When HR professionals begin the hiring process, the focus is often external as they search for talent. Companies who successfully recruit and maintain talent begin with an internal approach. They take stock in their online communications from social media to their company website. By taking a look at how you are presenting your company to potential new hires, you could change not only how you hire, but also improve the quality of the employees you hire.

Benefits of Branding

Employer branding involves promoting company culture as a magnetizing quality to attract top talent. If you are able to position your company as a place people enjoy and want to be, you can take a lot of the legwork out of the hiring process by luring in the best job applicants.

If you haven’t yet turned an eye toward strategies involving employer branding, it’s time to look at the benefits branding can bring. Branding differentiates your company from competitors by sending messages to people that help them understand why you’re the best in your market.

Job Seekers are Looking for Branding

Job seekers are looking for and listening to the messages from employer branding. The Society for Human Resource Management listed focus on employer branding as a top trend for 2016 hiring practices and points out that many job seekers won’t even apply to a company if they can’t find enough information about it online.

Company websites and social channels are often the first line of communication a business will have with potential employees. In a survey of over 200 HR professionals and over 1,300 employed and unemployed professionals, CareerArc discovered that 75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job. Despite its benefits and today’s trends, only 57% of employers say they have an employer brand strategy.

Where to begin

Start by evaluating the online information about your company to see what kind of reputation is currently cultivated through the messages sent. Assess how closely that reputation aligns with your company’s true values and culture. This will help you discover the areas to focus on branding strategy first.

The most important thing is to be honest. If you want to find the right people, you have to be honest about who you are. If you have enough accurate information out there that conveys your company’s core values and promotes its culture in a positive light, it will attract the right candidates more effectively.

About NextGen

NextGen is the brainchild of longtime telecom professionals with nearly 50 years of experience and millions of dollars in Telecom Recruiting Services. We focus on establishing long term relationships with our clients and candidates so we can recruit the best and the brightest in the telecom industry. This ‘quality over quantity’ approach is at the heart of everything we do and has resulted in successful job placements at Fortune 1000 firms worldwide.