Employer branding is the yin to recruitment marketing’s yang. Magic happens if you manage to keep them both in balance. But what do these terms mean, and how can they help your company? 🤔
You may have heard of employer branding before, or was it employer brand? 🤔 Or maybe it’s entirely new to you (no judgement here!). We admit it, both terms are similar, but there is definitely an important difference! Employer brand is the term that describes the organisation’s reputation and popularity from the employee’s and consumer’s perspective. It also includes the values the organisation gives to your workforce. Employer branding, on the other hand, is used to describe the process of developing and maintaining the employer brand. Got it?
Employer branding has a clear purpose: to present your organisation as attractively as possible to attract quality candidates. A sympl purpose, but there are still several common misconceptions about it. While you’re on with it, we recommend reading our blog post in which we bust the misconceptions about employer branding!
For everyone who still has their doubts on the effect of employer branding, take a look at LinkedIn’s research into the behaviours of its own users. 🕵🏻♂️ The survey shows that 75% of candidates research the reputation of the organisation they are about to apply with first, while 69% says that they wouldn’t accept a job offer from an organisation with a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed. Are you convinced yet?
With employer branding, you’re trying to find answers to the following questions:
Who is my ideal candidate?
Why would that candidate work for me?
Why am I a good employer?
What about my company culture?
Recruitment marketing is the umbrella term for all marketing methods and tactics that showcase your employer brand. This is how you unite recruitment and marketing techniques in the search for new talent. 🤝
In other words: recruitment marketing is the process where you, along with traditional recruitment techniques, promote your employer brand on different social media channels. Every connection between the potential candidate and the social media platform is called a touchpoint. Would you like more information about this? Check our blog about recruitment marketing and the different touchpoints.
This purpose is sympl as well: To deliver the right message to the right candidates via the right channels so you can convince them to apply with your organisation. With recruitment marketing, the emphasis is on the channels you use in your search for the ideal candidate.
Employer branding is the first step in your recruitment process because it creates an image of you, the employer, and your organisation. Recruitment marketing swoops in afterwards to help spread the employer brand and attract the right candidates. The right combination allows you to reach and convince the “best” candidates for your vacancies to work for you. If you struggle to find a balance, it could be a real challenge to fill those open positions. 😳
If it’s all still a bit unclear, we are happy to illustrate with an example:
Imagine “Pose”, a trendy photo studio in Antwerp looking for a candidate photographer to complete the team. They choose to use several social media platforms alongside their own vacancy page to reach a large audience.
Yasmina, a professional photographer, happens to be job hunting for an interesting opportunity, as her current job doesn’t challenge her full potential. While scrolling through her timeline, she comes across a tweet from the photo studio, calling for candidate photographers. The fact that Pose’s tweet reaches Yasmina’s timeline (via sponsoring of retweets) is called recruitment marketing.
Yasmina knows the photo studio and is familiar with their work. Pose has invested a lot of time in their employer branding in the last few years, so Yasmina has a rough idea of their image and working culture. The tweet has caught Yasmina’s interest, and before she applies, she asks herself: ‘Do I fit in with this company?’, ‘Where do I see myself in 5 years?’, ‘How good/bad is it to work at Pose?’, ‘How talented will my colleagues be?’… The answers to these questions will be influenced by a combination of Pose’s employer brand and their recruitment marketing techniques.
Now that everything is crystal clear, let the magic happen! ✨
