The most common complaint I hear from recruiters is the lack of qualified candidates available for each of their positions. The democratization of the application process means that recruiters are sometimes sifting through hundreds of candidates to find 5-10 to bring in for an interview.
What many don’t realize, however, is that their employer brand may be turning top job seekers away.
Why your employer brand matters
Thanks to the internet, employees all over the world can share their experiences with their employer for the world to hear. This can be great if your company is praised by employees for being a great place to work, with a culture that values learning, work-life balance and a passion for innovation. Take Google, for example – they’ve worked really hard to both create and promote a positive employment brand and they have top applicants from around the world flocking to their company. When they’re ready to hire, they have only the best to choose from.
However, some employer brands have suffered from negative employee feedback. Take Goldman Sachs as an example: last year, an employee publicly quit by writing his resignation in the New York Times. Many companies have received other forms of negative criticism on sites such as Glassdoor or CareerBliss. As job seekers often research the company and employee feedback at some point during their recruitment process, this feedback can be the difference between applying or running in the other direction.
So, how do you get the same candidates that Google is getting?
Start by doing a review of your employment brand. Check review sites like Glassdoor, Google your company name, and see what people are saying about you on social media. Don’t forget that your product brand may also affect your employer brand, so tie in your marketing department, if need be. Ask your employees to take an anonymous survey to see what they think of you as an employer, and what could be done differently. Then take a step back and consider what an applicant would think of the information you’ve gathered. Would you want to apply for this company? Would you refer your friends to work there?
Whether you like what you see or not, there is always room for improvement. Strive to make your company the one that people are lining up to work for by offering competitive salary and benefits, and then some. Ask your employees what it is they want most – maybe it’s a flex schedule, or the ability to work from home. Perhaps they would like updated workspaces, or more recognition. Whatever it is, try to accommodate the most frequent requests, when feasible.
Try to take the same approach that your company takes with customer service – would you just ignore a complaint? Or are you always trying to make the customer happy, to get them to keep coming back and to refer people your way? When you treat your employees like customers, you’ll start to see the benefits – both in terms of how it affects your employer brand, as well as how it affects your quality of applicants.
About Jen Picard:
When she’s not at doing marketing at Bright, you can find Jen snowboarding in Tahoe, traveling abroad, or enjoying a night in with friends and a good bottle of wine. She’s a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a degree in Socio-Economic and Political Global Studies.
Please connect with her on Linkedin and Twitter.
About Bright:
Bright eliminates the noise in the hiring process by efficiently connecting job seekers to their best opportunities, and employers to their top prospects. Our machine-learning algorithm, the Bright Score, examines thousands of data points to find the best fit between job seekers and job openings. By reducing time to hire, Bright is a welcome relief to job seekers and employers.
If you’re an employer looking to use the Bright Score as a time-saving, cost-efficient, game changer in your hiring process, learn more about Bright Recruiter.
HRTact 
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
LikeLike