How recruitment marketing can help shape great employer brands and attract talent.

Recruitment is marketing. Strategic content can help shape your employer brand and engage, retain and attract top talent.

LinkedIn’s Employer Brand Statistics revealed that 75% of job seekers consider an organisation’s employer brand before they apply for a job. Committing to an organisation is an important decision, and people want to know exactly what kind of workplace you have, what your culture is like and how you operate on a day-to-day basis. 

Potential employees want to know about your people, including what they do and what they think about their work. Glassdoor research states that consumers consider an employee’s voice as three times more credible than a CEO’s.

Recruitment marketing aims to communicate that your organisation is a great place to work. To do this, you must build a narrative around who you are and what you can offer potential employees. You can achieve this with effective content.

Content that can help shape your employer brand

The purpose of content in recruitment marketing is to entertain, inform or educate (or all of the above!). Your aim is to attract the attention of top talent, engage their interest and encourage them to find out more.

Posting original content that resonates with job seekers will initiate a connection. You’ll move into their radar and will have an increased chance of attracting them to your organisation.

Here’s how you can use content to shape your employer brand:

·  Entertain and attract: Present stunning visuals that will attract and engage the viewer and invite them to learn more.

·  Express who you are: Demonstrate how your company values are put into practice and show that you practise what you preach.

·  Offer insight: Provide behind-the-scenes insight into your people and operations, and show the employee experience you can offer.

·  Be seen as a thought leader: Share valuable information that will educate or inform to establish your credibility and authority.

·  Demonstrate your expertise: Highlight successes and achievements to demonstrate your capabilities.

·  Validate your message: Provide case studies and testimonials to validate your proficiency and boost credibility.

Examples of great employer brand work 

Here are a few examples of how content can be used to showcase an employer brand.

Innocent

Innocent smoothies use content to demonstrate its core values: natural, entrepreneurial, responsible, commercial and generous. The knitting initiative encourages consumers (and therefore talent, as talent are consumers) to knit a hat that the organisation sells on a smoothie, with profits going to charity.

Innocent validates its values in one piece of content. The organisation uses a colourful visual to grab the attention of the entrepreneurial consumer. Content features short, sharp, creative copy that encourages the consumer to engage with the organisation by contributing to the work of the brand, and Innocent offers a link to help them do it. 

The charitable element is in line with Innocent’s core beliefs and values, which helps solidify its employer brand.

IBM

IBM aims to change the perception of what a technology company is all about. The organisation does this by using video content to highlight the varied and exciting work it does. The imagery presents an informal, casual tone and portrays a diverse and collaborative work culture.

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford has developed a unique piece of fun content, leveraging from a topical sporting event, showing the institution to be part of the conversation surrounding current topics and trends. The content also effectively showcases the work of an employee, boosting the credibility of the people working within the organisation.

As a piece of single content, this post is entertaining, engaging and informative. Maths is traditionally perceived as a fairly flat topic, but this piece of content portrays the message that the University of Oxford can have educated fun!

Tony’s Chocolonely

Tony’s Chocolonely chocolate company wraps its values in every piece of content, including fair-trade chocolate wrappers. As an organisation committed to people, the company uses wrappers to share its story and spread the message that chocolate should be 100% slave-free. Even the chocolate bar itself is divided differently to represent the inequality within the industry.

Key takeaway

Talent are consumers of your product, which in recruitment refers to the career roles you offer. To make your product more appealing, you can use recruitment marketing to shape your employer brand. This can help to put your organisation in the spotlight and showcase it as a great place to work.

For more insights on recruitment marketing and employer brand, contact the team at Heart Talent.