Employer Branding: Definition, Steps, and Strategy

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Contents

• How the job market has shifted
• Why employer branding keeps growing in importance
• What is employer branding? A definition.
• What candidates care about
• The four phases of the employer branding process
• The benefits of a well-run employer branding process
• Conclusion
• Frequently asked questions

TL;DR

Employer branding is the structured way you build an authentic employer brand so your company can compete for skilled talent. It runs in four phases: assess where you stand, define your employer brand, roll out the campaigns, and monitor the results continuously. The deciding factor is authenticity, because sugarcoating damages your image instead of building it. Done well, employer branding grows your applicant pool, improves fit, and lowers your recruiting costs over the long run.

!A man presents at a flip chart reading "Attractive Employer" with a star, in front of colleagues. A visual for building a strong employer brand through employer branding.

Author: Dominik Becker · Published: January 19, 2022

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The skills shortage has a firm grip on many industries, and companies are searching hard for talent. One question keeps moving to the center: how can a company present itself to candidates as an attractive employer in the best possible way? The answer: by building an employer brand. The process behind it is called employer branding. But how exactly does it work? And what should you keep in mind? You will find out on this page.

How the job market has shifted

A few years ago, recruiters could still sit back and relax because email applications came flooding in. Today the opposite is true. Companies are searching hard for candidates. The job market has turned around completely, and the skills shortage has a firm grip on many industries.

The talent gap is especially wide for skilled workers with completed vocational training, according to a survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation. It found that 48 percent of companies report a shortage of staff in this area, while "only" 27 percent of employers report a lack of university graduates. The care sector and healthcare are hit especially hard by the war for talent. But there is also a shortage of engineers, tradespeople, teachers, IT specialists, and educators across the country. And the trend keeps rising in every industry.

Why employer branding keeps growing in importance

For recruiters, this means one thing. It is no longer candidates who apply to an organization, but companies who apply to talent. And that talent weighs things up very carefully: which company is attractive to me and which is not? To answer that question, they pay close attention to how employers present themselves, for example in job postings, on social media, or on their career page.

And you never get a second chance at a first impression. If companies fail to win candidates over right away in recruiting, those candidates move on and look at the next job posting or career page. After all, they have the choice, and the options are plenty.

So how can recruiters spark genuine interest right away on their online channels? How can they promote and market their company? By learning from the people who understand marketing. Their colleagues in marketing. After all, it is their daily work to deliver on-point messages to a target audience. They know how to put a brand in the perfect light.

What is employer branding? A definition.

The brand is everything. It carries the image and the value that people associate with a company and its products. And that is exactly what needs to happen in recruiting too. Except it is not about building a product brand, but an employer brand. And the brand-building process is not called branding, but employer branding. The basic approach, though, is the same in both cases.

At its core, employer branding means nothing other than giving talent in recruiting exactly the information that sparks genuine interest in your company. It is about drawing out what makes a company truly unique for its employees. Sounds simple, but is it? Admittedly, anyone who wants to start a lasting employer branding process has to put in real thought and work through it step by step. Otherwise the result turns out half-hearted.

What candidates care about

To do that, you need to answer questions like these:

• What is the company culture actually like?
• How does the company stand out from competitors as an employer?
• How strong is the sense of teamwork?
• What values and vision does it stand for?
• What career options does it offer?
• How is the salary structure set up?
• Does the company offer flexible ways of working?
• Does it value a good work-life balance?
• How family-friendly is it?
• Does the employer act sustainably?
• Does it offer meaningful jobs?
• Does the company support social causes?
• What does workplace health management look like?
• What about job security?
• How is diversity management handled within the company?
• Does the employer actively support climate and environmental protection?
• …

Interim conclusion: employer branding does not happen on the side. Creating a real employer brand takes a genuine deep dive into your own company culture. But it pays off. In the end, companies can set themselves apart from the generic phrases competitors use in recruiting, with messages that are truly their own. That, and nothing else, is how you create genuine interest and loyalty right away. That is the secret of good employer branding.

The four phases of the employer branding process

So how should companies go about it? Experts break the employer branding process into several phases. And it is never really finished. The fourth and final phase means consistently reviewing and improving your employer brand. But first things first.

Below we walk you through the four phases of employer branding in more detail. They break down as follows:

1\. Assess the current situation in the company

2\. Define an employer brand

3\. Put the employer branding concept into practice

4\. Consistently monitor and optimize the measures

Phase 1 in employer branding: assess the current situation in the company

The basic requirement for a strong employer brand is a first assessment. How does the company position itself toward candidates today, and how does it want to, can it, and should it position itself? In this step, you first gather and review all the available data. You compare the arguments a company currently uses to win over candidates with the ones it could be using.

To find out which additional factors could set a company apart, you can survey your employees. What makes the daily work at the company what it is? What do they value most about their employer? Is it the work-life balance measures the company offers, the career options, the special focus on diversity, or the flexible working hours?

Comparing the survey results with your existing recruiting messages quickly reveals which arguments toward candidates have not been tapped yet. Because what excites your current employees also excites talent. And with that, the foundation for a strong employer brand is set.

Phase 2 in employer branding: define an employer brand

You now have a rough overview of which factors make your company attractive to employees. With that, you enter phase two of the employer branding process.

Now it is time to sort things out:

• Which of the attractiveness factors you identified are the core values your company especially wants to stand for?
• Which should take center stage as guiding themes in recruiting campaigns?
• Which should also be mentioned, but with less weight?

This assessment matters enormously. Not every employer branding aspect is equally important to your target audiences. So it comes down to putting the most relevant one at the center of your recruiting. But to do that, you first have to find out how your audience thinks and what matters most to them.

Different audiences think differently

That calls for an audience analysis. The best approach is to ask your candidates directly. Or ask employees who applied to your company recently and are still in the onboarding phase. They can answer the following questions best: what appealed to you most in recruiting? Which messages did you miss?

That is the surest way to find out which information should stand out most in recruiting campaigns. And you will notice that different audiences look at different attractiveness factors. If your recruiting is aimed more at Generation Z, for example, they pay especially close attention to a good work-life balance, a high level of digitalization, sustainability, and meaningful work. Generations X and Y apply different standards again when choosing an employer. As employees who usually already have children, they tend to look more at a family-friendly setup and flexible working hours.

Phase 3 in employer branding: the rollout

Now let us move to the third phase of the employer branding process. It is time to put things into practice. You know your core values and your target audiences. Use that knowledge to build recruiting campaigns with appealing copy, images, videos, and graphics that authentically reflect your values, vision, and value as an employer. From there, develop audience-appropriate messages you can deliver to talent across a wide range of media.

Keep this in mind:

• Copy: do not just list dry facts. Where possible, tell short stories and anecdotes. That makes your company more approachable. Experts call this storytelling.
• Images and videos: use authentic visuals from your own workplace with real colleagues. Skip stock photos and agency clips. They are interchangeable and impersonal.
• Graphics let you say a lot in little space. They also add variety to your design. Style them in your company's corporate design, which boosts recognition.

Why authenticity matters so much in employer branding

Careful. One clear warning here: under no circumstances should you invent messages in your recruiting campaigns or gloss over aspects to make your company look more attractive to candidates. That would be fatal. Authenticity is everything in employer branding. After all, talent wants to learn from your career page, your job postings, and your social media presence what a company is really like, not what it could be like.

At the latest, exaggerations, sugarcoating, or lies come to light during the interview or the onboarding period, and the candidate ends up all the more disappointed. The result: the talent walks away and, in the worst case, vents their frustration on employer review sites like kununu. That achieves the opposite of what you set out to do. Damage to your image instead of building a strong employer brand. So the rule in employer branding is: always stick to the truth.

Phase 4 in employer branding: measure and adjust

Once you have published your employer branding messages, it is time to monitor your recruiting campaigns. That means: check their performance closely. This is easy to do with the reporting tool built into your applicant tracking system. Here you can measure various metrics, for example the conversion rate of your job postings. In other words, how many clicks a job listing generates and how many applications follow from it.

If you did everything right in your employer branding, the conversion rate should improve thanks to on-point audience messaging. But you might also notice in your analysis that the time spent on your job postings has doubled or tripled while the number of incoming applications has not gone up. This is where you should take a closer look. It suggests your messages have become more interesting and candidates are engaging with them more deeply. But something is still holding them back from applying.

It is quite possible that your application process is too complex and drawn out, and that mobile talent cannot apply easily via smartphone. Be sure to fix that. Because a good employer branding and an attractive employer image also mean giving candidates the perfect candidate experience.

That also includes:

• Name a contact person in your recruiting campaigns. In an age of constant digital communication, there is really no excuse for why employers resist being reachable for candidates. Transparent communication makes the application process more human and builds trust.
• Reply promptly and warmly after an application comes in, and tell your candidates what happens in the next steps and how long it will likely take until the next update. If the process is delayed, give feedback again.
• We have arrived in the remote era: make sure the video interview for the first meeting is perfectly organized. Act as the host who guides the conversation.

What matters is that you monitor your campaigns and your recruiting continuously. If metrics decline, you can make the necessary adjustments when needed. That way your employer branding always stays on point.

The benefits of a well-run employer branding process

If you follow the four phases of employer branding, your company gains the following benefits:

1. An attractive employer brand:

By highlighting your company's distinctive strengths authentically, you position it as an attractive employer that stands out positively from the competition.

2. A larger applicant pool:

Through greater appeal as an employer and on-point messages that speak to your target audiences, your company receives a larger number of applications from qualified professionals. Open roles can be filled faster.

3. Better fit:

With an employer brand communicated clearly to the outside, you attract candidates who share the values your company lives and who are a good match for it. The risk of bad hires goes down.

4. Lower costs:

Faster hiring and a better fit of candidates lead to stronger employee loyalty and lower turnover in the company. That cuts costs, because roles no longer need to be refilled as often.

5. A stronger company image:

A brand that is present to the outside as a capable employer will positively influence your general company image, not only among employees but also among customers and business partners.

Conclusion

The only effective way to stay that decisive step ahead of the competition in the war for talent is to position yourself as an attractive employer. To do that, work through a structured employer branding process and draw out the value that makes your company unique and special. Then highlight it in your recruiting in a way that fits your audience. But be sure to always stick to the truth, because sugarcoating tends to damage your image rather than build it. It is also important to keep working on your employer branding strategy over time.

Run creative recruiting campaigns through your applicant tracking system and measure the results in your built-in reporting tool. Or figure out where performance in your recruiting could still improve. From there, work out the right measures. Employer branding is not a one-off task but an ongoing one, and it takes effort. But it pays off. Because the skills shortage stops being your concern once you have really put your employer brand in the spotlight. Mission accomplished.