sure
you know exactly the people you are targeting and what they want in an employer. You don’t want to create a brand that
does not appeal to your target audience. - Talk to employers to help draw a picture of your company’s culture. Engage
employees from all segments of your
company, not only executives, in the
process of recruitment. - Select a few people to tell their story.
Make sure you hand pick a wide range of
employees who are successful and
happy working for your company. Do
not use actors or models for your Web
content or print ads. Have them tell their
story about why they like working for
your firm; make sure you use this information in all your recruiting materials. It
is your employees’ stories that will make
it real. People believe other people, particularly if the stories are sincere.
What are the disadvantages of not having a
recruitment brand?
When a business does not have a
recruitment brand, it will not attract the
type of employees that will be happy
working at the company. Recruiting can
also be more expensive and time-consuming since, without branding the
work environment, a business might get
applicants are not a right fit for the
company.
Many companies don’t understand why
this is so important. Company owners
and executives may believe that they can
effectively compete for employees by
offering a job position with a bulleted
list of responsibilities and a competitive
salary. This will not get you the best
selection and the right fit of applicants.
Remember, in addition to the details of
the job, employees want to know what it
is like to work for a company, if they will
be happy there, and if others are happy
working there.
RUTH MCCURDY is vice president, corporate connections for Talent Tree, a staffing company based in Houston. Contact McCurdy at
(713) 361-7555 or [email protected].
