Just as there is a certain reputation of every company in the market for the brands or products it sells, each company has a certain reputation as an employer as well. The ability of an individual to build that reputation such that the top talent is easy for the company to attract, recruit, and retain, is known as his employer branding skills.

Employer branding skills, therefore, simply refer to being able to promote a company among a desired target group such that they begin to see it as the employer of choice and the recruitment and retention of those ideal employees becomes easy.

Why is employer branding important

If we begin by looking at numbers, according to a survey conducted in 2014, talent shortages have been reported by 36% of employers around the world. In a more recent survey conducted in 2015, 73% of the CEOs were reportedly concerned about the availability of the most fundamental skills. For all those wondering how to win this war for talent, employer branding is your answer!

In markets where companies fiercely compete for the best talent, employer branding is what helps keep your organization top of the mind by providing compelling reasons to the most talented employees, whether existing or potential, for choosing your organization over all others. It helps you stand out in the crowd, providing a wide pool of talented candidates to choose from. This also increases to a great extent your power as an employer.

How to improve your employer branding skills

Following are some helpful tips for anyone who wishes to improve their employer branding skills:

  • Make all employees learn the company elevator pitch. A common-brand building behavior is to ensure that all existing employees at every level of the company are able to respond to the very basic question of what your company does. This is an incredible opportunity to get across your employer brand and saves all the costs and efforts involved in the complex process of building a public image from scratch.
  • Allow for open communication. If you wish to improve your ability to develop an accurate company image, the cheapest and the most effective way is to inquire the opinion of existing employees about working in the organization, and utilize their core knowledge to build a corporate image. Also, the more engaged your employees feel; the greater will be the chances of them promoting a positive brand.
  • Promote the stories of your employees. In order to make your employer branding better, you can attempt to build your employer brand around the same people that already work for you by promoting the stories of your star employees. The better approach is to use videos to show such stories instead of simply narrating them, so that any candidate who can see himself creating similar stories in the future is attracted to work for the company. Social media is increasingly getting popular for such purposes.
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