Is your employer brand real or reel?

Your employer brand is your reputation. It’s a reflection of what it’s like to work for you, how you operate and what you offer to employees. It’s a way of engaging, retaining and attracting talent by showing everyone how great your workplace is.

If the idea is to market your brand, you may assume the best approach is to showcase your offerings and best bits, like in a video highlights reel. But it’s not. A bright, shiny highlights reel may attract attention, but it’s not necessarily attracting the attention of the right talent for your organisation. Nor will it lead to the best talent outcomes.

An employer brand can’t be a reel. It must be real.

Being real means adopting a transparent and honest approach

Think of it like a job interview. A traditional line of questioning may be to ask about your greatest strengths and your weaknesses. The purpose is to get a realistic and rounded picture of a person's personality to determine whether their attributes match the role. 

Strengths are straightforward. You can showcase what makes you great to work for, like your dynamic work culture. Weaknesses are a bit trickier. You need to be honest, but you don’t want to repel potential talent.

Find the balance. What could be deemed a weakness can be overshadowed by a positive. For example, at Heart Talent, our team is 100% remote. This could be seen as a weakness (we can’t get together for Friday drinks when we’re spread across Australia!). But the positives outweigh the negatives, as we have flexible working hours and the freedom to choose our own work environments and personalise work to suit us.

Being real means managing expectations

To deliver an authentic representation of your employer brand, you need to manage expectations. What are you, and what are you not?

Ultimately, to build a high-performing team, you need to portray the real you so that the right people engage with you for the right reasons. Employees are more likely to leave if they realise after starting work with you that the role is not what they expected, which could be down to an unrealistic employer brand. 

According to Glassdoor research, almost 30% of job seekers leave their new jobs within the first 90 days, indicating a misalignment between the candidate and the employer brand.

A proactive employer brand can reduce the cost per hire by 50%, while a negative reputation can cost a company as much as 10% more per hire.

The best way to create a realistic employer brand

Your employees know the answer. Listening to and understanding your employees is key to building value and credibility into your employer brand. Create a positive employee experience and it will help shape your employer brand.

With a strong, authentic employer brand, you’re always recruiting, even when you’re not hiring. 

For guidance on how to understand and showcase your employer brand, speak to the Heart Talent team.