Why your poor employer brand is killing you softly

Millenials!!Needy. Self-entitled. Confused. Careless. Just a few words employers have used to describe the current workforce that is taking over 50% of jobs worldwide. They are a new species. One that has caught employers off guard. Almost like leaving a newborn baby with a first-time father for a week. They just don’t know what to do with us.

One thing that cannot be denied with Gen Y & Z is their uptake of information. With over 3 gadgets in their hands at any time, millennials have more information available than they can consume. This then begs the question we are answering in this post. With millennials having so much access to information why is it that job seekers can’t find sufficient information about employers or careers to inform their choices?

According to Linkedin Global Recruiting Trends 2017 report, 57% of hiring teams agree that competition for talent is their number 1 worry this year. Likewise, they also admit that one of the key solutions to this is employer branding. So, why is it that most employers still post anonymous job postings on free job sites if they want quality candidates and then complain about the high number of low-quality applicants being received on these free job boards?

Photo by Johnson Wang on Unsplash

60% of the online recruiting process happens before a candidate ever directly contacts an employer or recruiter- Conference Board

With only 36% of candidates being active job seekers i.e. the ones who apply to all your jobs be it in engineering, sales, or accounting, the majority (and the ones you need to be paying attention to) are not looking for you. So you have to go out of your way as an employer to brand yourself as a company of choice because let’s face it, millennials think they have options. It’s your work to convince them to work for you, not the other way around because the job market now is candidate-driven. But not to worry, here’s how you can do that;

1. Employer profile

Candidates and employers have agreed that company culture is now what gets the foot in the door. So a short paragraph describing the products you sell and a generic what we are looking for will not cut it anymore. Millennials want to be entertained. They will quit a job if they think it’s boring even when they don’t have a new job!

So what kind of information are candidates looking for?

Top five pieces of information job seekers want employers to provide as they research where to work;

1) Salary/compensation, 2) Benefits, 3) Basic company information, 4) What makes it an attractive place to work, 5) Company mission, vision, values. (Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey, January 2016)

Take last year for instance. The mannequin challenge might have been a ‘waste of time’ according to some, but some smart employers rode the wave by posting interesting & funny videos of employees including CEOs participating in it. Guess what this did to their employer brand.

2. Messaging

Candidate experience is everything. According to Xref Recruitment Risk Index, 2 in 5 candidates have abandoned the application process. Most job boards & existing ATS offer no easy ways for the exchange of information between parties during hiring. 61% of candidates pointed out that a good candidate experience meant employers responding quickly throughout the hiring process as well as being notified if they were not the right candidate for the job. Why is this noteworthy?

According to Career Arc;

• 65% of Candidates say they never, or rarely, receive notice about their application.
• When they don’t hear back, 85% doubt that a human being ever reviewed their application.
• 51% of those that do receive notification, say it takes 1 month or more

This leads to

• Candidates who are NOT informed about their application are 3.5 times less likely to re-apply to that company.
• Among the Candidates who have had a poor experience, 72% have shared that negative experience online or with someone directly.

While James Bond can get away with a lot of things, you, on the other hand, can’t. Your lack of responsiveness as an employer is costing you future potential quality candidates.

The last is reviews which have increasingly grown to become a trusted source of research for candidates. Because let’s face it. You’re corporate! You don’t even trust the things you say! So why should we? That’s coming up next.

Check out more on https://medium.com/jobonics/hr-meets-marketing-part-7-employer-branding-meets-emotional-branding-3cbf23b13360