Brand-Building Principles
Part of The PIRATE Way — Stories about scaling up engineering teams
What is Brand-Building in Talent Acquisition?
In today’s highly competitive job market, building a strong employer brand is essential for any organization looking to attract top talent. Candidates have more options than ever, and companies must stand out to succeed.
Brand-building in talent acquisition involves creating a positive and distinctive image of your organization that appeals to potential candidates and aligns with your company’s values and culture. In this blog post, we’ll explore the importance of brand-building in talent acquisition and provide practical tips and strategies for creating a compelling employer brand that attracts the right talent to your organization.
Why is Brand-Building Important?
- According to a survey by LinkedIn, 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agree that employer brand significantly impacts hiring.
- A strong employer brand can result in a 50% reduction in cost per hire and a 28% reduction in employee turnover, according to Glassdoor.
- In a study by CareerBuilder, 75% of job seekers said they consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job.
- The competition for top talent is fierce, with 76% of hiring managers reporting difficulty finding candidates with the right skills and qualifications (according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business).
How to Develop a Brand-Building Strategy for Talent Acquisition?
Drawing on my entrepreneurial background, I’ve found Traction (by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares) an invaluable resource for customer acquisition. Still, I found it equally effective for talent acquisition. The book identifies the following channels to be explored for testing your customer acquisition strategies (Viral Marketing, Public Relations (PR), Unconventional PR, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social and Display Ads, Offline Ads, SEO, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Engineering as Marketing, Target Market Blogs, Business Development (BD), Direct Sales, Affiliate Programs, Existing Platforms, Trade Shows and Events, Speaking Engagements, Community Building, and Customer Programs)
In the following sections, I will show you how you can use those same channels (or not) for your talent acquisition efforts.
Leveraging Different Marketing Channels for Talent Acquisition
One approach for talent acquisition is viral marketing (referral), which involves incentivizing current employees to share job postings and other content with their networks. Slack can be an effective tool for coordinating these efforts, along with all-hands meetings that provide context and encourage participation.
Public relations can also help attract talent, although more is needed to lead to direct hiring. By generating buzz through media coverage, companies can indirectly attract candidates. When announcing significant milestones, companies can prepare coordinated action with their talent acquisition team, including advertising, direct sourcing, and email campaigns.
Unconventional PR, such as stunts and non-traditional actions, can be challenging and may only sometimes be the most reasonable approach for talent acquisition. However, this strategy can be effective in some cases, such as when Airbnb received attention for allowing their team to work from anywhere.
Search engine marketing (SEM) involves advertising to customers using search engines like Google AdWords. Although only sometimes effective for talent acquisition, it may be worth testing for specific segments (e.g. Engineers searching for information on moving to Europe)
Social and display ads based on user metadata and behavior can be a highly effective way to reach potential candidates. Platforms such as LinkedIn, StackOverflow, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be leveraged for advertising.
Offline ads, such as TV commercials and billboards, may not be the most cost-effective approach for talent acquisition, especially for small or mid-sized companies. However, it may be worth considering for larger B2C companies.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves optimizing your website and content to rank high in search engine results pages. It is a long-term investment that requires patience and a proper strategy but can pay off in the long run. To set up the foundation for SEO, ensure your website is mobile-friendly, have a blog with at least 800 characters per post, plan your keywords, write relevant meta descriptions, and ensure your career site loads quickly.
Content Marketing involves creating and distributing helpful, relevant, consistent content to attract and engage potential candidates. This content can include articles, webinars, guides, and infographics. It helps candidates learn more about your company culture, EVP, and approach to work and fosters engagement. It can also contribute to your SEO efforts. To implement content marketing successfully, you need a roadmap of actions, support in selecting the right content for your audience, and team involvement.
Email Marketing involves delivering emails to potential candidates to boost conversion. To build an email database, you can buy or use an existing database, start from scratch, or collect emails from other sources. While it requires effort, it can be part of a mixed action, like a newsletter, or as a post-event action.
Engineering as Marketing involves building free tools for your audience to acquire customers and build your brand. It’s an excellent way to get the attention of potential candidates and build your brand. You can define principles and communicate them with your team, defining what can be eligible for becoming an open-sourced project and the process for making it happen.
Targeting Blogs involves targeting popular content generators for the audience you want to reach and negotiating with authors for guest or sponsored posts, advertising, coverage, or mentions. It’s a great tool used by headhunters and agencies for building a marketplace. You can also participate in podcasts as a guest to reach your target audience.
Direct Sales (Internal Talent Acquisition Team) is equivalent to a direct sales team for acquiring customers. An internal TA team can be crucial when scaling up your team. The TA team can manage to source, run preliminary interviews, coordinate the process, and get the market's pulse.
Affiliate Programs for talent acquisition are similar to those for customers. Headhunters and recruitment agencies can help you find candidates in exchange for a fee. However, it is essential to manage these programs carefully. Too many external agencies can impact your TA team’s performance and blind you to the market’s evolving trends. Instead, pick a small group of collaborators, align the profiles you’re looking for, and work closely with them to fine-tune your recruitment efforts.
Existing Platforms like LinkedIn, StackOverflow, and Glassdoor can be powerful tools for reaching your target audience through content and advertising. Maximizing your efforts and testing different creatives, messages, and segmentation can increase your brand awareness and attract more candidates.
Events and Engagements can help you build trust, respect, and reputation in the industry and the talent market. Here are some examples:
Trade Shows are cost-effective ways to get high volumes of candidates in a particular location. However, they work best for entry-level professionals and require significant investment in coordination and measurement.
Offline Events through sponsorship or running events can help you get attention and allow you to meet your customers in person. These events can be great opportunities for brand-building, but they could be more cost-effective from a purely transactional perspective.
Speaking Engagements are great ways to build trust, respect, and reputation in the industry and the talent market. They require significant efforts and allocation of resources, but being there will convey that you care about your industry and talent.
Community Building and a network can turn your customers into evangelists. By fostering a community within your team, you can make them your evangelists and spread the word.
Finally, please pay attention to your reputation since it is one of the most critical assets for talent acquisition and brand-building. Be kind to your candidates, provide feedback, and offer follow-up calls. Take care of your team, genuinely take an interest in their growth and well-being, and empower them to be your ambassadors.
How to Build a Talent Acquisition Strategy
Start with your brand and reputation.
Your brand and reputation are critical when it comes to talent acquisition. Before you start looking for candidates, take the time to build a strong brand and reputation. This will make it easier to attract top talent and build a pipeline of candidates.
Collaboration with agencies
In parallel, you may need to explore collaboration with agencies if you don’t have a strong brand/reputation yet. Although it can be expensive, it’s more costly not to be able to deploy the organization you need to deploy. Feel free to reach out if you want recommendations for agencies and headhunters that have worked well for me in my career.
In-house talent acquisition
Deploying the proper in-house talent acquisition is essential, especially if you don’t have the budget for collaborating with agencies. This will allow you to deploy channels like:
- Social Media Ads: Managing Social Media Ads at sites like LinkedIn and StackOverflow.
- Direct Sourcing: Actively contacting candidates on LinkedIn using platforms like Entelo, which empowers the team to reach candidates on behalf of engineering leaders.
- But also support other initiatives described below
Other effective channels
Once you have the right team and budget, you can roll out other channels that require more time to be effective, such as:
- Content Marketing: Generate content frequently as blog posts, webinars, and podcasts. This content can also be shared with candidates during hiring to give them more information about your team and culture.
- Referral Programs: Define an internal referral program once you have the right team and culture.
- Speaking Events/Podcasts: Speaking engagements and podcasts can help build your brand and reputation.
Exploring other options
As you grow, you can explore different talent acquisition strategies like:
- SEO: As a direct consequence of your content marketing efforts.
- Engineering as Marketing: Open-sourcing projects, contributing to external OS projects used by the team, providing tools to the market, and others.
- Public Relations: By capturing the attention of key players in the market, reference writers, and other industrial influencers.
In conclusion, building a talented engineering team requires a thoughtful and strategic approach to talent acquisition. By leveraging the proper channels and building a solid brand and reputation, you can attract and retain the best talent for your organization.
Remember: This is a blog post from the series “The PIRATE Way”.
