Talent branding is a more modern recruitment concept – it shapes the way prospective talent perceives your company and its culture. And thanks to the advent of digital media, organizations can project their talent branding far and wide, making it easier to reach the best talent.
The right talent branding can help you acquire the best talent and optimize your recruitment efforts. But the wrong talent branding can attract unfit applicants, discourage diversity, and reduce the effectiveness of your hiring initiatives.
To help you devise the best talent branding strategy, we’ve put together a guide to save you from common pitfalls and help you benefit from the best branding practices.
What is talent branding – and why is it important?
Talent branding refers to how your company projects your employee’s life in your organization. It’s a crucial part of talent acquisition that complements employer branding. Employer branding is how prospective talent perceives your company as an employer.
Some businesses consider talent and employer branding as the same concept, but they have a clear distinction: while employer branding focuses on your organization’s perception as a whole, talent branding zeros in on how people view your employees’ experience.
X Talent Branding Mistakes Companies Need To Stop Making Now
Projecting the wrong talent branding can hurt your hiring efforts. You’ll end up attracting talent that isn’t suited to your organization’s culture or cannot meet your requirements. Here are some fatal talent branding mistakes that many organizations are still making.
1. Advertising an inaccurate work culture
It’s important to present your organization in a positive light – but not at the cost of authenticity.
Many organizations fall prey to presenting their organization’s culture in a less-than-accurate way. For example, fast-growing startups might not be fully upfront about how dynamic their working environment is. For example, the organization might require employees to juggle multiple responsibilities.
And sure, it’s alluring to present your organization as a family where everyone is relaxed and works at their own pace. But if your organization isn’t actually like that, then inaccurate talent branding can hurt your recruitment efforts. You’ll end up attracting applicants that are not the right cultural fit, resulting in unfit hires and substantial hiring costs.
2. Not accounting for diversity
Diversity and inclusivity are some of the most important conversations in the modern world. Unfortunately, although many brands claim to value diversity, the numbers are quite abysmal in some key sectors. Tech, in particular, has some of the worst statistics for diversity – with an overwhelming bias towards white Americans and males.
“But how can recruiters combat this issue? Isn’t diversity and inclusivity a larger conversation?”
You’re right – to an extent, it is. There needs to be a fundamental shift in values and priorities to make industries like the tech sector more inclusive. Global leaders and megacorps will need to champion diversity initiatives on an organizational level – and, fortunately, we are seeing these conversations taking place.
We are seeing organizations take more accountability for their lack of diversity and work towards building more inclusive workforces.
But recruiters can make a difference, too, by making the talent sourcing process more inclusive. This will require conscious shifts in talent branding efforts, which we’ll discuss in detail later in the article.
3. Casting a wide net
Casting a wide net means you catch more fish, right? But what if none of them are the right ones?
In the era of rising recruitment costs and shrinking HR budgets, recruiters cannot afford to be careless in talent sourcing. However, many recruiters are still exhausting recruitment budgets to expand social media reach and promote job advertisements without clear direction.
This approach is similar to a journey without a destination. Expanding reach and promoting advertisements aimlessly leaves talent sourcing up to chance. So, recruiters should instead tailor their talent sourcing and branding and define clear outcomes. You might want to outline answers to the following questions:
- Which talent type are you looking for? What hard and soft skills should they possess? What qualifications should they have?
- Where is your ideal talent? Which channels are they using to job hunt? Which universities train the kind of talent you’re looking for?
- What’s the best way to approach your ideal talent? The answer to this question will help define your talent branding. Your talent branding should attract your ideal talent – so it follows that your branding should be tailored accordingly.
4. Not accounting for cultural fit
Every recruiter knows that there is far more to hiring than qualifications and experience. Cultural fit is one of the most vital indicators of the value an employee can provide to your organization. An employee that does not share your company’s values and cannot adapt to work with your team will not meet expectations or achieve desired goals.
Unfortunately, despite being aware of the importance of cultural fit, many organizations fail to incorporate assessing for cultural fit into their recruitment funnel. This means your funnel fails to filter out unfit candidates, increasing the probability of bad hires.
5. Not taking advice from your employees
One of the most fatal mistakes an organization can make in hiring is treating recruitment as an isolated process. It’s not – especially when employees are expected to work in a team and integrate with your company culture.
Many organizations engage team members in the interviewing process to improve recruitment efficiency, assessing for factors such as cultural fit and compatibility. And while these efforts are valuable, they are seldom sufficient because hiring starts well beyond the interviewing process. We’re tempted to say that the process starts with talent sourcing, but to be honest, it stretches a further step back – to your talent branding.
Thus, organizations should also seek employee advice regarding talent branding and sourcing initiatives. HR should not operate in isolation, engaging employees only once talent has progressed through the funnel.
How To Improve Your Talent Branding Today
If you’re looking to improve your talent branding, you’ve already taken the most important step forward; realizing the importance of good talent branding. You can now prepare an action plan to optimize your branding and attract your ideal talent. And here’s more on how you can get started.
Diagnose problems and weaknesses
The first step is to identify your talent branding’s strengths and shortcomings, so you can tailor initiatives accordingly. It’s entirely possible that aspects of your talent branding are already working, but other elements could be increasing your hiring costs or discouraging certain applicants.
You can best identify these problems by consulting existing data and talking to your employees (especially new hires). Ask your team members what their perception of your company’s talent branding was and what encouraged them to apply. You can also inquire more about the specifics of what appealed to them and what they wished was different about your talent branding.
Uncovering areas of wasted hiring efforts can be more complicated – you’ll need to rigorously assess different platforms and determine which are actually helping your talent sourcing efforts. For example, if your company spends significant resources on cultivating a talent pool on LinkedIn, it’s important to see a return in talent acquisition. Otherwise, if your efforts are not achieving desired results, reevaluating them may be necessary.
Define your strategy
After identifying shortcomings and problem areas, it’s crucial to outline a clear strategy for your talent branding. Some important considerations to account for include:
- The specifics of your ideal talent. This includes the qualifications, skills, and qualities they should possess.
- A list of channels to focus your talent branding efforts on. For example, which social media channels and communities/forums should you engage with. Moreover, are there any particular universities or programs from which your company should source?
- Your employer branding, which ties in with your talent branding. You’ll need to decide which organizational values to project and what company culture to advertise. In these efforts, it’s crucial to remain authentic.
Talent sourcing and branding go hand-in-hand
Your talent branding serves as a magnet for your ideal talent. That means your talent branding and sourcing efforts must complement each other.
After identifying key channels and institutions for talent sourcing, it’s important to tailor your branding accordingly. Use language that speaks to your ideal talent’s expectations and aspirations; customize your pitch to their career ambitions.
Talent sourcing is very much like marketing – there are ideal customers that you must seek out and attract, and the best way to do so is through highly customized campaigns.
Pursue diversity relentlessly
Earlier, we discussed how recruiters could encourage diversity hiring by making changes to their talent branding. Now, we’ll explain how this is possible.
Your talent branding is a projection of your organization and the place of employees in it. If your branding does not project diversity, it may discourage prospective talent from applying. For example, if talent from a particular minority background is interested in working at your company, they may look to see if your company has any employees from their shared background. In fact, over three-fourths of job seekers evaluate companies on the diversity of their workforce.
Thus, it is crucial to incorporate your company’s diversity and inclusivity values into your talent branding. And beyond this integration, it is also vital to scrutinize each stage of your recruitment funnel to identify potential shortcomings. For example, it’s important to use gender-neutral and nondiscriminatory language throughout your branding to avoid discouraging potential applicants.
Realize that employees are your talent branding
If you choose to retain only one takeaway from this article, let it be this: employees are your talent branding.
What this means is, to attract new talent, you must show them that your existing talent is happy, satisfied, and thriving. Thus, your talent branding should be led by your employee’s experiences.
Share their accomplishments. Spotlight their experiences. And give prospective talent an inside view of how it will feel to work in one of your teams.
At WeCP (We Create Problems), we have our own series of Life At WeCP where we share employees’ experiences at our company. This helps us project our work culture and company values to prospective talent, improving our acquisition efforts.
Moreover, beyond directly including your employees in your talent branding, it’s also important to take their advice when optimizing your branding. They may have valuable insights to share about improving your sourcing efforts and making your brand more inclusive.
Be authentic
Whether it comes to showcasing your company’s culture, values, or the opportunities for new employees, it’s important to remain authentic. This is crucial both for strengthening your talent branding and employee retention. Your talent branding shouldn’t attract just any talent, but the right talent. So make sure the message you’re putting out resonates with your people and makes promises that you can deliver on.
Conclusion
Done right, talent branding is one of the most powerful tools for talent acquisition. It can help you attract and onboard the best talent and ensure they’re the right fit, guaranteeing a longer lifetime at your company. However, it’s important to avoid common pitfalls when putting your talent branding strategy together. You should remain authentic, pursue the right channels for sourcing, and bring your employees into the spotlight.
