Employer branding for startups: free beers not included
Let’s face the ugly truth, attracting top talent for a startup is not an easy job. And I am happy I’m not a recruiter.
First of all, nice and small companies are competing against big names and brands. The pool of people who’re interested in new businesses and disruptive products is limited and the rest are just not confident enough to make a switch from a big corporation that has been out there for ages to that promising mobile company who just made its first steps.
Secondly, most of startups are so focused on growing their business, they barely give any love to recruitment processes. Moreover, they tend to outsource their recruitment activities and very much rely on agencies who will reach out to potential candidates with a standard protocol.
Thirdly, who in God’s sake told startups that cool office, ping pong and free beers will sell the vacancy to a candidate?! Does anyone nowadays still consider to switch a job because of free food and drinks? Google made these perks hip, but it’s time startups revise their offers.
Let’s talk employer branding.
So how can a startup be more attractive to prospective candidates? The answer is easy: treat your company as a brand. I am not talking about your product or service, which you market to customers through various marketing channels. I am talking about your organisation and building employer branding.
What’s the difference between branding for a product and branding for a company? Well, the audience you’re talking to. A brand is a set of features that distinguishes your product from its rivals in the eyes of the customer. An employer brand describes an organisation’s reputation as an employer, and its value proposition to its employees, both existing and potential (props and credits go to Wikipedia).
Let me give you an example of one of the most beloved tech companies who grew from a startup into the biggest streaming service on the planet, Netflix. When talking to its customers, Netflix is all about entertainment, discovery (see what’s next) and accessibility. Netflix did an awesome job: while being global, their brand is still unique and identifiable.
Netflix’ positioning for employers is somehow different. While entertainment is the core company’s mission, their employer branding is built on other values — freedom and responsibility. Their culture description is one of the best out there, because it’s extremely straightforward and honest. Just check out my favourite paragraph:
There are companies where people walk by trash on the floor in the office, waiting for someone else to pick it up, and there are companies where people lean down to pick up the trash they see, as they would at home. We try hard to be the latter, a company where everyone feels a sense of responsibility to do the right thing to help the company at every juncture. Picking up the trash is the metaphor for taking care of problems, small and large, as you see them, and never thinking “that’s not my job.” We don’t have rules about picking up the real or metaphoric trash. We try to create the sense of ownership, responsibility and initiative so that this behavior comes naturally.
They don’t attract candidates by offering high salaries and free stuff (quite sure they still have those perks), they offer a challenging job and a chance to make an impact. And to be honest, I am completely sold.
Employer branding: how to get started?
Define your values and describe your culture
First rule of employer branding: your culture and values are being lived by people who’re working at your company every day, so there’s no chance you can fake those two. If you mention on LinkedIn that your startup provides “good work-life balance conditions” but in fact your employees have to work after-hours every day, get ready to be roasted on the internet and beyond. Your employees are literally your brand ambassadors who’re spreading a word about you not only among friends and family, but also to the outside world (happy people = good reviews on Glassdoor).
They are the most valuable source of inspiration in defining your employer brand. So instead of researching internet on what the best companies to work for are and how they position themselves, ask your colleagues about why they like to work for you and what perks are really important to them. Collect those answers and try to find things that were mentioned by most of people, they can’t be too different if you’re doing the right thing. This exercise will help you to define your values and describe your culture.
Remember a sad story of Uber and it’s discriminating and sexist culture which was all over the internet? Employees played a very important role in restoring the reputation of the company and things on Glassdoor are finally looking good for them.
Put down on paper your EVP (Employer Value proposition)
An EVP describes the mix of characteristics, benefits, and ways of working and differentiates you from a competition. Why is your startup better than that other startup across the street? (literally, so many of them) And what are the unique things you can offer? Whether it’s a challenge of building new apps from scratch, or working with a team of highly skilled professionals, it should be mentioned in your EVP. By defining a strong and true EVP, you will be able to deliver sound and consistent communications during the communication phase and develop an attractive, as well as unique, employer brand.
Elevator pitch is not just for investors
Pieces of puzzle are coming together and you get the feeling of HOW you want to appear to the world outside. To wrap it up, create an elevator pitch about your startup. Sell your company to a potential candidate in 30 seconds (you can take more time if your story is interesting). Besides mentioning your product/service and elaborating on the reached milestones, integrate your values, culture and EVP into the story. If you did your homework, you’re going to accomplish this task with flying colours.
Communicate your employer brand.
Consistency is a key when it comes to communicating an employer brand. But it’s personalisation and customisation that makes it unique. You can have a consistent company description on your own website and LinkedIn, but you would like to adjust it for Stackoverflow, a platform for hiring top tech talent.
You can also choose to customise specific open vacancies for a better recruitment experience. For example, you can tell more about monthly hackathons for vacancies in development or elaborate on department structure for marketing folks. You can also personalise vacancies by adding short video testimonials of existing employees. Facebook nailed this technique by creating a short episode for each department they have:
As a startup you have total freedom to talk about awesome things you’re working on. So why not to start blogging about it? Content is King and this trend is here to stay for many years.
While reaching the right people through your company blog can be somehow tough (and expensive), there’re some cool examples on Medium which can help you to reach people interested in specific subject organically (free targeting?). For example, Booking.com has a Medium blog about UX design, while Lever is blogging about engineering. Get your employees involved in content creation if it feels natural. Instead of hiring a professional copywriter, publish real stories of real people.
Remember that cool office you wanted to mention in your elevator pitch? Put it to good use to promote yourself as an employer by offering to host meetups. People who’re attending professional meetups are usually very engaged and thirsty for knowledge and new experience. You definitely want to introduce yourself to them. You can find specific industry related meetups in your city here and you can reach out directly to organisers. This is the right time to offer some free beers!
Another way to communicate your employer brand to the professional world is to become a speaker at conferences. Once again, let your employees participate to share specific insights they get from their day-to-day challenges. Quite sure you have some passionate people who want to tell more about what they’re working on.
Use the power of social media to share stories. Social media is not only a perfect tool to start a conversation with your customers, but also proves to be effective in attracting good people. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that mixing messages for customers and potential employees on one channel might not be the smartest strategy, so use different channels (ex. Facebook for customers, Twitter for employees) or create separate accounts for different purposes. At the company I work for we‘ve created an Instagram to show office lunches prepared by a very own chef.
Promote your employer brand.
Get your strategy and budget ready. Set your KPIs and expected ROIs. While building an employer brand is important, you will still have to promote your vacancies, posts, videos in order to grow the recognition faster. Your paid efforts should not replace but compliment your organic activities.
Focus on mobile. According to this infographic from 2013, 86% of jobseekers prefer to look for a new job on mobile devices. Whilst mobile consumption is only growing, most of companies (not only startups) do not have a mobile optimised career page. Should I mention that people still have to upload CVs instead of using autofill from LinkedIn profile?
Be creative. Like this Ukrainian banking app who promoted their open vacancy inside the iOS app update. I don’t know if they got any direct applicants, but they definetely increased their recognition as an employer among millions of their users.
Create an employee referral program. Did you know that candidates who are referred through an existing employee are also 4 times more likely to result in a hire than a candidate who applies directly through a careers’ site? Inform your team about open vacancies and requirements and motivate them with a mix of monetary and non-monetary incentives. While money rewards are commonly used, a lot of companies are offering trips and experiences which feels more personal.
In my opinion, employer branding has already become “that next big thing” combining marketing and recruitment, not only in a startup world. But smaller companies have particularly more flexibility to embrace it and stand out. Instead of trying to appeal to potential hires by using startup clichés like cool office & free beers, tell a story. Great stories attract Great people.
