The Art of Employer Branding In Bootstrap/Seed Funding Stage

As a startup, most employers think of 'brand' as the company logo and a medium of spreading out their message. Very few focus on building a compelling employer brand!

What is Employer Branding?

Employer branding refers to the process of managing and influencing your employer's reputation among job seekers, employees, and key stakeholders. It includes everything you do to position your company as a top employer.

Employer Branding #Strategy

An employer brand is an amalgamation of how consumers at the market, existing employees, and future potential employees perceive the company. It is the intangible of what job seekers get attracted to and what pushes them away. While 9 out of 10 startups fail as per statistics, having a strong employer brand that potential employees are excited to join and are aligned with purpose will give your startup a steady head-start. Your startup is only as strong as the team that you pull together.

It is therefore imperative to build a social media strategy in line with the top career priorities of your targeted jobseekers. Finely curated digital marketing campaigns play a vital role in hiring efforts in a talent-driven competitive job market.
Social media strategy is a cost-effective medium with high penetration and outreach amongst millennials. Engaging on key trends, as it pertains to your industry through organic content on innovative product/service offerings, market #intelligence curated by experts in your company could have a lasting impact on building a strong brand. In a nutshell – invest in your employer brand as much as you would on your consumer brand.

The below simple actionable is intended to give you a head start as it pertains to building your social media presence.

• Telecast recruitment events videos to engage with latent candidates. Encourage existing employees to share their #brand experience and personal growth journey on platforms that, as per your marketing team, have the highest outreach.

• Develop an engaging career page on your company website. Share links of this for hosting on relevant platforms. Include information on vision, mission, values, leadership, platforms, and products, relevant statistics on diversity, industry accolades apart from job descriptions, and common recruitment resources like application process. It may also imply that the job postings would be picked up by leading job portals, further brightening the chances for position closure.

• Creating a positive candidate experience is critical for building a budding employer brand. More often than not, a candidate with unfavorable experience drops out of the recruiting process and has a high probability to go on social media and contribute to negative publicity of the brand. However, a personalized positive candidate experience results in better outreach through the network and further referrals.

• Leverage text recruitment for greater outreach at a low cost. It will, however, need access to the relevant database, which you could build or subscribe to.

• Engage with a pre-determined list of employees who will publish on social media flash stories and blips on company culture, new ventures, current journey, and achievements to transparently share the journey of the organization. It is a substitute for newsletters with no pressure on the frequency of publication.

• Attend industry events to not only be current with the latest industry trends but to position your company amongst relevant groups and potential future consumers and employees.

• Host low-budget casual recruitment events that don’t need candidates to come formally dressed. These could be at the local café with some coffee and snacks and a good vibe that matches with the culture of your company. #Networking is key to getting the best-fit candidates for your startup. Moreover, you get to see the personal side of the candidate that will help in a long-term sustainable relationship and the right cultural match.

• Build and maintain a talent community of candidates that have shown interest in your brand in the past by either having gone through interviews, explored your website, or attended/ reacted to events and blogs from your company but are not with you currently. It is a very key segment of individuals that you want to share more information on your company to continue to deepen the awareness for future potential engagement.

Simply starting a Facebook Group or a Twitter handle to highlight the company culture, product launches, innovation success, fun at work, corporate social responsibilities, industry accolades build the outreach to passive candidates.
While this could be an easy first step, constant benchmarking to organizations that are similar in size and competing in the talent marketplace could well provide necessary insights into how you need to maneuver the positioning of your employer brand.

Networking

We hope that was insightful and valuable to you!!!

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