The Scientific, Technical and Medical industries are nothing if not competitive. The best candidates are often picked up in the blink of an eye and companies are upping the ante in the measures they take to snare the top talent. That has made employer branding increasingly important to an organisation’s recruitment prospects.
Your employer brand is, essentially, your reputation as an employer compared with others in your industry. If your business has a strong employer brand, then it is often easier to secure the best talent. Conversely, if you have a weak employer brand, it might not be seen at all or worse could be putting off potential hires.
Here is our guide on some simple actions you can take to improve your brand and ultimately attract better quality talent to your business.
Finding Your Brand
The most important element of successful employer branding is to be honest and authentic about who you are as an organisation. With top scientific talent having their pick of opportunities, they’re interviewing you as much as you’re interviewing them.
Your brand doesn’t have to be the biggest or most well-known in the marketplace to attract top talent. However, what is important is that your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is clearly defined and is explicit about what makes your company a unique place to work. This will enable you to have a clear message to present to candidates about what differentiates your business from your competitors.
With your EVP defined on paper, it is then key to be able show potential employees your brand in action. Encourage your managers and top employees to become brand ambassadors and give them opportunities to represent your organisation. By making your best people visible at conferences, events, or networking opportunities, you allow your brand’s personality to shine through, which in turn builds your brand’s credibility.
Fine Tune Your Application Process
As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘it takes many good deeds to build a good reputation and only one bad one to lose it.’ The same can be said for your reputation as an employer, which is why it is so important that your application process makes the right impression of your brand right from the start.
Put yourself in the shoes of a candidate; if the application process is long and arduous, with multiple steps and infrequent, inconsistent communication from the employer, then it’s fairly likely that you won’t hold that company in the highest esteem.
The way a company handles its recruitment process, is one of the key insights that candidates get into how a company operates on a day-to-day basis. Your recruitment process needs to be simple, straightforward, and sensitive to the needs of a candidate.
The candidate touchpoints start with the job advertisement itself. Ensure that the job advertisement is a clear description of the role, outline the processes needed to apply and paint an accurate representation of the company. However, the key element is to have a comprehensive understanding of your organisation’s unique selling points. Try to identify at least three key elements that will appeal to the talent you’re trying to attract, and position these at the forefront of your messaging.
The Interview & Offer Stage
Once you have a shortlist of viable candidates, it’s important to show them that you value their interest in the role by establishing a connection. While email is often the communication tool of choice these days, calling is more personal and gives you the opportunity to communicate the next steps clearly person-to-person. You should then follow up with an email to confirm details and give yourself a written record.
Alternatively, if you have to be the bearer of bad news for whatever reason, then sending an email can come off as standoffish and be seen as disrespectful. In these situations, it’s always better to front up and make a phone call where possible.
It’s common for tests and assessments to be part of the interview process. Informing the candidate about them at the outset will ensure that they aren’t taken by surprise. Most candidates will be understanding of this and will take this as a chance to impress, however, over-assessing will start to test their patience rather than their skills – especially if they have other offers on the table. Whilst you shouldn’t compromise your recruitment process, be careful to get the information you need. Often, conducting round after round of interviews and assessments doesn’t result in learning anything new, and may be the difference between securing a great candidate and losing them.
It’s also important to effectively coordinate the people conducting the interviews, as well as the interviewees. With Hiring Managers usually having hectic diary commitments, employers can often lose out on talent due to long gaps in the process. This makes it crucial to get ahead of potential scheduling conflicts, and pre-book key decision-makers in advance so that they are available when you need them.
When it comes to the interview stage, be flexible and discrete. Keep in mind that many people take time out of their workday to attend job interviews, so be open to holding interviews over lunch or outside of work hours. This is hugely helpful to many candidates, and will reinforce the notion that you care about the people you work with, which will help get things off to a good start if they choose to join your business.
Other important considerations then include the speed of initial feedback, job interviews, the way offers (or rejections) are presented, and critically, the time the entire process takes. When recruitment isn’t your core function, this can often prove difficult, so outsourcing this part of the process to an external recruitment agency can help to keep things running smoothly.
In Closing
In today’s competitive talent market, every interaction you have with a potential candidate is your chance to stand out and assert your organisation’s unique identity to attract great people – both in terms of the way you go about hiring and the way in which you present your organisation. When doing this, there may well be a temptation to emphasise certain elements, and create an image of your organisation that seems more exciting or appealing. It should be noted that when it comes to employer brand, this strategy very rarely pays off, as once employees join they’ll quickly realise that they’ve been sold a false premise. Remaining authentic during your hiring process will help you to attract the people who want to work with you, ensuring that you end up with a team that is strongly aligned with your organisation’s values.
