Your Employment Brand -- What It Means, What It Can Mean.

I thought it might make sense to start this piece with some staggering statistics about branding results within the products and services marketing world. I pictured a list of hard numbers and percentage growth figures that would clearly illustrate the importance of this concept, not to mention its relevance to fighting in the talent wars. For most, however, that would be equivalent to talking about winning the Boston Marathon before you even begin training. Simply put, there are plenty of steps to focus on between here and there.

Beginning at Point A.
Employment branding, if it's possible to put in a nutshell, is a long-term solution in a short-term world. It's the infrastructure-building part of any true career network.

Whereas your hiring management solution and corporate employment Web site hosting initiatives are essential tools for competing today, your employment brand offers an honest, differentiating value proposition for candidates and employees alike. It starts the flow of applicants, and sets the rest of a critical process in motion.

Build it proactively, and they will come.
The need for an employment brand is not a new one. It's simply been magnified because of the demographic shifts and tightening labor market that we know all too well. Because employers no longer own the control, because would-be employees and would-be ex-employees are firmly in charge, and because they're demanding more today than ever before, your brand must work hard for you. (But not as hard as your organization will have to work to effectively establish it.)

New experiences. Mentoring and growth opportunities. Future-defining impact. Rewards based on performance. Getting home at a decent hour. Staying motivated about work on a daily basis. Fitting one's career into one's life, as opposed to vice versa. These are just a few of the factors that today's job seeking industry shapers have the luxury of considering. Forget about gold watches and retirement packages, your best candidates will typically work for more than five different companies before it's all said and done.

So what does this all mean? It means there's a lot to consider before you even set out to build (or enhance) your brand as an employer of choice. Considering these issues up front and assessing what your organization can offer with respect to them are key steps. Here are some others:

1. Think like a marketer, don't act like one.
Declare that building an employment brand is, above all, a sales and marketing opportunity for your company. So work closely with the powers that be (typically your corporate marketing group) to make the most of it. Share knowledge with marketing folks and upper management alike. Ask them to share knowledge with you (i.e. advertising and branding strategies, focus group results). Leverage everything you can for your purposes. Pledge not to compromise an overall brand. And work hard to get buy-in and blessings from your corporate branding department, as it will only help tremendously in the long run. ~

1a. Identify your audience. More importantly, get to know them.
Okay. You have 200 open reqs and they simply must be filled. That's a huge challenge, there's no doubt about it. But the more you dwell on the number and the apparent impossibility of it all, the less time you have to find the best ways to source the talent you really need.

Employment branding goes a lot further when it reaches the right people. And reaching the right people has everything to do with learning precisely who they are, where they are, and what they're up to when they're not on the job. This takes some legwork, but fortunately there are simple steps that could help put you ahead of the game.

Use your top performers as a starting point. Ask them how they found out about the opportunity at your company. Ask what makes them stay. Find out what the real story is behind their job description, the story that will appeal to people exactly like them. Then explore effective methods for delivering your employment branding message to your ideal candidates. Look to your recruitment advertising agency, if you have one, for fresh media and event ideas. Go beyond the widely cast net that is newspaper advertising to a more focused effort that speaks to top-notch talent on their own terms. (If the demographics tell you that the engineers you covet can be found skiing over President's Day, be right there with them. And if "The Simpsons" keeps coming up in your informal conversations about how your tech support people spend their Sunday nights, investigate creative ways to use this little slice of insight.) Just be sure to take a chance every now and then. And be doubly sure to track the results of everything you do, because it all adds up to progress.

2. Do whatever possible to help build a culture of recruiters.
When branding a product, marketers rely heavily on communicating distinguishing features. ("Milk. It does a body good.") With the branding of services, it becomes more of a trust issue. ("You're in good hands with Allstate.") Communicating distinguishing features and building trust emerge as even more essential in the world of employment branding.

It's important to realize that one of the fundamental differences between corporate branding and employment branding is that, beyond asking candidates to buy a product, we're asking them to change their lives. An employment brand, therefore, helps build a comfort level for candidates. If they can believe in it, they'll be intrigued by it. If something they've heard about your company hits home, they'll remember exactly why.

What better way is there to get the word out than by encouraging everyone in your organization to take on a recruiting role? Provide your employees with a communication foundation for them to move forward with. Whatever external employment branding steps are being taken, make sure that there is an internal component as well. After all, a culture of recruiters doesn't just happen. It must be built. ~

3. Don't confuse recruitment ads with employment branding.
An employment brand is much, much larger than a 1/4 page ad in the newspaper. It's everything that sits in front of, and behind, that small but vital link. It's present in your choice of media, reflected on your booth at a career fair, personified by your recruiters in interviews, and reinforced when someone begins their first day of work.

Most importantly, your brand should be present for all to see on the recruitment section of your corporate Web site. This is typically where the candidate takes control, where they begin digging deeper for information they can use. Don't let them down.

Make sure your recruitment site can easily be found from the corporate homepage, and that it mirrors the branding carried throughout the rest of the site. Then use it as the launch point for an interactive, information-rich journey that you and the potential candidate will experience together. By approaching it this way, you'll be better positioned to help them imagine what it would be like to work for your company. All that's left to do after that is provide the tools for these potential candidates to become actual candidates. Enable them to create profiles, refer friends, request follow-up on future opportunities, subscribe to a newsletter that may be of interest to them, etc.. Just remember, now it's about relationship building, continuous recruitment, and seeking rich candidate data. (So have fun with it!)

4. Go forth boldly.
Talent management (sourcing and development alike) will be an integral corporate priority for years to come. Treat it proactively now. Take command and work with capable partners. Know your culture and take the pulse of it often. Use every tool you can. Then find more to exploit. And gather data and metrics on everything you've done, while never losing sight of the power of creativity in an increasingly difficult mission.

Whatever you do, embrace your employment brand. That's precisely when you come realize just how important it can be.

Michael McNeal (michael@purecarbon.com) is the Chief Industry Evangelist for PureCarbon, creator of JobPlanet, a service that helps companies identify, hire, and retain outstanding employees. He has spent the last 15 years setting the standard for real-time, high-volume staffing for the high-tech industry. In June 1996, he was appointed Senior Director of Corporate Employment for Cisco Systems, Inc. and took charge of Cisco's global staffing strategies and programs. At Cisco, Michael developed a recruitment strategy modeled after successful business and marketing strategies. During his tenure at Cisco, the company grew from 3,800 to 30,000 employees while experiencing less than 7 percent annual attrition.

Michael's views are often featured in national publications, and he frequently appears as a conference speaker on non-traditional recruitment methods and the role of the Internet in competitive recruitment. Michael received a BS in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco. In 1999, he was a recipient of Fast Company magazine's "Who's Fast 99" award (Issue 20).