The role Talent Acquisition plays in employer branding

[This post was updated in March 2022 to reflect Gem's most recent recruiting trends data]

For better or for worse, your company has an employer brand. It's a reflection of everything your employees say about you—to their colleagues, their friends, and their networks, whether in face-to-face conversations or on social media. In our post-pandemic world, talent is experiencing a renewed desire for purpose and values-alignment in their work. And employer brand is more important than ever for organizations hoping to turn The Great Resignation into The Great Attraction.

Yet according to Gem’s 2022 Recruiting Trends Survey, nearly 30% of enterprise talent leaders say a weak employer brand is currently impacting their ability to hit hiring goals. This explains why talent leaders also say that employer branding is the #1 place they’ll be investing their budgets this year. After all, “uncompetitive offers” is the second-biggest challenge they anticipate in 2022. And one of the smartest things companies can do if they’re struggling to compete on comp and benefits is to forge a strong talent brand.

If you're in talent acquisition, you can't control what current employees feel about or say about your organization. But you are in a position to relate—honestly and sincerely—the most appealing elements of your company to passive talent who aren’t otherwise searching out the story of your org. And you can bring in talent that reflects the culture and the brand you ultimately want to build. Here's why employer brand deserves recruiting teams' attention in 2022.

Recruiting is frequently a candidate’s first touchpoint

Whether it’s through an email or a LinkedIn message, the outreach that happens during the recruiting process is a company's first opportunity to present itself to potential candidates. This is true regardless of your organization’s size. If you’re a small startup, this may be the first time talent hears anything about your company, placing a lot of power in the recruiter’s hands. Even if you’re a well-known brand, chances are that the candidate knows a lot about your product or service—but very little about your work culture. 

Even a simple message or series of interactions can be very telling for job candidates. For example: Did the recruiter craft a personalized message that included valuable content and made them feel like the company was genuinely interested? Was the outreach organized, or did multiple people from the same company reach out about different roles? Did the hiring manager follow up, making it clear their message wasn’t just part of a massive outreach?

All of these small but significant details during the outreach process can shape a candidate’s impression of your organization. Of course, this is a lot of work for talent acquisition teams to handle. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed by all the touchpoints, it may be helpful to bring in tools, such as a sourcing solution, that can automate personalized followups, track outreach, or allow you to send messages on behalf of hiring managers.

It leads to hires that align with the company culture

Your employer brand is a culmination of everything your employees think, say, and share about your company. This means that your talent acquisition team has a big hand in molding your employer brand since they’re responsible for bringing new people into the organization. 

For instance, during the hiring process talent acquisition oversees everything from interview panels to one-on-one coffee chats with team members. Since your employees are essentially serving as brand ambassadors, you want to train your hiring team to emphasize the aspects of your culture or the role that most resonate with candidates. This reinforces your employer brand and gives potential hires a sense of who you’re looking for.

Similarly, your talent acquisition team’s decision to use structured interviews (or not) can significantly influence whether you hire people who align with your employer brand. Since this approach provides a standardized method of vetting candidates, it becomes much easier to make objective comparisons and select the person who is most qualified for the role and the most aligned with your culture.

This demonstrates the feedback loop that needs to be established between talent acquisition and employer branding efforts. A clear employer brand makes it easier to recruit the right people, and recruiting the right people leads to a stronger employer brand. 

It provides opportunities to elicit feedback 

The talent acquisition process also provides an excellent opportunity to collect feedback from candidates, which can be used to strengthen your employer branding. Candidate surveys are a great tool and provide an effective way to dig into the experience of people who come through your talent pipeline.

For example, let’s say a candidate shares that they were kept in the dark at certain points during the interviewing process. Specifically, they didn’t feel like there were enough updates or communication between rounds of interviews. As a company that prioritizes transparency, this is a chance for you to adjust your interviewing process to reflect these values and create a better experience for future candidates. This, in turn, will lead to positive word-of-mouth and strengthen your brand even more. 

While eliciting feedback directly from candidates provides great qualitative data, there are also ways to collect quantitative data. A CRM platform, for instance, can give you insight into questions like: Where are candidates falling out in our hiring process? Which messages are our passive talent pool most responsive to? Having the data in hand to explore these questions allows you to iterate on your process, content, and overall brand in a way that resonates with top talent. 

It allows recruiters to keep their fingers on the pulse of the talent market

The sourcing and hiring process organically allows recruiters to keep their fingers on the pulse of the talent market when it comes to brand perception. Through conversations with candidates, talent acquisition teams can get a sense of how job applicants feel about your organization, whether or not their expectations of the role align with reality, and what potential employees are looking for in their next workplace. Using these insights, you can fine-tune both your talent acquisition process and employer brand to improve the quality of the talent pool that’s available to your organization. 

Employer branding is more important in 2022 than ever before, and talent acquisition plays a critical role in how others perceive your organization. Find ways to strengthen your talent acquisition process, and you’ll find that you attract better candidates, hire the right people, and preserve your company culture. If you’re curious to learn how Gem can support both your talent acquisition and employer branding efforts, request a demo.