Therefore, it’s important to know where job seekers doing their research so you can manage your employer brand and reputation. And yes, negative online employer reviews ratings on these sites can harm your company’s overall employer branding and talent acquisition success.

Employee reviews have become increasingly important as an indicator of organizational performance, considering how a recent Glassdoor survey revealed that a serious misalignment persists in organizations. The figures show a 149% jump in the disconnect between workplace leaders and employees. 

On that note, I created a list of 18 top company review sites to reference. These websites’ user-friendly accessibility enables you to sort the positive reviews from the negative reviews for an accurate gauge of employee sentiments.

While these sources of workforce behavior seem like similar sites that collectively offer feedback, they may have different specializations.

For instance, some may feature employee-based content like reviews and ratings, while others reveal valuable insights from internal employer reviews ratings from specific companies.

Our curated list contains the following employer reviews ratings sites that most often double up as job search platforms:

• Indeed
• Glassdoor
• Kununu
• The Muse
• Seek
• Great Place to Work
• BuiltIn
• Comparably
• Vault
• FairyGodBoss
• CareerBliss
• TeamBlind
• Jobcase
• InHerSight
• The Job Crowd
• Rate My Employer
• Rate My Internship
• WayUp
• Wellfound
• Ambition Box
• The Ladders

METHODOLOGY for Ranking Employer Reviews Rating Sites

We ran the top company reviews sites through an SEO (search engine optimization) tool called ahrefs to give us an “ahrefs Rank”. ahrefs defines this as “the strength of a website’s backlink profile compared to the others in ahrefs database, with rank #1 being the strongest.” Here’s a sample view of Indeed.com’s ahrefs rank (represented by AR 256). We’ll also include each site’s DR value, which stands for its domain rating. The DR represents the strength of the site’s domain on a logarithmic 0 to 100 scale (i.e., its ranking potential or credibility/authority). While the DR is not a surefire way to rank, it is an excellent industry benchmark. 

Ahrefs’ ratings aren’t foolproof, but it provides a third-party “apples-to-apples” measurement to compare these company review sites. 

So, here are the top 18 company reviews sites that give a detailed, accurate look at employers:

1. Indeed

Indeed’s employer reviews are segmented into a list of the best places to work and has around 500 companies that are reviewed and rated by current and past employees. Indeed is similar to Glassdoor reviews (Recruit Holdings Ltd. owns both) in presenting feedback based on individual and cumulative ratings.

The platform partnered with the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, which identified the importance of employee well-being and its effect on company stocks. Known as “Work Wellbeing 100,” the metrics gauge key employee indicators of thousands of companies in the Indeed database to link job seekers with organizations known for their positive work culture and retention. 

The Work Wellbeing 100 measures employee satisfaction based on four workplace outcomes: happiness, purpose, satisfaction, and manageable stress. As such, Indeed, can help provide a holistic assessment of employer ratings from the perspectives of arguably the most important stakeholders: the employees!

Indeed’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Overall Company Review Rating Scale
• Work/Life Balance Scale
• Compensation/Benefits Scale
• Job Security/Advancement Scale
• Management Scale
• Culture Scale
• Employee Review
  • Pros & Cons
• Interview insights, which gauge the quality of each experience

ahrefs Rank: 256

Domain Ranking: 92

2. Glassdoor

Glassdoor is one of the largest employer review sites. It has a database of 75+ million company reviews, leadership team/management ratings, salary reports, job interview tips, employee benefits reports, and workplace insights.

Glassdoor is actually the sister company of Indeed, under Recruit Holdings Ltd., shedding light on a number of employee concerns. These provide job seekers with a more detailed understanding of their prospective employer, which includes assessments of management quality and cultural fit. 

Glassdoor reviews are generated by “the people who know the company best”—the employees. So, the site’s star reviews offer job seekers an honest perspective of a particular company’s culture. As such, these reviews prove advantageous in shaping company profiles and affecting your organization’s application success.

Glassdoor’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Overall Company Review Rating Scale: 1-5
• Recommend Company To A Friend Scale: 0-100%
• CEO Approval Rating Scale: 0-100% (This essentially shows the percentage of a workforce at the company in support of their CEO).
• Employee Review
  • Pros & Cons (including top review highlights based on each sentiment to give an overall view of the company)
  •  
  • Interview Ratings

ahrefs Rank: 1076

Domain Ranking: 91

3. Kununu

*note: Kununu focuses on companies in the DACH region (comprising Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). 

Kununu is an employer review site that provides prospective employees with a genuine feel of the corporate culture through authentic company reviews.

The site also encourages employees to share real work-life experiences, supporting organizations in promoting their company’s reputation to modern job seekers searching for a relatable purpose at work.

Kununu’s Top Company accolade has been an industry standard in identifying companies with leading employer branding practices. According to the site, only the top 5% of companies qualify for the prestigious accolade, which has resulted in a significant increase in hiring success. 

As such, the site has become a pivotal ratings platform (on par with Glassdoor and Indeed) for companies located in Europe. 

Kununu’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Kununu Score
• Recommendation Rate
• Employee Ratings (based on 13 criteria, which include leadership and diversity scores)
• Applicant Ratings
• Culture Rating
• Benefits
• Salary

ahrefs Rank: 1,984

Domain Ranking: 89

4. The Muse

The Muse empowers talent acquisition through its dynamic job board and career advice offerings. The site also features a dynamic company/employer ratings and reviews database that connects top talent with prospective employers.

My favorite feature is the employee videos section. The section presents informative content like a 1-2 minute video on the company background, open positions at the job site, and an inside look at the overall employee experience.

One notable aspect of The Muse is its VIBE awards, which highlight companies where talent feels supported and appreciated. The VIBE awards narrow down to the most sought-after employers based on professional development opportunities and inclusive practices (including fair hiring practices).

The Muse Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Company Overview
• Employee Videos
• In-depth Office Location Slideshows
• Department-specific content (this enables job seekers to identify the interplay of workplace dynamics across different teams, such as HR vs IT.)
• Detailed Perks and Benefits of Working at the Company
• Links to Job Openings

ahrefs Rank: 4,348

Domain Ranking: 85

5. Seek

Seek is an Australian-owned and operated employer review site that provides reliable and consistent feedback and reviews submitted by actual employees.

The site has become a leading authority for employer reviews and ratings in Australia, established through detailed feedback between employers and their talent. 

Candidates can conveniently tap on Seek to browse for ratings, reviews, and jobs from diverse companies tailored to specific situations and needs in their job search journey. The platform’s employee recommendation rating essentially guides job seekers to a company, facilitating a self-driven referral engine that could essentially outperform traditional hiring channels.

Seek’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Work/Life Balance
• Career Development
• Benefits & Perks
• Management
• Working Environment
• Salary Rating (to provide an industry comparison)
• Employee Recommendation Rating (a gauge of the success of internal referral programs)
• Diversity and Equal Opportunity

It is also worth noting that Seek comes with a Smartmatch feature that automatically draws hires to employers with high recommendation ratings. This results in greater visibility that ultimately leads to improved hiring quality. 

ahrefs Rank: 3,045

Domain Ranking: 87

6. Great Place to Work (GPTW)

Great Place to Work (GPTW) offers some of the most in-depth employer reviews. While GlassDoor offers individual employee feedback, Great Place to Work’s employer review system is based on a collective rating of all current employees’ feedback on an anonymous survey in six different areas.

They also provide dynamic visuals of employer statistics, giving potential job candidates various ways to interpret the feedback. The informative presentation can help attract job seekers’ interest and boost employee retention by easing new hires into a new environment where they are more comfortable staying committed to their roles for a long time.

GPTW’s Trust Index© survey has accrued feedback from millions of employees globally, providing a detailed assessment of workplace sentiment. The data-backed research (based on dimensions such as employee pride, trust, and camaraderie) equips GPTW with accurate information needed to shortlist companies that fulfill the “Great Place to Work” certification. Companies with GPTW’s esteemed award can add greater credibility to their work culture via alignment with employee values, driving highly supportive and trusted environments. 

Great Place To Work’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• What Employees Say Scale: 0-100%
• About Company
• Company Awards
• Perks & Programs
• Compensation Programs
• Employee Benefits
• Demographic Visuals (Charts & Graphs)
• Hiring Outlooks
• Advice On How To Get Hired

ahrefs Rank: 3,865

Domain Ranking: 86

7. BuiltIn

BuiltIn exclusively tailors to employers and jobs in the tech industry. The site guides tech talent toward their professional calling while effectively promoting employer stories. The site’s company review pages offer comprehensive information, including employee reviews and a Q&A section.

BuiltIn’s platform utilizes the latest developments in predictive analytics to guide job seekers toward the most suitable placements within an organization. One notable feature of the platform lies in their focus on dynamic video-based and interactive storytelling, showcasing real-world experiences faced by existing hires. 

BuiltIn’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Locations
• Perks & Benefits
• Job Openings
• Technology Used
• Articles mentioning company/company news

ahrefs Rank: 3,504

Domain Ranking: 86

8. Comparably

Comparably is a company review site focused on compensation and corporate culture data. With ratings for gender, diversity and overall culture, Comparably prioritizes what candidates seek when researching a company.

Employers may prefer Comparably versus Glassdoor because the site focuses on surveys from current employers (whereas Glassdoor includes ratings from former and potentially disgruntled employees who may leave behind scathing reviews that tarnish your company’s professional reputation).

Comparably also offers one of the most user-friendly interfaces of all employer review sites, with its clean, detailed graphs and dynamic visuals.

For instance, the platform offers culture score heat maps that provide prospective hires with a bird’s-eye view of critical information such as compensation and work culture practices. Since the platform’s acquisition by leading tech company ZoomInfo, the site has maintained an intuitive method in conducting detailed cross-references between various workplace cultures. 

Comparably’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Company Culture Score (Includes breakdown by Department)
• Awards
• CEO Score
• Gender Score
• Diversity Score
• Reviews from Employee
• Salary Information
• Competitor Comparison
• Anonymous Q&A with Employee

ahrefs Rank: 15,051

Domain Ranking: 79

9. Vault

Vault provides employer ratings, reviews, and rankings on 5,000 companies in over 120 industries. Rather than an employee review based site, Vault does most of their company research in-house and provides some really in-depth information on each department.

Notably, the platform offers transparent insights into talent-prioritized information such as promotion policies and worker compensation practices. Vault also applies unique AI insights in the interview process, resulting in expert-driven tips that streamline job placements with precision.

While the site offers free content (overviews and selected ratings) on companies, you must subscribe for a fee to unlock the complete user experience.

Vault’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Overview
  • Review on each department
  • Financial Performance
  • Strategy
  • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Recent Company News & Press Releases
• Industry Reputation
• Career Advancement
• Quality of Life
• Salary & Benefits
• Interview Process
• Employee Reviews
  • Uppers
  • Downers
  • Comments

ahrefs Rank: 34,778

Domain Ranking: 75

10. Fairygodboss

*Disclaimer: The company review site focuses on women hires and talent

Fairygodboss offers one of the largest career communities for women, providing rich resources for free to motivate and help them connect with other career-minded individuals and companies.

Millions of women visit Fairygodboss for career connections, jobs, community advice, virtual events, and exclusive intel/research about how companies treat women employees.

Fairygodboss focuses on increasing transparency regarding a talent’s work-life balance and equity at work, based on data-verified engagement metrics. As such, the platform spreads greater awareness on inclusive employability where hires thrive. 

The community-catered company review site makes it easy for women to access the information they need to succeed in their careers and avoid inequities that may compromise the quality of their work experience.

Fairygodboss’ Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Company Overview
• Job Openings
• Employee Reviews
• Benefits
• Parental Leave
• Work/Life Balance

ahrefs Rank: 29,969

Domain Ranking: 76

11. CareerBliss

Another trending company review site is CareerBliss. Serving multiple perspectives (employers, job seekers and recruiters) CareerBliss is a one stop shop for job seekers looking for information on an employer.

CareerBliss has some of the most complete salary data including salary by position and in-depth salary comparisons to the national average and geographical averages.

The platform’s employee reviews offer a comprehensive insight into workplace satisfaction, based on critical but often overlooked factors such as relationships with coworkers, growth opportunities, and job resources. CareerBliss also provides a total rewards breakdown, so talent can keep track of salary differences across the company from a single touchpoint. 

As such,hires can readily turn to the site’s overall Bliss Score to determine career decisions according to financial practices and personal well-being. 

They also have an annual employer of choice award for the top 50 Happiest Companies in America.

CareerBliss’s Employer Reviews Rating Rundown

• Bliss Score – Includes multiple user-generated data points like job satisfaction, pay-scale and overall employee happiness to calculate the “Bliss Score”
• # of job openings
• Average Salary (across company)
• Employee Reviews (based on 8 criteria)
• Links to Job Openings
• Company Salary Distribution
• Salary by Position
• Compared to national avg. salary of position
• Compared to avg. salary of position at specific location

ahrefs Ranking: 118,189

Domain Ranking: 69

12. Teamblind

Blind is where 3.5MM+ anonymous and verified professionals worldwide share advice, provide honest feedback, improve company culture, and discover relevant career information.

Blind’s mission lies in promoting transparency by breaking down professional barriers. These measures empower informed decisions and inspire productive change in the workplace.

The platform offers data on vital talent perspectives across DEI and psychological safety standards, which informs prospective hires about organizational support and leadership methods. User contributions on Blind also assists with breaking down total compensation data. As such, talent can assess career pathways within an organization with ease and social proof.  

Blind’s Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Company Overview
• Employee Reviews
• Company Ratings (rating scale: 1-5)
  • Career Growth
  • Work/Life Balance
  • Compensation
  • Company Culture
  • Management

ahrefs Ranking: 51,117

Domain Ranking: 73

13. Jobcase

Jobcase provides lots of capabilities for job seekers. They offer a couple of cool features including a cool Q&A style message board where community members share experiences at that company. They also gives you the ability to connect with current employees on social media.

obcase also showcases employee connections, highlighting dynamics at work and work place satisfaction levels. Talent can conveniently integrate their social profiles on the site, adding an additional layer of authenticity to each candidate’s presence. The site also provides attractive hiring opportunities promoted through virtual and on-site fairs.  

Jobcase’s Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Company Snapshot
• Employee Profiles (and if you have any connection to them)
• Discussion
• Job Openings
• Upcoming Hiring Events

ahrefs Ranking: 8,475

Domain Ranking: 82

14. InHerSight

Like Fairygodboss, InHerSight caters to women in the workforce but offers complete anonymity in measuring how well companies support women employees at every level. The comprehensive platform includes positions in office suites, executive suites, cubicles, and warehouses.

Women employees can rate and review their experience at companies and can get matched to a job at a company that shares their values.

The platform identifies 18 specialized metrics to provide a comprehensive breakdown of worker sentiments, including family-driven metrics such as maternity leave and family growth support (i.e., IVF subsidies or surrogacy coverage). 

InHerSight’s Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Employee Ratings for: (rating scale 1-5)
  • Opportunity
  • Schedule & Flexibility
  • Enrichment
  • Family
  • Culture
• The site also features a subsection of ratings within the five categories listed above.
• Employee Comments
• User-friendly Interface —  You can filter reviewed ratings by career level, race/ethnicity, sexual, sexual orientation, and parental status.

ahrefs Ranking: 81,309

Domain Ranking: 71

15. WayUp 

WayUp is a specialized job portal that links qualified and diverse interns to the most suitable roles. The site’s crisp and user-friendly interface makes it easy to shortlist internship opportunities based on industry and popularity.

While WayUp lacks employee reviews, it is a resourceful starting point in familiarizing interns with an employer’s corporate culture. 

The site guides users through intern-catered information, which could include study loan assistance and mental health coverage. WayUp also strengthens social connectivity among job seekers and companies with day-in-the-life-style content and other real-world examples of work culture. 

WayUp’s Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Company Perks
• Upcoming Events Hosted By The Company
• Opportunities
• Social Media Links (These steer interested interns toward further company information and open roles).

ahrefs Ranking: 61,674

Domain Ranking: 73

16. Wellfound 

Wellfound focuses on job vacancies in the startup and ventured-backed space, emphasizing the importance of workplace equity and inclusive hiring. The platform’s unique direct-to-founder model approach enables open communication that attracts candidates interested in joining the early stages of a company’s life cycle. As a result, talent could turn to Wellfound in accessing niche vacancies omitted by traditional job boards. 

Wellfound’s Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Transparency in organizational practices (including salary and equity) 
• Direct communication opportunities with startup founders and hiring leaders
• Start-up culture tagging
• Response rate badges that reflect the response rate activity in employer communications
• Verification of a company’s tech stack 

ahrefs Ranking: 3,656

Domain Ranking: 86

17. AmbitionBox

AmbitionBox is a company review platform catered to the Indian and Southeast Asian markets. The platform runs anonymously, where contributors can enhance posts with visual elements such as images, videos, and polls for greater site engagement. Job seekers also have the option of customizing their feed based on tags such as “Customer Service,” “HR,” and “Consulting” for an optimized review experience.

AmbitionBox’s Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Interview advice section that equips talent with best practices
• Transparent salary/compensation data
• Data-rich insights on workplace culture (including job security and skill development opportunities)

ahrefs Ranking: 54,590

Domain Ranking: 73

18. The Ladders

The Ladders is a premium platform catered to high-paying positions such as director and senior executive roles. Niche job seekers can automate on-site job searches to meet a minimum income threshold of $100,000 a year with the Apply4Me concierge service. 

The Ladder’s Employer Reviews Ratings Rundown

• Compensation calculator for comparing the salary of similarly high-paying roles
• Market value assessments that reveal pay factors such as bonus structures
• Concierge communication services for direct communication with headhunters
• Predictive analytics that automate experience matching with market skill/leadership gaps

Ahrefs Ranking: 13,655

Domain Ranking: 80

Closing Thoughts: Building TA Success With Employer Reviews Ratings

A transparent candidate experience that lays the good alongside the bad reviews could prove advantageous in navigating ever-evolving workforce expectations. Therefore, comparing the data across multiple employer reviews ratings sites promotes a shared understanding of talent experiences and hiring company practices. 

We live in a world heavily influenced by the social proof of user-generated content at every angle on the internet. So, the same logic extends to talent acquisition. And if you plan to increase the number of unique visitors to your job search site, it is also important to leverage that social proof through strategic integration.

In 2026, we’re looking at an increased interest and preference for visible data over verbal promises. For employers, it has become more pressing to replace clinically correct corporate promotions with real-world feedback. Through employer review ratings and data-backed trust, job seekers are more likely to follow through with an application, no matter their niche and experience.

Why I wrote this?

Company review sites aid job seekers in making decisions. It’s important to know these employer review sites so you can manage your brand and reputation. 

So, if you have company ratings and reviews or an employer of choice award from a company listed above, our Career Site Builder let’s you add it to your job pages.

Ongig can help with a robust TA solution that optimizes the effectiveness of your job sites with talent acquisition widgets that encourage site engagement and conversion.

Our user-friendly integrations include widgets with Glassdoor reviews and LinkedIn to convince and convert your most talented hires.

Request a demo with Ongig to discover how you can succeed in the candidate experience with optimized ratings and reviews tailored to your job site.

Shout-Outs

1. Glassdoor – Glassdoor’s Worklife Trends 2026
2. Indeed – Companies do well when people do well

The post Top 18 Employer Reviews & Ratings Sites for 2026 first appeared on Ongig Blog.

So if you’re looking to build powerful, converting job postings you’ll really enjoy this list.

Employer Branding Strategies on Job Descriptions vs Company Career Page

A lot of your candidates are coming from job boards like Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn. So, this means they are bypassing your careers landing page and going straight to your job descriptions.

Companies also tend to focus the bulk of their employer branding efforts on their careers page. Thus, little to no EB efforts are carried over to their job descriptions where the conversions are made.

Why Is Using Employer Branding Strategies Important on Job Descriptions?

Employer branding is important on job descriptions because they are the pages where your primary call-to-action is to “apply”.

So, you want to give candidates as much info as possible to make the decision of whether to apply or not.

Look at your job postings as a one-stop shop, where candidates don’t have to leave your pages in search of extra information.

A List Employer Branding Strategies for Job Descriptions:

1. Job Page URL

This one seems simple but often gets lost in the shuffle when integrating with an applicant tracking system.

So, here’s an example of a branded job page URL vs. an ATS-based URL:

So, ideally, you’d want company name and job title to make up the majority of your URL.

Your job page URL should also remain concise when attracting potential candidates. Succinct URLs can also add a sense of professionalism while raising your site’s SEO performance.

2. Job Page Branding

You want your job pages to have a similar aesthetic layout as any other page on your website.

This means keeping a consistent:

• Header
• Footer
• Color Scheme
• Company logos

This helps reinforce your brand in the minds of top talent. So, in the same way that color psychology affects mood at the office, applying the right themes on your page can invoke a strong emotional connection with potential hires.

Research also shows that potential customers make a subconscious judgment within 90 seconds of entering a store, and 62%- 90% of first impressions come from perceiving the color of the interior design. Similarly, a strong employer brand for your job page could leverage color psychology to convey your organizational vibes and values.

3. Mobile Optimization/Responsiveness

In the era of mobile traffic, responsive job pages are a must.

“78% of people in the US would apply to jobs on their mobile devices.” – Indeed 

Here are some insightful articles on mobile optimization problems and resolutions:

• 5 Most Common Reasons Your Job Descriptions Fail on Mobile (w/ fixes!)
• How Google’s New “Mobile-First Indexing” Re-Ranks Your Job Pages

Several simple ways to improve the mobile-friendliness of your career pages, include:

1. Making the call-to-action buttons more prominent (e.g., contrasting color with the rest of your on-site elements) and responsive. These can help boost application rates and prevent candidates from navigating away from your page before responding to your ad.
2. Reducing the quality of the media files embedded on your page. Complex scripts and high-resolution videos/images could reduce your page loading speed when viewed across mobile devices that run on 5G or other non-wi-fi networks. Therefore, it is important to note that page load times between one to five seconds generally lead to a 90% increase in bounce rate (visitors navigating away from your site after viewing a single web page). You could also potentially lose a bulk of potential employees from a non-mobile-friendly configuration.
3. Avoid site plugins and elements that are unsupported on the mobile interface. Ongig’s Career Site Builder lets you conveniently optimize widgets for hiring, such as attracting prospective candidates on their mobile devices.

4. Job Description Text

It’s easy to spend most or all your employer branding time on the visuals (logos, color scheme, pics, video, etc.).

But what about the countless words of text in your job postings?

Employer Brand-wise, there are 2 main areas where your text can boost your EB:

Bias

• Gender bias — Make sure your language is gender-neutral.  Check out Five Stats & Tips on Gender Diversity Recruiting and 5 Things to Look for in a Gender Neutral Writing Tool for some help.
• Unconscious Race Bias — Check out 7 Examples of Unconscious Bias in Job Descriptions (it mentions racial and other bias)
• Ableism Bias — 10 Tips for Recruiting People with Disabilities in Job Descriptions
• Age Bias — 6 Ways to Avoid Age Bias in Your Job Descriptions

Readability

All of the following are proven ways to make your job posting text (and thus Employer Brand) more effective:

• Job Description Length
• Words per Sentence
• Shorter Words
• Write in a Conversational Way

Check out 7 Tips on How to Write the Most “Readable” Job Descriptions for details on each.

Better text = better employer brand.

5. Media

It’s important to include media on your job postings.

Pictures and video boost engagement and time on page which are important metrics.

Great media content above the fold on your job page sets the tone for your job descriptions and catches the candidates’ attention.

“The average web user spends 88% more time on a website that has video.”

Video content remains a top draw among internet users due to its capacity for telling impactful stories in a succinct and visual way. According to marketing expert Zelios Agency, video content can also lead to an 80% increase in conversion on a landing page.

That data should apply to your specialized career landing pages when highlighting your company’s reputation to prospective employees.

6. Company/Workplace Culture Information

There are a couple ways you can get this information into your job descriptions.

1. Media — Pictures and videos highlighting the workplace and articulating company culture
2. Company culture snippet within the job description
3. Embedded text box
4. Recruiting Widgets — Specifically employer ratings and reviews widgets (mentioned below)

“When making a decision on where to apply for a job, 84% of job seekers say the reputation of a company as an employer is important.” –TalentNow

“75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job.” –LinkedIn Talent Solutions

7. Ratings & Reviews (Employer Review Sites)

It’s good to provide employer ratings and reviews on your job postings. Any click you can save the candidate and keep them on your pages is a win.

Most employer ratings and reviews options are in the form of a widget.

For example, here’s a Glassdoor widget that has features company rating, CEO rating, employee reviews and more.

An alternative to Glassdoor is Comparably. Focused on company culture, diversity, gender and salary, Comparably is in the process of creating a recruiting widget for job postings.

8. Benefits

Another employer branding best practice for your job descriptions is including benefits details.

They can also provide that extra push to convert a job seeker into an apply.

And also (you guessed it) saves the candidate extra clicks and research that would take them off of your pages.

“Benefits information about flexible working policies,parental leave, or healthcare is more significant for womenso be sure to include that in your job descriptions as well.” – LinkedIn Gender Report

Here’s a list of 20 awesome employee benefits.

9. Maps/Location Info

Help candidates find out exactly where the job is located. Showing location pinpointed on a map adds more context than just listing city and state.

“Less than 5% of Fortune 500 companies include a map on their JD.” –Source

Add a map and location data to make your job descriptions stand out.

10. Commute Time

We haven’t found a company that provides a widget for commute time. So you’ll most likely need to develop a commute time widget in-house. We also believe creating one is worth the trouble after considering these stats:

• “Commute time was ranked 4th (43%) in top factors employees and job seekers looked for in job ads.” –Source
• “A convenient, easy commute ranked 2nd (47%) in what would make Americans more inclined to submit a job application.” –Source

Here’s an example of a commute time widget from Wendy’s:

For more reasons and ways to implement commute time on your job postings CLICK HERE.

11. Employee Testimonials

If you’re looking to add social proof to your job postings, employee testimonials are a great way. We usually see them on company career pages, but they should also be on every one of your job ads.

“Employees rank as the most trusted influencers when communicating about their company’s engagement and integrity.” –Source

Here’s one way to get a testimonial on your job page (embedding a text box).

Feedback from current employees also enables job seekers to understand the company culture better. The social proof from these contributions supports company reviews from sites like Glassdoor and Indeed.

Need help with ideas on how to embed employee testimonials on your job postings? This is a great article.

12. Employer of Choice Awards as Employer Branding Strategies

Looking for more social proof? If you’ve got them, flaunt them.

An employer of choice graphic can help close the candidate in the first few seconds of viewing a job description.

The process of becoming an employer of choice and earning an award may seem daunting. But it’s usually a matter of registering, survey, and paying some money.

A couple of the most popular award companies are:

• Fortune 100
• Forbes
• Top Employers Institute
• Great Place to Work For
• Glassdoor

Here’s a Comprehensive List of Employer of Choice Awards.

13. Recommended Jobs

Give candidates more than just a one-and-done experience.

A recommended jobs recruiting widget presents jobs similar to the department, location, and also the skills of the job page the candidate is currently on.

So, here’s an example of a recommended jobs widget for a software engineer job:

AI machine learning and employee feedback are effective ways to optimize the recommended jobs section of your career site. These measures also enable your hiring team to discover the trending job search keywords and job terms to maximize your job posting’s visibility and searchability.

You could also integrate site widgets that gather candidate insights from career sites like LinkedIn to review employee experiences, social interactions, market trends, and job seeker preferences.

14. Optimized Social Sharing to Highlight Your Employer Branding Strategies

Make sure your jobs are optimized for sharing on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

So, when we say optimized we mean:

• An engaging thumbnail image or video
• Job Title and location
• 1-2 sentences of well-written copy
• Link to the job page

These elements should automatically be grabbed by simply copying and pasting the job link into your post/status update.

Here’s an example of a non-optimized social share job ad (left) vs. an optimized social share job ad (right).

Branding is ultimately about exposure. The same is true about your employer branding strategies. When publishing your JD, it’s advantageous to leverage an ATS that integrates with a wide selection of job boards. While LinkedIn, Monster, and ZipRecruiter are top job board choices, consider diversifying your talent pool with other community-specific platforms like FairyGodBoss and Coded by Kids.

15. Walk Score

Walk Score is a location-based widget that provides detailed information on a specific location.

3 scores are included on the widget:

• Walk Score: Measures the walkability of any location.
• Transit Score: How well a location is served by public transit.
• Bike Score: How good an area is for biking.

View Walk Score’s methodology.

16. Career Blog Content to Boost Your Employer Branding Strategies

Content is a proven channel for lead generation and can be applied to recruiting.

It’s also a great way to provide valuable content to candidates and increase your chances of converting the apply.

If candidates are interested in your company they want to learn more and a career blog is a perfect way.

Some recommended topics to include in your JD as part of your employer branding strategies are early career advice, day in the life, employee spotlights, and also the recruitment process.

Organizing various blog series with a thematic approach could also prove strategic, which could help position your company as a thought leader and people-first organization.

For instance, you could develop a series that unpacks your company’s core values or employees’ experiences from underrepresented communities. These may include a behind-the-scenes look at employee resource groups (ERGs) and HR collaborations such as community outreach events and initiatives.

Having these blog links available on your JD lends more credibility and transparency to your job postings.

Tenable is an example of a great career blog.

Here are 5 Tips for Creating a Company Career Blog That Recruits For You.

17. Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Your employer value proposition (EVP) shouldn’t just be on your company career page. It’s also a major element in your employer branding strategies. Therefore, like many of the other items we touched on, they should be on every one of your job descriptions.

Often known as one of the most important steps in an employer branding strategy, the EVP should answer questions like:

• Why should the candidate work for your company rather than another?
• What’s in it for the candidate?
• Why is your company a great place to work at?
• What can you offer candidates that other companies can’t?

A couple awesome resources for planning and crafting an EVP:

• What is Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?
• Create a great employee value proposition

Framing a compelling EVP as part of your employer branding strategies can boost employee retention by providing your target audience with the most sought-after career incentives and lifestyle arrangements. Similarly, recent workforce research indicates that 72% of employees in the United States prioritize work-life balance.

In addition, consider personalizing your JD branding strategies for optimized inclusive hiring campaigns according to demographic needs. For instance, 78% of women value work-life balance over other career choices compared to 67% of men.

Ongig’s Text Analyzer software provides comprehensive JD vetting that checks for gender neutrality scores while accounting for critical segments and elements. Therefore, leveraging the platform empowers your team to promote impactful and inclusive EVPs at scale.

18. Diversity Statement

Diversity and Inclusion are most likely at the top of your HR priorities. That means including a diversity statement in your job descriptions is a must. But, I’m not talking about an EEOC filled with legal jargon.

I’m talking about a compelling statement from the heart of your company. So, these thoughtful write-ups should promote employee engagement regardless of a new hire’s background. For instance, your diversity statement could encourage equity in payment and professional development for all qualified hires.

Here are 10 Examples of Awesome Diversity Statements and what makes them awesome.

How to Measure the Success of Your Employer Branding Strategies

Creating a compelling employer brand is just the first step. As such, measuring its success is equally important to ensure you’re on the right track.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your Employer Branding Strategies

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you track how well your employer branding efforts are working. These KPIs include:

1. Employee Satisfaction: How happy are your existing employees with their work environment? So, use surveys to get their feedback.
2. Brand Awareness: How well is your company’s employer brand known in the job market? Monitor mentions of your brand on social media channels and other platforms.
3. Candidate Experience: Are job candidates having a positive experience during the hiring process? Check your application completion rates and feedback from new hires.
4. Quality of Hire: Are you attracting the best talent? Look at the performance and retention rates of new employees.
5. Social Media Engagement: How active is your social media presence? Track likes, shares, and comments on posts related to your corporate culture and company values.

Tools and Metrics for Tracking Employer Branding Strategies

Using the right tools and metrics is the best way to track your employer branding success:

1. Surveys and Feedback Tools: Use tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to gather positive feedback from employees about their work experience and satisfaction.
2. Social Media Analytics: Platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social can help you measure your social media channels’ engagement and reach.
3. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): These systems help you analyze the hiring process, track job candidates, and also monitor the effectiveness of your talent acquisition strategies.
4. Google Analytics: Use this tool to measure traffic on your careers site and see how many visitors are converting into applicants for open positions.

Analyzing Feedback and Making Improvements on Your Employer Branding Strategies

Collecting data is the first step, but analyzing it and making improvements is where you’ll see a positive impact.

• Identify Trends: Look for patterns in the feedback from new talent and former employees. Are there common praises or complaints? So, this will help you understand your corporate brand’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Set Goals and Create an Action Plan: Based on the data, set clear goals for improving your employer brand strategy. As such, you will need to develop an action plan with best practices to enhance the candidate experience and attract the right talent.
• Engage Your Marketing Team: Work with your marketing team to create blog posts and other content that highlight your organization’s reputation and strong brand. So, this will help improve your company’s employer brand visibility.
• Promote Your Unique Culture: Use your company website and social media presence to showcase your unique culture and corporate social responsibility initiatives. This will also attract the ideal candidate who aligns with your company’s values.
• Monitor and Adjust: Regularly check your KPIs and adjust your strategies as needed. Also, continuous improvement will help you maintain a competitive edge in the job market.

So, follow these steps to measure your employer brand’s success and make necessary improvements. This will also help you build a strong company culture, attract the best candidates, and become known as a good employer in the outside world.

Why I Wrote This

Job descriptions are an integral part of your recruiting process.

Ongig provides job page overlays that integrate with your applicant tracking system. Job page overlays allow you to take back control of your job pages.

The post 18 Helpful Employer Branding Strategies for Your Job Descriptions first appeared on Ongig Blog.

But your Glassdoor rating has become a number that affects your hiring.

For instance, Appcast recently confirmed that higher Glassdoor ratings increased apply rates for job ads.

The average Glassdoor employer rating is 3.4 out of 5 (that doesn’t sound very good, does it?). That’s mainly because disgruntled former employees are often the active Glassdoor users giving you a review.

Afterall, it’s free for the disgruntled employee to give this review and it likely makes them feel great for a moment. Your current employees are less likely to be giving you ratings because they’re busy doing great work for you!

But you can change this Catch-22 with the free tips below. Enjoy!

Note: To take advantage of the tips below, you need to first “claim” your free employer profile on Glassdoor. Here’s the “Free Employer Account” page which gives you basic access to Glassdoor’s Employer Center.

1)  Announce Your Business Profile to Boost Your Glassdoor Ratings 

The first step in improving your Glassdoor ratings is to let your employees know you have a Glassdoor profile. 

To gain company-wide support, the CEO should send a personalized email or conduct a town hall meeting to discuss Glassdoor: what it means,  why it is essential, how it will benefit the company, and a brief overview of how to write company reviews and ratings. 

Additionally, ask for online reviews using Glassdoor’s customizable email templates and shareable links, which you can embed in other communication channels like Slack.

2) Read and Respond to Reviews

It sounds obvious, but many of you don’t read and respond to your reviews.

It’s free to respond, and the employer has the last word. This doesn’t cost a penny and shows employees and candidates you’re engaged.

It can be challenging to see complaints on Glassdoor. After all, nobody wants to see and read bad stuff about them. However, that is not enough reason to ignore them. You can offset the bad publicity by acknowledging it. Apologize if you must, and issue a positive and personalized public response.

Responding to all reviews is an excellent way to show that your company is willing to listen to what people say and that you are committed to improving things for current and future employees. When staff and applicants see that Glassdoor reviews are taken seriously, they are encouraged to provide honest feedback, thus increasing your reviews.

3) To Boost Your Glassdoor Ratings, Ask Current Employees for Reviews

Make it a regular practice to invite candidates & employees to “tell us how we’re doing”. You’re more likely to counter those negative reviews by doing this.

I recommend you ask employees for reviews in at least these 2 ways:

1. On a regular basis (so they trickle in regularly)
2. After milestone type events (e.g. after an annual company meeting or other rah-rah events).

Most importantly, talking to satisfied employees about your company culture is critical. These individuals are: 

• Tenured employees – these people who have been around your company for the longest time. There must be a particular reason for them to stick around: the excellent benefits/work perks,  the incredible company culture, and why they won’t move to other employers. 
• Employees recently promoted – they are more likely to talk about things they like about the company, what they appreciate about it, how the company promotes a healthy workplace environment, how unique your company is compared to others, and how the company recognizes their hard work.
• Employees who received good performance reviews/ratings – if they received a bonus or salary increase after performance appraisal for a job well done, they are more likely to praise the company for recognizing and rewarding good performance.
• Managers – supervisors are your allies in rallying their teams to get Glassdoor reviews. When recruiting for new roles, managers can request reviews so potential candidates have information about what’s going on with the role and company daily. Set up a reminder every six months to one year to nudge managers to talk to their team members for updated feedback. 
• Members of ERGs (employee resource groups) – if your organization prides itself on having a strong DEI presence, requesting Glassdoor reviews from these individuals will result in a strong employer brand and attract more diverse candidates

Have a process in place for asking these people for reviews. Schedule them in batches, so you have enough reviews evenly spread out during different times of the year.

4) Ask Freelancers and Interns for Review

Many employers forget to invite freelancers/contractors and interns for reviews. They can be an untapped resource for additional higher-rated reviews. You just have to ask them.

Another reason that freelancer/contractor/intern reviews might be a high score is that their limited time with you reduces the chances that they had that “nightmare” episode with your business.

5) Send Candidates the “Write Review” Link to Boost Your Glassdoor Ratings

Keep in mind that candidates can also rate you on Glassdoor. And this is another great way to boost your Glassdoor ratings.

One free tip: when you or your team is thanking your candidate for interviewing with you, include this link: https://www.glassdoor.com/mz-survey/interview/collectQuestions_input.htm in your email.

It will lead the candidate to a page like below where they can rate you. There are two healthy psychology plays here:

• Candidates are more likely to give you a higher rating if you have just thanked them (Law of Reciprocity)
• Candidates are more likely to give you a higher rating if they think you’re watching them (Observation Effect).

Again, this is free for you to do. You don’t have to pay Glassdoor anything. It’s just good business practice.

6) Share “Company Updates”

It’s free to publish updates on Glassdoor. Those updates go to all of your followers, and people frequenting your jobs on Glassdoor.

Warning on spammy solutions to boost your Glassdoor ratings: There are now a bunch of what people are calling “guaranteed rate Glassdoor” websites out there. These are services that claim to get you higher ratings and better reviews on Glassdoor.  Most are spammy and will end up hurting more than helping you in the long run. Be authentic!

7) Capitalize on Important Events

Every company has key events that excite and energize employees. Thus, putting them in a good mood to write positive reviews that will boost your Glassdoor ratings. 

Here are scenarios where you are most likely to receive 5-star reviews: 

• Newly hired staff – are excited to start their new job and more inclined to write positive reviews. Ask about their experience while applying for the company.
• Six months after hiring – by this time, new hires have had enough time to feel your culture and can give feedback to job seekers.
• After employee engagement surveys – do you have employees who have written good feedback in your recent surveys and would be glad to recommend your workplace to their friends and colleagues?  Ask these employees to share their input on Glassdoor. 
• Work anniversaries – are emotional times when employees remember how they started with the company, their struggles, and the good times they spent with fellow workers. This event is worth celebrating, so why not ask them to share these moments with a review that will boost your Glassdoor ratings? 
• Exit interviews – if the person enjoyed their stay with your organization, you could ask them to document their journey on Glassdoor. 

Create an employee review system customized for each event to ensure a steady stream of reviews on a regular. Gather employee information and send them prompts requesting a Glassdoor review when they experience these special events. 

8) Share Glassdoor Ratings

Share the progress of your Glassdoor ratings with all employees regularly. Being transparent shows that you value your employees’ thoughts and feelings. It also makes the whole process a shared experience and responsibility between employees and employers. 

When presenting the employees’ Glassdoor ratings, highlight the positive reviews, showing the areas where the company is doing well. Don’t leave out negative Glassdoor reviews, no matter how uncomfortable they may be. Acknowledging your shortcomings means you care for your employees and are open to improving things. 

Sharing Glassdoor results and discussing your action plan will motivate more employees to post reviews. They know their sentiments will be listened to and acted upon.

The Impact of Employee Reviews on Employer Branding

Employee reviews on Glassdoor can have a huge impact on how people see your company. These reviews shape the overall perception of your company. And they also play a key role in employer branding. So, it’s vital to take the necessary steps to boost your Glassdoor ratings.

Why Employee Reviews Matter

Employee reviews are like a window into the daily life at your company. They give prospective employees a look at your workplace culture, work-life balance, and leadership team. So, when potential employees read positive Glassdoor ratings, they see your company in a positive light and are more likely to apply for a job offer.

On the other hand, negative reviews can hurt your company’s reputation. Thus, if unhappy employees leave bad reviews, it can make top talent think twice about joining your team. So, that’s why HR teams and PR teams must monitor and manage these reviews carefully.

The Power of Honest Feedback

Honest reviews, both positive and negative, provide valuable employee feedback. When employees share their experiences, it helps HR professionals understand what’s working and what needs improvement. Therefore, encouraging employees to share honest reviews can help create a better place to work.

Negative feedback can also be a good thing. It highlights areas that need attention and can guide you to make changes that improve the overall employee experience. So, addressing negative experiences shows that you care about your employees and are committed to making your workplace better. Doing this can also encourage people to update their negative reviews which can boost your Glassdoor ratings.

Building a Positive Company Profile

A high Glassdoor rating can boost your company profile and attract more candidates. Glassdoor’s best places to work often have higher customer satisfaction scores and are seen as great places to work. So, this not only attracts more candidates. But, it also attracts top candidates who are looking for a positive work environment and a strong leadership team.

Using Reviews to Your Advantage

Using employee reviews as part of your Glassdoor strategy is a best practice for improving your employer brand. So, be sure to highlight positive experiences on social media platforms and your company page. This can improve your overall rating and increase the number of reviews you receive.

It’s also important to respond to reviews. So, thank employees for positive feedback and address negative feedback constructively. This shows prospective employees that you value employee sentiment. It also shows that you are committed to making your company a great place to work.

Why I wrote this:

I hope the above tips help. They are all available with a free Glassdoor employer account.

Note: Our business Ongig believes so strongly in the effect of Glassdoor ratings that our content management system now lets employers add a Glassdoor widget (with rating, salary and CEO approval) to every job description. Candidates appreciate you being this transparent! And if you don’t have a Glassdoor rating you’re proud of then we give you an option to let your employees give their own testimonials directly to you!

The post How to Boost Your Glassdoor Ratings: 8 Free Ways first appeared on Ongig Blog.

These are the same strategies our top clients use to get (and stay) in the minds of job seekers.

Let’s get to it!

1. Email Marketing
2. Content Marketing
3. Job Boards
4. Company Job Pages
5. Employer Review Sites
6. Google Adwords (Search Network)
7. Google Analytics
8. Social Media Advertising
9. Recruiting Microsites

1. Email Marketing

Email is still king.

It’s one of the most effective and direct ways to reach your talent pipeline.

But first, do you need a talent pipeline/email list?

In 2017 we wrote a blog post on how to build a killer talent community.

In that blog post, we suggest adding an email opt-in on every job description.

It’s a quick way to build your talent pipeline and easy to implement. Also, now you can use a DMARC report analyzer to secure your domain authority and reputation.

Some companies take it a step further.

They make candidates fill out a talent network form before getting to the online job application. Like this:

They make the application like a gated piece of content. Which is smart.

That means they’re converting 100% of applicants into talent network subscribers.

2. Content Marketing

When it comes to lead generation, content marketing is one of the best approaches.

Incorporating content into your talent strategy isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when and how.

When? Now.

How? Start a company career blog.

It’s a great way to create and market your employer brand to the masses.

One of our favorites is McKinsey’s company career blog:

The bulk of their content is focused on employees. Perfect!

This is who candidates and job seekers want to hear from.

A while back I published a post highlighting the top tips for creating a company career blog.

I could have written about the technical aspects like setting up a career blog and what hosting to use.

Instead, I focus on conceptual aspects like:

• Topics to write on
• Headlines to use
• Strategies to use

Creating content should be at the top of your list if you’re looking for cost-effective ways to market your employer brand.

3. Job Boards

Job postings are a part of your employer brand because they affect how candidates view your company. Job boards or job aggregators drive a significant amount of traffic to your company career site.

I recently looked at traffic numbers for a Fortune 500 client from 1/1/2019 to 6/1/2019.

Out of 412,704 total sessions from all channels, job boards made up 21% of those sessions!

So, it’d be smart to optimize your company content on them.

What content can you control on job boards? Your job postings, specifically your job descriptions.

Here are some things to optimize within your job descriptions with supporting blog posts:

• Job Title — 5 Things to Avoid in Your Job Titles
• Gender-neutral language — 5 Things to Look for in a Gender Neutral Writing Tool
• Readability — 7 Tips on How to Write the Most “Readable” Job Descriptions
• 7 Examples of Well Written Job Descriptions [With Tips!]

4. Company Job Pages

Job pages are some of the highest traffic pages on company career sites.

It’s where candidates go to apply online.

In addition, a huge chunk of traffic coming from job boards (mentioned in #3) is bypassing your career page and going straight to your job pages.

When candidates apply to job postings on a job board, they’re usually sent to the matching job page on the company career site.

It’s important to make sure your employer brand is articulated on these pages.

I recently published the Ultimate List of Employer Branding Strategies for Job Pages:

It’s jam-packed with strategies, tips, and examples.

Here are some of the best ways to market your employer brand on job descriptions:

Benefits

Attractive benefits and perks can set you apart from competitors. To attract prospective employees, showcase your benefits package prominently on your career site and in job listings. 

Flexibility is a highly valued employee benefit because it indicates work-life balance.  If you offer flexibility, promote them through remote work options, flexible hours, and hybrid work models.

Employee Content (Videos, Testimonials, Reviews)

Posting employee testimonials and stories is another effective way to boost your employer’s brand. These stories showcase real employee experience, building trust and credibility with potential hires. When current employees share stories of personal growth, teamwork, or handling meaningful projects, it resonates with potential candidates and makes for a compelling employer brand. Use social media, blog posts, and videos to highlight daily life, team activities, and company events.

Appeal to the target audience by publishing stories from various employees across different departments, backgrounds, and experience levels. Doing this shows your commitment to inclusivity and demonstrates opportunities for advancement within your organization.

Employer Review Site Widgets (Comparably, Glassdoor)

If you haven’t done it yet, claim your company profile on these platforms. Customize your basic information and add your company logo and branding.

Promote a positive employer brand by encouraging satisfied employees to leave good reviews. Use internal communication channels or employee feedback surveys to nudge them to leave their feedback.  Don’t forget to respond to reviews. Thank positive reviewers and acknowledge negative ones. Briefly explain what you’re doing to address any issues raised.

Engaging Media

Use different content formats to keep everyone job seekers – blog posts, video testimonials, social media posts, or podcasts. Make sure their stories align with your employer brand strategy. 

Company Values

Aligning values can be a significant deciding factor for qualified candidates. Clearly articulate your company’s mission, vision, and values on your career page and in job descriptions.

Career Development Opportunities

Ideal candidates are attracted to companies that invest in their growth. Highlighting your training programs, mentorship opportunities, and career progression paths indicates a strong employer brand. 

Awards and Recognitions

Recognition and awards can enhance your company’s reputation. Apply for employer branding awards. Showcase any accolades on your social media channels, and mention them in your open roles. 

5. Employer Review Sites

Employer review sites like Glassdoor are a key reference point for job seekers.

In fact, 83% of job seekers are likely to research company reviews and ratings when deciding on where to apply for a job.

This means it’s crucial to manage your employer brand on these sites.

Which sites should you focus on?

The top 5 sites for employer reviews are:

• Glassdoor
• Great Place to Work
• Indeed
• Comparably
• Careerbliss

Looking for tips on managing your employer brand on these review sites?

Recruiterbox has 4 great ones (focused on Glassdoor but can be applied to other job boards):

6. Google Adwords (Search Network)

Some think the main purpose of investing in Google Adwords is to drive traffic and clicks.

While that’s true, there are also some underlying benefits.

A while back Google did a study on search ads and brand awareness.

And as it turns out, the results found brand awareness as a notable benefit of Google Adwords.

Even if your ads don’t get clicked, the visibility of your brand name in relation to target keywords drive influence.

The ability to drive traffic, clicks and brand awareness makes Google Adwords a top way to market your employer brand.

Pro Tip

Don’t try to compete with the Indeeds and Glassdoors for broad keywords like “engineering jobs”.

Target longer tail and location-specific “jobs” keywords like:

• States — engineering jobs in California
• Cities — engineering jobs in San Francisco
• Parts of cities/neighborhoods — engineering jobs in the financial district

In terms of SEO, the more granular (or long-tail) your keywords are, the better chance you have at ranking for them.

7. Google Analytics

There might not be a way to market your employer brand through Google Analytics.

But the data it provides gives data-backed ways to market your employer brand.

• What channels generate the most traffic?
• What channels generate the most applies?
• Which job pages do candidates view the most?
• Which job pages get applied to the most?

Google Analytics can answer these questions and many more…for free!

Here are a couple ideas for utilizing GA data:

• Find job pages with the most pageviews, applies, apply rate, etc. Analyze them.
  • Why are they performing so well?
    • Is it involved in a social media ad campaign?
    • Is the job title driving clicks?
    • Where is the traffic coming from?
    • Is there media on the page? Images, video, recruiting widgets?
  • Replicate what makes your top job pages so successful and add those elements to other pages.

• Find channels that generate the most traffic. Promote on those channels.
  • Is your best social channel source Facebook?
    • Promote employer branding content there
    • Run some social media ads
  • Test some new employer branding campaigns.

8. Social Media Advertising

It’s no secret that recruiting on social media is very effective.

It’s where your candidates are hanging out.

Source

That said, strategies like post and pray don’t cut it anymore.

You need a more targeted, efficient approach.

Find out which social media platforms your candidates are on, create content, and promote it.

It’s a cost-effective way to get in front of your ideal candidates.

Facebook is a great place to start.

It’s the largest social network and their targeting options are 2nd to none.

Create a Facebook career page if you haven’t already and explore the advertising options.

Here are some tips for a Facebook career page and top Facebook career page examples.

Already have a Facebook career page?

Here’s one of my favorite articles on How to Use Facebook Ads to Recruit Top Talent.

In that article they cover a complete range of topics:

• Creating a Facebook recruiting ad
• Setting up targeting
• Facebook recruiting ad results
• ROI of Facebook recruiting ads

You don’t need to invest too much.

Run some test campaigns and learn what works for you and your audience.

Invest more once you find value-driven ways that yield the best results.

9. Recruiting Microsites

Landing pages with targeted content and a set of jobs for any initiative, program, department, location or job type.

The benefit of these is having a page solely dedicated to a specific initiative, program, etc.

That means all of the content and jobs on that page are tailored to a specific group of candidates.

They’re also great as landing pages for paid campaigns (i.e. social media, search).

Some great ideas for recruiting microsites include:

• Initiatives — Women in Tech, Diversity & Inclusion, Millennials
• Programs — Internships, Students
• Departments — Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Work From Home
• Location — Cities, States

Here’s an example of a work from home recruiting microsite:

Notice Teletech’s microsite is like a mini-career page for remote jobs. It features:

• Employee Testimonials
• Nice work from home-based images (like the house slippers pic)
• Employer of choice awards for remote jobs
• Work from home job listings

Looking for some numbers? Here’s how the American Heart Association increased its diversity application-to-hire conversion rate by 400 percent.

Recruiting microsites are easy to create and cost-effective.

The majority of the effort goes into creating the content.

You want it to be optimized for both user experience and SEO.

So invest time into researching things like keywords to target, SEO best practices, and search intent are critical.

10. Use Data and Analytics

Tracking your application conversion, employee retention, employee engagement, and employee satisfaction rates can give you the necessary insights to know what’s working and where to improve. 

Here’s how tracking data can help you understand your whole recruiting process: 

• When you analyze past hires, applications, and industry trends, you get an idea of your ideal candidate’s skills, experience, and demographics, allowing you to tailor your messaging and target specific talent pools.
• Reviewing your employee surveys can help you create employee stories and company culture content that resonates with potential employees with the same values.
• Monitoring website traffic sources, application numbers, and hire quality to determine which employer branding tactics are most effective. You can use this data to refine your strategy and optimize resource allocation.

Here are some critical key performance indicators to track on your career site: 

• Visits – total number of people who visit your career site.
• Source of Visitors – help you identify the number of visitors from search engines, social media, or job boards so you know which marketing channels drive traffic.
• Page Views – total number of pages viewed by visitors.
• Visit Duration – average time visitors spend on your career site.
• Bounce Rate – the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing a single page. A high bounce rate might indicate a confusing career site or a lack of relevant information. 
• Return Visits – the number of visitors returning to your career site, indicating a positive user experience.
• Applications- total number of job applications submitted.
• Applicant Conversion Rate – the percentage of visitors who became job applicants 
• Application Form Drop-Off Rate: the percentage of visitors that didn’t complete their application form, revealing application process issues.

Other Important Ways to Market Your Employer Brand?

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Which marketing strategies from today’s post are you going to try?

Or maybe I didn’t mention one of your favorite strategy for marketing your employer brand.

Either way, let me know by dropping a comment below right now.

Why I wrote this?

Ongig’s job description software helps transform your employer brand through pictures, videos, recruiting widgets and optimized, non-biased text. Ping us if you’d like to hear more.

The post 10 Winning Employer Brand Marketing Strategies first appeared on Ongig Blog.

The Employer Branding Podcast

Join Jorgen Sundberg for this employer branding podcast filled with practical tips for talent attraction and branding strategies. The bitesize podcasts follow a Q&A format and are remixed into articles on the Link Human blog and Undercover Recruiter.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Employer Branding: The Inside Podcast

Another bite-sized employer branding podcast, hosted by CEO Georgiana Ghiciuc. You’ll find Q&As on all things related to employer branding, from specialists and thought leaders.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

The Employer Branding Geeks

Universum has over 35 years of experience in the employer branding field, making this one of the most knowledgeable employer branding podcasts available to listen to right now!

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

The Employer Brand Shop Talk Podcast

In this employer branding podcast, host Kaitlyn Holbein helps to take large-scale employer branding projects and break them down into actionable pieces.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Building a Modern Employer Brand

Susanna Rantanen is Finland’s best-known employer branding expert. In these weekly podcasts, you’ll find modern strategies for growing and scaling business through talent acquisition.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Kick-Arse Employer Brands – The Podcast

Hosts Carly Murray and Simon Andrew are joined by industry experts in this employer branding podcast, bringing you tips and stories to help build your employer brand.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Employer Branding Show-and-Tell

Recordings from a 9-part live webinar series, hosted by Nate Guggia, discussing problems experienced in employer branding and how they were overcome – a real-life ‘how to’ employer branding podcast.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Employer Bland

This employer branding podcast, hosted by Voyse co-founder Chris Murdoch, tackles everything you can think of from the employer branding industry, helping listeners to create a thriving company culture.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Memos The #1 Employer Branding Podcast

The news and current affairs viewed through an employer branding lens, by employer branding experts, Daggerfinn.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Talk Talent to Me

Host, Rob Stevenson, talks to recruitment leaders about strategies, trends, metrics, and techniques in this fast-paced employer branding podcast from Hired.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

The Talent Cast

Host James Ellis (aka “Employer Brand Nerd”) talks about how to re-invent employer branding, recruiting and hiring from the ground up in this podcast. And helps you “get serious about what works, so that you can punch above your weight in the war for talent.”

Listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Check out our other recruiting podcast lists for more top tips from the best!

Why I wrote this…

Ongig wants to help you find top talent. Our blogs cover HR topics from every angle, and our job description software helps you create more inclusive and less boring JDs.

The post 10+ Top Employer Branding Podcasts first appeared on Ongig Blog.

“95% of candidates identify a company’s reputation as a key consideration when exploring new career opportunities”

(source: KRG)

Here are 5 employer branding solutions to set you up for success. Plus 4 successful EB examples for inspiration.

Let’s get started.

1. Ongig – For Effective and Inclusive Job Descriptions

Ongig is one of the must-have employer branding solutions. The software helps you create job descriptions that are engaging, accurate, and unbiased. And it automates your JD writing workflow to save time.

Key features:

• Cloud-based repository of approved job descriptions with user permissions for security
• Scoring dashboard. Each JD gets a real-time gender neutrality score, readability score, & title score 
• Exclusionary language checker. Each JD is scanned for bias outside of gender (e.g., race, age, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, mental health, and more).
• Job title suggestions based on what candidates search for on Google each month 
• Readability algorithm flags complex words, extra-long sentences, and long lists of requirements
• AI Section Finder flags missing JD sections and gives tips on adding important details (e.g., Salary, Benefits, About Us, Flex Work, or a D&I Statement) 
• Template builder to create and approve consistent JDs (for speed and scale) 

Pricing starts at $11,900 per year. Request a demo to learn more and get a personalized estimate based on your company’s needs. 

2. Canva – For Engaging Visuals

Canva is a graphic design platform that helps you create attractive visuals, from logos and brand guidelines to EB content for social media. 

Key features:

• Massive visual library. Use free and premium icons, images, and templates. 
• Real-time collaboration. Invite your colleagues to edit projects, leave feedback, and organize the employment brand visuals. 
• Multiple sharing options. Present your work directly on the platform or download it in various formats like PNG, PDF, and MP4. These solutions are excellent for creating employer branding videos, photos, and documents. 

You can use this tool for free with limited features or purchase the premium version to unlock more functionality and exclusive resources. Paid plans start at $12.99/month. 

3. Sociabble – For Employee Advocacy 

Sociabble is an employee advocacy tool trusted by big brands like Microsoft and Coca-Cola. It helps you engage employees and strengthen your employer brand. 

Key features:

• Social media aggregator. Manage your brand’s social media channels, assets, and RSS feeds, which employees can share directly with their networks. 
• Content curator. Expand your content library by including user-generated content from employees and social listening tools.
• Gamification. Reward your organization’s advocates with points and badges for submitting employee stories and promoting the company on their platforms. Also, use challenges, polls, and quizzes to increase engagement. 

Using this employer branding tool varies depending on your chosen features, but it generally costs $4/month per employee.

4. Awario – For Brand Monitoring

Awario is a social listening tool analyzing brand mentions across platforms (from social networks to blogs and online forums). Awario is an excellent way for you to understand how people perceive your brand.

Key features:

• Filtering options. Enter relevant keywords and exclude specific terms to speed up the monitoring process.   
• Non-stop monitoring. This tool can display real-time conversations about your business in 59 languages based on the target audience’s locations. 
• Powerful analytics. Track the number of mentions, general sentiment, and top influencers talking about your brand. The tool also lets you turn this data into a downloadable report in PDF or HTML formats. 

Awario offers different packages starting at $24/month with a 7-day free trial. 

5. Built In – For Employer Brand Visibility & Reputation Insights

Built In is an employer branding and recruitment marketing platform that helps companies measure and improve how they are perceived in search AI answer engines throughout every point of the candidate hiring journey. It combines branded employer profiles and content, job distribution, proprietary analytics and actionable AI-optimization insights to strengthen visibility and reputation across the hiring journey.

Key features:

Employer Brand Reputation (EBR) Score: Clear benchmarking of your employer reputation across leading AI models, pinpointing the core categories — like leadership, culture and work-life balance, among others — that need improvement.

Reputation Content: High-impact, AI-optimized employer branding content options built to amplify your strengths and counter weaknesses — available self-service or fully managed.Competitive Intelligence: Fast insight into how you stack up against talent competitors in AI outputs, showing exactly where you win and where you fall behind.

5 Great Employer Branding Examples (with takeaways)

Now that we’ve reviewed 5 employer branding solutions, here are some successful co.s who’ve built solid EBs (for even more inspiration).

Salesforce

To attract the right employees, Salesforce has strong company values listed on its website – Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, and Sustainability. 

Their company culture also offers flexibility and practical benefits for post-pandemic working trends, like work-from-home expense reimbursement and personal wellbeing programs.

Great values and positive work culture are among the reasons why Salesforce has been listed as one of the best companies to work for by Fortune for many years.

Key takeaway: define your company values and culture to kick-start a great employer branding strategy.

Patagonia

Another great example of employer branding comes from Patagonia. They hire employees who enjoy outdoor activities and provide work-life balance programs that reflect the company ethos, like Bike to Work Week and a Composting Program. 

A strong employee value proposition and alignment with peoples’ values increase employee engagement and retention rates. Patagonia’s employee turnover rate is only 4%.

Key takeaway: align your employer branding strategy with your corporate and employees’ values.

Spotify

Another company to take inspiration from is Spotify. Their career page shares essential information, including:

• The company’s mission, values, and culture
• Available job opportunities
• Office locations
• Employee benefits 
• FAQs 

Spotify also shares business statistics, employee demographic information, and worker-generated content to promote its inclusive workplace culture. This is great for recruitment marketing and employer branding. 

Key takeaway: create an informative and appealing career page to captivate the best talent.

Note: Since a business’ website is a critical touchpoint to attract job seekers, investing in the best web hosting is crucial. A reliable web hosting service will deliver better site performance and response times, helping you to build a good reputation and a solid first impression with potential candidates. 

Netflix

Netflix has outstanding employer branding campaigns across social media channels, like Instagram and YouTube. They invite existing employees to be brand advocates by featuring them in audio, photo, and video content.

Netflix often spotlights specific groups (like parents or members of the LGBTQ+ community) and shares how they value their employees’ contributions. 

Key takeaway: integrate creative content styles with real people to communicate your employer branding messages. 

What is Employer Branding?

Employer branding is the process of managing and influencing your reputation as an employer in the marketplace. This includes job seekers, employees, and stakeholders. In simple terms, it’s how people inside and outside your company portray you. Having a good reputation will position you as an employer of choice.

Benefits of Employer Branding

Many companies are taking steps towards creating strategies that increase their employer branding efforts. Here are some benefits of employer branding:

• Strong company culture: This will create an overall positive experience for your employees to enjoy working for your company strengthening employee retention and employee satisfaction.
• Employee Referrals: If the employee feels that working for you is beneficial, it will be easier for you to attract other top talents through their referrals.
• Talent Acquisition: Attract top talent faster and easier by saving money on recruitment processes.
• Retain Top Talent: Happy employees will stay longer and feel grateful for the opportunity. This will increase their motivation and success as well as save on employee turnover.
• Positive Brand Perception: Others will think positively about your company because your employees will reflect that online and in person. 
• Attract Modern Talent: Social Media is one of the biggest platforms to use for employer branding. Most candidates between 18-34 will seek you online so if your company is recruiting Gen Z talent, this is the best strategy for you.

This is a guest post by Eliza Medley, an experienced writer, and psychologist. She is actively interested in management, new technologies, and writing motivational articles. 

Why I wrote this:

Ongig’s mission is to create effective and inclusive job descriptions. And employer branding tools help improve your chances of attracting top talent, starting with your JDs. Request a demo to learn more.

Shout-outs:

1. Recruitment trends for 2022! (by Rosie Waghorn)
2. Amplify Employee Advocacy With Smarp, Sociabble, SOCXO (by ClearVoice)
3. The NLI Interview: Patagonia’s Dean Carter on How To Treat Employees Like People (by David Rock)

The post 5 Examples of Employer Branding Solutions first appeared on Ongig Blog.

But first, here’s a quick definition of employer branding.

What is employer branding?

Employer branding (EB) is your reputation with your current employees (and the general public), especially job seekers.

Your employer branding affects how your company is perceived. Data shows companies with a reputation for being caring, with a solid culture of diversity and inclusion:

• are more likely to be seen as a great place to work (by job seekers)
• keep current employees from looking for another place to work

A company’s reputation matters more than ever. In fact, 86% of workers would not apply for, or continue to work for, a company that has a bad reputation with former employees or the general public.

(source: Everything You Need to Know About Employer Branding by Caroline Forsey)

Note: Check out our blog for more tips and tools to build your employer brand.

Why employee benefits are important for your employer brand

The types of benefits you offer affect your employer branding (think caring and inclusive). How you’re perceived by new talent and employee retention make benefits hugely important.

Your benefits package is a marketable tool to help build a solid EB. When considering how your employee benefits affect employer branding, remember these 3 main points of focus:

• Reputation — Your employee benefits should boost your reputation as a company that cares about its employees and extends this care to a diverse range of people.
• Job Security — Your employee benefits should help employees feel secure in their jobs.
• Culture — Your employee benefits should be inclusive in nature so employees (and candidates) recognize your focus on culture.

Below are some examples of benefits to boost your employer branding.

Employee Benefits to boost your reputation

Whether you are an SMM specialist or a digital coach, your reputation is led by what people are saying about you. Today, it’s easy for people to make quick judgments about you from social media or a Google search. So, you want your employees, customers, and candidates to say positive things.

There are lots of ways to achieve this, but when it comes to employee benefits, it’s a good idea to focus on:

Being Transparent

Be open about your benefits in your JDs and career pages.

Each benefit you include in a job ad increases the apply rate by 1% to 5%. The benefits with the most positive impact on apply rate are: Regular Incremental Bonus (+155.1%); Pet Insurance (+37%); Health Insurance (+29.8%); Stock Options/Employee Stock Purchase Plan (+27.5%); and 401(k) (+20.5%).

(source: Job Ad Content: How Benefits Impact Candidate Attraction by Appcast)

And, if you add a new benefit, post it to your social media and ask employee advocates to do the same.

Covering your bases

Different people have different ideas of what “good benefits” are. So, to show that you care about a diverse range of people, consider benefits that fall into a number of categories

• health and wellness (gym memberships, health insurance)
• financial (reimbursements for travel and tuition, bonuses)
• retirement (401K matching)
• paid time off (for vacation or volunteering)
• flex-time or flex-work (hybrid office/home options)

Staying up to date

Be willing to add to your benefits as current events bring new challenges for your employees. But, be cautious of removing benefits.

So, here’s an example of how staying up to date (and being willing to add to your benefits) boosts your EB reputation:

The Supreme Court ruling on June 24th on abortion access has stirred strong emotions. With this in mind, many companies have opted to include abortion access benefits, mostly by covering travel expenses for abortion. You can also read more about companies that have added abortion access benefits here.

And, another good example is maintaining remote work or hybrid work options post-COVID-19:

“32% of working professionals would consider relocating with a paycut, if given the opportunity to WFH as much as they would like.”

(source: The Permanent Relocation: Paycut Edition by Team Blind)

Employee Benefits to boost job security

Your EB is affected by how secure your employees feel in their job, and also how much they complain about any insecurity they feel!

In the past, and now more than ever (due to the increased cost of living), job security is high on employees’ and potential candidates’ lists of importance. Consider these benefits to boost job security:

• Healthcare plans
• Parental leave or return to work pay
• Financial assistance for things like travel or caring for aging parents
• Wellness benefits to help with stress and mental health

Ernst and Young (EY) offers a comprehensive wellness benefits package to help employees stay emotionally healthy and provide support through challenging life experiences (like divorce):

“EY’s “Better You” program is designed to support the physical, financial, social, and emotional needs of its employees by offering them free resources to help them “find balance so that they can fully engage at the office and in life.” To address employees’ mental health, EY’s program offers up to 25 counseling sessions for employees and their family members, mindfulness training, and mediation sessions. Plus, EY also covers the cost of online support tools to help employees better manage stress, and training for employees to recognize if someone in their network is struggling.”

(source: 15 Companies That Prioritize the Mental Health of Their Employees by RIPPLEMATCH TEAM)

Benefits showcase your culture

Companies with a defined culture help employees feel included and part of a community.

When you have a clear work culture, it boosts the confidence of potential talent. You want to make them feel like they’ll fit in. This also applies to making current employees want to stay as part of the team.

So, how do you make it clear from an employer branding perspective?

Employee benefits support your work culture when they relate to your mission, morals, and ethics. These benefits often take the form of optional extras like team-building exercises and community opportunities. But they might also fall under more standard benefits.

Here’s an example based on financial benefits from Patagonia:

Patagonia has long stood for enjoying nature and protecting the environment. Its EB is a natural extension of that, promising an “unusual blend of work, play, family and environmentalism.”

They deliver on that promise through:

• paid environmental internships
• time off for civil disobedience training
• reimbursements for commuting to work in a way other than driving
• flex-time policy

Why I wrote this:

Ongig is on a mission to support HR professionals in creating unbiased, inclusive, and healthy work environments for employees, and great employer branding is an important element of this. Connect with us friends@ongig.com

Thanks to my sources:

1. How to Strengthen Your Reputation as an Employer by Sarah Jensen Clayton
2. 15 Companies That Prioritize the Mental Health of Their Employees by RIPPLEMATCH TEAM

The post Why Employee Benefits are Important for Employer Branding first appeared on Ongig Blog.

Businesses are now struggling to find (and retain) talent. While many factors in the “new normal” influence employee acquisition and retention rates, building a powerful employer brand will make your business immune to socio-economic fluctuations.

Here are 3 tips for employer branding for the “new normal” that will allow you to attract top talent…and retain your best employees.

1. Leads should focus on people and not data

The needs of the modern workforce are constantly changing, even more so in the post-pandemic world. Business leaders need to prioritize the health and wellbeing of their employees, plus their personal and professional needs.

Whether they’re still working remotely or back in the office, leaders should focus on people and not data to make smarter decisions for their teams. It’s important to have regular meetings with your employees to assess their level of happiness in the virtual workplace and address their concerns. 

According to Kouzes and Posner’s leadership model, you can inspire and empower your employees by:

• Delegating power to trusted employees
• Acknowledging the individual’s contribution
• Focusing on their feedback to find the key pain points they’re experiencing
• Fostering collaboration in remote teams
• Inspiring a shared vision in your collective
• Leading by example and achieving small, daily progress

2. Relieve your team’s “work-from-home fatigue”

Working from home has been great for many. But it has also been a challenge for companies to adapt to the remote work model. In the “new normal,” we can expect remote work to prevail. But to attract and retain the best employees, you need to optimize remote work in your business.

It should go without saying that employees are now experiencing work-from-home fatigue. So, employers need to focus on:

• Better time management and goal-setting. Following the examples of extremely successful business owners like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, it’s important for your day to be planned out to the minute to ensure positive outcomes.
• Employee appreciation. A great examples of employee appreciation comes from Apple, when the company surprised their employees with extended time off over Thanksgiving.
• Transparent and open remote communication. 3M is a good example of a company that focuses on removing communication roadblocks to ensure productivity and zeal, but they also focus on transparency with one-one-one employee interviews.
• Virtual downtime and team building. Hotjar is a great example how virtual team-building can be fun and relaxing – hosting 15-minute coffee sessions and Wednesday bonfires for the collective to build meaningful relationships.
• Enabling individual contributors for success. Acknowledghe the individual and their work, and delegate power to them. This will free up your time and allow them to optimize their work and the work of their colleagues.

3. Use training and mentorship to retain talent

Another one of the most important tips for employer branding is investing in employee training and growth. You need to invest in your employees’ professional development and reduce training costs without sacrificing quality or failing to address the unique needs of your employees.

To achieve this, you can:

• Develop internal training programs without paying for external consultants
• Create a mentorship program to groom employees for higher positions
• Gather feedback from employees on their professional goals to optimize your programs
• Create an effective training process that you can repeat without incurring more costs
• Use virtual training to cut the need for a dedicated space, commuting, or professional equipment and create a job aid for your employees to help them implement their tasks more efficiently

By focusing on virtual training and workshops, you can keep your expenses low and deliver a great training experience. Investing in employee professional growth helps build a positive employer brand image and will bring value to your company.

The more you invest in your employees, the more they’ll invest in growing your business.

Employer branding is the key to effective employee acquisition (and retention) in the post-pandemic world. By focusing on these best practices, you can optimize your employer brand to attract the top candidates and ensure the growth and happiness of your employees.

Why I Wrote This?

Ongig’s mission is to help you attract top, diverse talent. This starts with creating effective and inclusive JDs to build your employer brand. Please request a demo for a free analysis of your job descriptions.

Shout-Outs:

1. Feature Photo by Patrik Michalicka on Unsplash
2. Work from Home Fatigue – Why Zoom is Exhausting (by Brett Knowles)
3. Why Leaders Should Focus on People and Not Data (by 6Q)
4. 5 Effective Ways To Reduce Training Costs Without Sacrificing Quality (by Jenna Bunnell)

THIS IS A GUEST POST FROM NIKOLA SEKULIĆ OF CONTENT WIZARDS:

Nikola is a seasoned brand developer, writer, and storyteller. Over the last decade, he’s worked on various marketing, branding, and copywriting projects – crafting plans and strategies, writing creative online and offline content, and making ideas happen. When he is not working for clients around the world, he is exploring new topics and developing fresh ideas to turn into engaging stories for the online community.

The post 3 Tips for Post-Pandemic Employer Branding first appeared on Ongig Blog.

Before we dive in, here’s why “employer branding” is so important.

The value of employer branding tools

Employer branding is how you manage and influence your reputation with job seekers, employees, and stakeholders. It’s creating a belief in your organization as a top place to work. Even how you write job descriptions directly affects your employer brand.

According to IT IQ Tech Recruiters, the 4 key components of employer branding are:

1. Brand advocates (employees who actively promote their experience) 
2. Your career page
3. Brand consistency 
4. A social presence 

So, how do employer branding tools help? These tools maximize your ability to attract, motivate and retain current (or potential) employees. Some tools are specific to one area of employer branding, and others are more universal.

Note: If you are building an employer brand for a non-profit, you might find this Branding for Non Profit Organizations: The Definitive Guide useful.

5+ Great Employer Branding Tools

Here are 5+ tools (of many!) that help build solid employer brands:

1. PathMotion

PathMotion is a social space for employees and candidates to meet and share stories. Companies like Mars, Lazard, Coca-Cola, AXA, the NHS, and the British Army use this employer branding tool to host virtual events for candidates, automate emails and on-boarding, upload videos from employee advocates, and integrate with their social media channels.

Here are some success stats from PathMotion users:

• 98% said they planned to apply after a virtual event
• 80% said they would recommend the tool to others
• 77% said it improved their perception of the firm
• 68% said it was critical to thier decision to accept an offer

2. Olivia from Paradox

Olivia’s AI assistant saves time and simplifies recruiting processes. It also creates an enjoyable experience for potential candidates. Aramark, Unilever, Citizens, CVS Health, McDonald’s, and Nestle use Olivia to maintain a cohesive brand image.

It’s compatible with other recruitment tools (e.g., WhatsApp) and manages screening, applications, interview scheduling, Q&A, reminders, and more.

Rachel O’Connell, VP of HR at Great Wolf Lodge, said:

“The ability to communicate with applicants in the ways they like to communicate is invaluable.”

3. BAM by Papirfly

BAM is an employer branding tool for creating on-brand marketing pieces (e.g., social media assets, videos, brochure templates, signage, and more).

Companies like IBM use BAM to plan campaigns, manage digital assets, and review analytics:

“To someone considering adopting Papirfly, I’d say, “just do it”. It has saved me and the local team so much time. I know that the assets they’re creating is of this high standard and is completely on-brand.”

— Global Recruitment Branding Manager, IBM

4. Employer Brand Index by Link Humans

Employer Brand Index (EBI) is a data-based tool that measures your employer brand through what your past, present, and future employees say about you online.

EBI uses data from 100+ user-generated sources to measure your employer brand.

Companies like Netflix, Pepsi, H&M, and L’Oréal use EBI to track changes over time and analyze the success of their efforts based on 16 key employer branding attributes:

5. Skill Scout

Skill Scout is different than other software-based employer branding tools. But it creates value by using your employee stories as a way to show potential candidates what it’s really like to work at your company.

CEO and Co-Founder Elena Valentine’s motto is “you cannot be what you cannot see.” Skill Scout helps you make videos part of your employer branding strategy.

You can choose “full-scale production,” where Skill Scout handles all aspects of creation. Or “production lite,” where you record video content and Skill Scout manages the rest.

Note: If you need more tips on souping up your employer brand…check out this post on 9 Winning Employer Brand Marketing Strategies.

6. Wisdom

What is Wisdom? A software platform we’ve built to give our clients information about their target talent demographics:

• Who they are: Their motivations, desires and reasons for choosing a job.
• Where they are: The places they look for jobs, and hear about opportunities.
• What they think about you: Your brand awareness, appeal and whether they would consider applying to work for you.
• How to communicate with them: Test your marketing assets to optimise your messaging for your audience before you waste budget distributing suboptimal content.

Why is it valuable?

“By leveraging Wisdom’s data, our clients can laser-focus their activation campaigns to attract candidates who are the best fit for their organization. This reduces cost per hire and enables them to demonstrate ROI on all their employer branding & talent attraction efforts.”

7. Built In

Built In is an employer branding and recruiting platform that helps companies measure, manage and improve employer brand visibility and reputation across digital and AI-powered hiring channels. Its Employer Brand Reputation (EBR) Score provides insights into how companies are perceived across search and AI answer engines throughout the entire candidate hiring journey. Built In integrates AI-optimized branded content, analytics and job distribution into one ecosystem, making it a hybrid between a consulting partner and talent platform.

Why I wrote this?

Our mission at Ongig is to help you attract top talent. Ongig’s software enables you to create effective and inclusive JDs to fit your image (and boost your employer brand). Please request a demo to learn more.

Shout-outs:

1. 25 Extremely Useful Employer Branding Tools (by Karim Ansari)
2. 4 Employer Branding Tools to Use in 2020 (by Naukri RMS)
3. 50 Handy Employer Brand Tools, Tips, and Resources (by Katy French)
4. Four Key Components of Employer Branding (by Ryan Judd)
5. The Brutal Truth About Why Nobody Wants to Work for Your Company (by J.T. O’Donnell)

The post 5+ Great Employer Branding Tools first appeared on Ongig Blog.

• What is an EVP?
• What is the difference between EVP and employer brand?
• How to develop an EVP.

And, I also found 10 employee value proposition examples from top brands.

What is an employee value proposition?

To create an employee value proposition model in your company, it’s important to first understand what an EVP is.

So, here’s an employee value proposition definition:

An EVP is sometimes confused with “employer brand”. The difference is that the employee value proposition is focused internally (what motivates and engages employees, helps retain top performers, attracts talented candidates); versus the employer brand which is more externally-focused (e.g. the company’s reputation as an employer, its social image, what sets it apart).

10 Employee Value Proposition Examples

I perused career pages and job postings to find 10 companies (see below list) with a great employee value proposition example.

Apple’s Employee Value Proposition

Apple’s EVP Headline: “Join us. Be you.”

Apple’s employee value proposition draws you in with an effective (well-copywritten) headline: “Join us. Be you.” It doesn’t hurt that Apple dedicates eye-catching creative (visuals) to their messaging.

Apple’s EVP is built on these elements:

• employees adding value
• bringing together diverse thinkers and doers to innovate
• employees finding their calling and their place

Deloitte’s Employee Value Proposition

Deloitte’s EVP Headline: “What impact will you make?”

The employee value proposition at Deloitte is engaging because it asks a question, “What impact will you make?” Using this question approach immediately makes Deloitte’s messaging conversational.

Deloitte’s career page uplifts their EVP with a video that touches on inclusion, collaboration, and performance. The video shows what life is like at working at the company, interacting with other employees, and also finding opportunities for success.

Google’s Employee Value Proposition

Google’s EVP Headline: “How we care for Googlers”

The employee value proposition from Google focuses on 6 key elements. So, here how Google “cares for Googlers”:

• supporting families — benefits (parental leave, retirement savings, & more) and on-site amenities (for kids and dogs!)
• access to a healthy lifestyle — on-site doctors and fitness centers
• giving back — matching charitable donations and volunteer hours for employees
• access to quality time off — flex workdays and vacation time
• financial support — retirement savings matching and financial planning resources
• investing in employee growth — personal and professional development options (degree programs, cooking classes, guitar lessons, and more)

Hershey’s Employee Value Proposition

Hershey’s EVP Headline: “Haven’t reached your full potential yet? Neither have we. There’s more to be made”

The Hershey employee value proposition is great because asks an engaging question:

“ARE YOU SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO HELP US WRITE THE FUTURE STORY OF HERSHEY’S?”

And, Hershey’s EVP example is also geared towards:

• culture & diversity — Business Resource Groups (BRGs) supporting an inclusive work environment
• benefits for employees — “health, wealth, and life”

McDonald’s Employee Value Proposition

McDonald’s EVP Headline: “Why McDonald’s?”

Their employee value proposition at McDonald’s can be found on their Why Work In a McDonald’s Restaurant? careers page, but I also found a great EVP example in this job posting for a department manager:

Including an EVP in a job posting on Indeed or your careers page, especially opening with it really draws in candidates. The EVP above hits all the marks (salary, benefits, training, healthcare, vacation, and work-life balance).

Employee Value Proposition: Netflix

Netflix’s EVP Headline: “Why Netflix?”

Netflix’s employee value proposition is on their careers page, but also in their job postings. Below is an example of an EVP in a job description for a Senior Software Engineer.

This employee value proposition example is great, not only because it’s in the job posting, but also because it mentions:

• training opportunities
• inclusive company culture
• benefits
• salary
• impact

These are all important pieces of a good EVP model.

Employee Value Proposition: Sodexo

Sodexo’s EVP Headline: “Looking for a diverse and rewarding career?”

The Sodexo EVP is great because it’s based on 2 key elements:

• belonging and team spirit — this encourages employees to stay long-term
• careers paths — making growth and longevity for employees a priority

Employee Value Proposition: Starbucks

Starbucks’ EVP Headline: “Expect more coffee.”

Starbucks’ employee value proposition has an excellent opener, “Expect more than coffee” and talks about their employees as “partners.” This highlights company culture and is one of the best employee branding examples we found.

Toyota’s Employee Value Proposition

Toyota’s EVP Headline: “We’re more than just great cars and trucks”

The Toyota employee value proposition is highlighted in text, “We’re more than just great cars and trucks” and a video on the company career page. Toyota’s EVP is great because it’s based on 2 pillars:

• respect for people
• continuous improvement

The 60-second video profile of Jack Hollis, Senior VP of Automotive Operations, really shows why he was attracted to the company and why he’s stayed around for 10+ years.

Unilever’s Employee Value Proposition

Unilever’s EVP Headline: “What we can offer you”

The Unilever employee value proposition is present in its job postings in a unique way, which really caught my attention. So, here’s an example of Unilever’s EVP in a recruitment lead job description:

What We Can Offer You

Culture for Growth | Top Notch Employee Health & Well Being Benefits | Every Voice Matters | Global Reach | Life at Unilever | Careers with Purpose | World Class Career Development Programs | Check Out Our Space | Focus On Sustainability

This is a great way to showcase your employee value proposition model for potential candidates because it’s in the format of links that are easy to explore.

The Unilever employee value proposition is found just above their statement about diversity and inclusion.

How to Develop an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Do you want to develop an EVP of your own? The 4 tips below might help get you started.

Choose the length of your EVP

There is no standard length of an EVP. Some companies (like Netflix and McDonald’s) include a shortlist of bullets in the job postings, while other companies (like Apple and Google) dedicate an entire page on their website to their employee value proposition.

Add visuals and video to an EVP

Not all of the example EVPs above use videos or images to tell their story, but it might help. So, if you are adding an EVP to your career page or website, using visuals is more attention-grabbing than text alone.

But, if you have limited resources (e.g., no budget for a graphic designer), using a simple bulleted list works too. Just make sure the language you use speaks to your audience (see below).

Speak to your audience in an EVP

Speaking to your audience using 1st/2nd person language has more impact. In the employee value proposition examples above, Apple, Deloitte & Hershey use “you” to speak directly to their audience.

Conversational language is another great way to reach your audience. Deloitte, Hershey, and Unilever open their EVPs with a question. Candidates might be more connected to the statement “What can we offer you?” instead of using the word “Benefits.”

Using inclusive language in your employee value proposition is also key. Ongig’s Text Analyzer flags words that might contain bias and gives suggestions for more inclusive replacements. Therefore, running your employee value proposition example through the software can help you create an unbiased EVP.

Sections to use in your EVP

If you aren’t sure which sections to include in your employee value proposition, first think about what sets you apart from other companies. Is it flexible work policies, bring your dog to work benefits, or access to unique family benefits?

The answer to these questions might help you choose which sections to use. If not, here are some suggestions with examples of what top brands use:

Headline/Impact Statement

Start with a statement of impact. How will the company and the employee create a mutually beneficial relationship? Deloitte & Hershey tie their EVP to how employees impact the company with strong headlines like:

“What impact will you make?”

and

“Haven’t reached your full potential yet? Neither have we. There’s more to be made”

Compensation and Benefits

Salary is one of the top things potential candidates look at before applying and it’s what keeps many employees at companies long term. So, be sure to include salary, bonuses, and other benefits in your employee value proposition.

Google, Hershey, McDonald’s, Netflix & Unilever mention employee benefits and/or supporting families in their employee value proposition.

Other companies like Accenture, Chipolte, Goodyear & Massage Envy use a compensation section called “What’s in it for you” as a part of their EVPs.

Company Culture

People are different, and that’s what makes companies great. So, having a stance on diversity and inclusion in your employee value proposition is important. Employees who feel supported and respected regardless of their race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are more dedicated and productive.

Your company culture is what employees are immersed in daily, so let them share their stories and their message about inclusion at work.

Starbucks & Sodexo put a spotlight on their company culture and employee belonging. Mutual of Omaha uses the statement “A diverse workplace where associates feel a sense of belonging” in their JDs as a part of their EVP.

Employee Growth and Training

Having a pathway for growth and stability is also a top priority for employees. Do you have coaching or mentoring opportunities? Or opportunities for advancement within the company? A successful employee value proposition should include these things.

Apple, Deloitte, Google, Hershey, McDonald’s, Netflix, Sodexo, Starbucks, Toyota & Unilever all include some version of “opportunities for success” in their employee value proposition.

Companies like John Deere, Sweetgreen & Vacasa list career growth and training opportunities in their EVPs.

Work-life Balance

The benefits of a work-life balance are a top priority for a lot of people. Therefore, listing perks like flexible hours, parental leave, and vacation time is key to an employee value proposition.

Employees who have a balance between work life and home life are usually:

• more productive and motivated
• less stressed
• avoid burn-out
• healthier (mentally and physically)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Jamba Juice & NetApp list this in a section called “What We Offer” for employees in their EVPs.

Location

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a big impact on location in the EVP model. Most companies around the world were forced to switch from being in an office to working 100% remotely for months.

In this post-pandemic world, employees might value having the flexibility of working from home vs. being in an office full-time. So, if your company has a policy for remote work as a benefit or if it’s standard operation procedure, you might want to mention it in your EVP.

GoDaddy, VMWare, & Wikimedia Foundation use phrases like “you can work remotely from anywhere,” showing flexible locations to support their EVPs.

Why I Wrote This?

Part of Ongig’s mission is to help you attract top-tier diverse talent. Ongig’s software transforms your career page and job descriptions so you can highlight your employee value proposition (EVP). Request a demo to learn more.

Note: If you need some employee branding examples or help with your EVP model, our blog 9 Winning Employer Brand Marketing Strategies might help.

Shout-Outs

1. 5 Key elements of an Employee Value Proposition (by AIHR)
2. Employee Value Proposition (by Gartner)
3. EVP trends you should be looking out for post-COVID (by Talent Works)
4. EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION: HOW 30 COMPANIES DEFINE THEIR EVP (by Bailey Reiners)
5. A federal brand worth working for (by Accenture)
6. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMPLOYER BRAND AND EVP? (by Karim Ansari)
7. Employee Value Propositions: 14 Great Examples (by Chris Platts)
8. 5 Ways a Healthy Work-Life Balance Improves Your Productivity (by Toby Nwazor)

The post 10 Employee Value Proposition Examples [+ How to create your own] first appeared on Ongig Blog.

One other measurement is how often candidates search for your company.

We took data from our favorite SEO Tool ahrefs to find out which companies candidates search for the most.

Methodology & Disclaimers:

Our methodology is simple though far from perfect:

• How We Counted Searches — We counted the # of times per month there was a Google search with “[name of company] jobs”. 
• Disclaimers — We know that people other than candidates (e.g. analysts, vendors, competitors, etc.) search for “[name of company] jobs” so are results are not perfect. However, it’s the best apples-to-apples comparison we can think of. We did not include “Long Tail”  searches (e.g. for Amazon, only “Amazon Jobs” is counted and not more specific searches such as “Amazon Delivery Jobs”.
• For companies with an acronym (USPS) that also get searched with full name (US Postal Services), we combined their traffic. If a company had a symbol (e.g. the “&” in AT&T, we included the queries for both search terms.

The Top 100 Employer Brands Searched for by Candidates (Summary)

Top 100 Employer Brands Searched for by Candidates [Complete List]

Why Our Team Did this Top Employer Brands Research

The Ongig team and me have been running into interesting stats (like above) during our research for various blog articles. When we find interesting data, our first question is: “Why shouldn’t we share this with the community?” The answer is almost always: “Why not!?” So we shared it. Please request a demo if you’d like to learn more about Ongig’s job description software.

The post The Top 100 Employer Brands Searched for By Candidates [2019] first appeared on Ongig Blog.

Comparably CEO Jason Nazar (pictured) answers Rob Kelly’s questions about employer branding, recruitment marketing, Glassdoor alternatives and more.

If you’re a recruitment marketing or employer branding leader, you probably have tons of energy around company review sites like Glassdoor. A new Glassdoor alternative that has grown rapidly is Comparably.

I spent some time with Comparably CEO Jason Nazar to dig in on this important new part of the employer branding space. Special thanks to the great Drew Kossoff (head of Rainmaker Ad Ventures) who intro’d me to Jason back in 2010.

I asked Jason a bunch of questions and the result is this Q&A below. Enjoy!

Hey Jason, what’s the most important problem that Comparably is solving for employer branding leaders?

The most important thing we’re doing is making sure that employers’ reputations are being reflected fairly, accurately, and that you can really see what it’s like to work for a company.

The quick back-story of Comparably is that I spent 15 years before this building up businesses. I was really passionate about how to build great company cultures. I was super familiar with all of the employee review sites out there, Glassdoor, and the others.

I’m a massive proponent of bringing more transparency to the workplace. I also feel like over the last few years, a lot of these employee review sites got a bit out of control. Very often, feedback was left, in very large part, by ex-employees.

Any time a company’s reputation is primarily dominated by people who used to work there, it’s not going to be reflective of what that company is like today. That’s really what we set out to correct.

I have a ton of respect for everybody else in the space. But I think what people are really liking about Comparably is that we are a platform that gives a bit more control back to employers. This tips the scales back to showcase what it’s really like to work at a company in the fairest and accurate way so that the hard work leaders and companies put in aren’t overly punished as people do Google searches about an organization.

Talent Acquisition vs. Employer Branding vs. Recruitment Marketing. How does Comparably position itself?

Comparably is a solution to help with employer brand and recruitment marketing. I think there are a lot of great platforms to find jobs and candidates like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc. I also think there’s a whole host of other options like LinkedIn to find great candidates.

We’re here to help a company with their employer brand and reputation to give them more resources for recruitment marketing. We have a ton of the best digital candidates that have signed up on Comparably (these are passive job seekers that you can’t find on the job boards. Engineer, Product Marketing, Design, Sales, and Finance).

We are able to expose companies to these great candidates and bring hires in the door, but we’re not here to work primarily with recruiters. We’re here to work with HR, chief marketing officers, and folks in the employer branding space and give them a platform and product that really gives them the fairest representation that:

• Helps them get lots of press
• Makes sure they’re getting the most accurate Google results
• Helps candidate conversion

Who do you consider your top competitors? Would it be company review sites like Glassdoor?

Glassdoor is our main competitor and I think they’re in a different space now that they’ve been bought by Recruit (the parent company of Indeed).

I think they’ve already, over the last many years, been focused on being a job platform as you can see from their product.

But they are the most well-known platform where employees leave feedback about what it’s like to work at companies and that’s the space that we’re in — so Glassdoor is our main competitor.

How does Comparably compare to Glassdoor?

I’ll talk about the things that I think we do well. I’m not here to disparage anybody else. I wouldn’t have built this business if I hadn’t respected what they and others have done in the space.

So part of what Comparably does that is unique and different to the whole rest of the category is we can we make sure that we give companies the options to enable only their verified existing team to leave public feedback.

“My very strong held belief is if you want to understand the company culture, you got to find out from the people currently there, for better or worse.”

For example, the Google culture isn’t what the people that used to work there eight years ago [say it is]…it’s the hundreds of thousands of employees that are there today.

It’s important when you want to understand a company culture that the most important voices that have to be heard first and most clearly are the current team. And that’s something that we do differently than I think any other employee review platforms to do.

What HR Tech category would an analyst like Gartner Group put Comparably in?

I think they’d put us in reputation management services. Again, we’re a platform that’s geared for both employees and employers to best understand what it’s like to work at companies.
For example, we do things that our predecessors don’t, where we give every company:

• A Gender score — As rated by women at that company
• A Diversity score — As rated by people of color that company
• Very specific detailed break down of what’s happening in that department level
• Really detailed analytics around how competitors and industries stack up versus each other

Then we help companies get amazing press to the areas they stand out through our Best Places to Work awards. So I think that Gartner group would put us in the category of reputation management services.

Do former employees play a part in Comparably’s analysis of a company?

Absolutely. By default, both former and existing employees can leave feedback, but we give companies the options to make it so that they can just get public feedback from their existing team and then get private feedback from ex-employees.

We’re not here in any way to make a company look better than they actually are. We’re here to give the fairest and most accurate representation.

My point of view for a long time has simply been that if you want to understand the company culture, both from the perspective of a candidate and existing team member, or how an employer wants to represent their brand to the world, then it’s your current team that is most important to be heard from.

The fact of the matter is that on employee review sites all sorts of bad stuff happens:

• Competitors leave feedback
• There’s fraud that goes on
• There’s way too much contribution from people that were at a company for a month and felt like they were aggrieved and then just leave an awful heinous review.

These things put the job seeker in a situation where they have to sift through all the feedback. That’s why you see so many one-star reviews complemented by good reviews. That happens on other platforms like Yelp and others.

“The question then becomes if you weren’t just getting the angriest voices to leave feedback complemented by people that were asked to go there by management, you could actually understand from people just like you what they felt about their workplace, leaders, co-workers, and their compensation.  How valuable would that actually be? And that’s what Comparably is here to solve.”

Another big area that we focus on is we’ve now become one of the top organizations giving out Best Place to Work awards.

We do these every quarter and we really want to help celebrate what areas companies stand out in.

One of the big things that is different between us and other employee review sites, is that we don’t lead with written reviews. We have millions of reviews on the site, but at the end of the day those aren’t always the fairest way to understand what’s going on at a company.

We lead by getting structured data, which is a fancy way of saying we get employees to fill out a survey. If one of your employees wanted to leave feedback about you they would come in and answer 20 questions that would take a minute and a half.

Then we would have this really rich set of data across all these different areas of your business. The value of that is that we can then compare and contrast how you are as an employer to similar companies.

So nothing is good or bad in a vacuum. We’re all as valuable as the alternative and so what’s important to a job seeker, an existing employee, or an employer is how do they rank versus:

• Other people in their space
• Their competitors
• Their alternatives
• Other companies of their size

That’s what Comparably helps bring to light.

The last big thing is we have an absolutely amazing SaaS product that:

• Gives all sorts of analytics
• Helps out with content creation
• Gives competitive culture data so that you see how you rank for sure competitors
• Has an incredible salary database

We have all sorts of software and tools to give more content and resources to folks in HR to onboard and convert the best candidates.

We’ve had a ton of success working with companies by making their job posts all across the web infinitely more valuable and obviously that’s an area that Ongig is super familiar with.

So at the heart of it, we’re just staying squarely focused on this employer brand and recruitment marketing space.

We’re trying to do things that are different and better than have been done before. When you look at the experience our customers are having (like Salesforce, Intuit, ADP, HubSpot, First National Bank, and Cisco Foods), they’re having a great experience. And we want to be able to help as many people as possible.

What’s the entry level investment or cost to use Comparably as a service?

Comparably pricing is really straightforward. It ranges between $15,000 and $50,000 a year. It’s primarily based upon company size.

We don’t upsell different things. We give an unlimited number of jobs. We don’t hold back any product features.

One of the things that we try to do is that we know that we’re the new kids on the block, so we provide unbelievable customer support. I’m involved in a lot of the accounts that come onboard and we try to go above and beyond whether it’s content creation, getting our partners press, and really helping to build out a complete strategy for how to attract and convert the best quality candidates.

A lot of companies don’t have a top of the pipeline funnel you can turn on. Indeed and ZipRecruiter are going to get you more candidates than you could ever want to deal with. The question is how to get quality candidates and that’s where we come in. So right now, we’re really just focused on providing great value and service.

Is there a free way that employers could use anything from Comparably for their employer brand strategy?

Absolutely, there are 15,000 companies that have claimed their Comparably profile and are using our software. We have thousands and thousands of HR leaders that are managing their Comparably page. For free they can:

• Respond to reviews
• Add media
• Fill out their profile
• Start to connect with candidates

We help attract candidates to employers and they have the ability to send them to their career pages and connect with them.

We provide a really great offering, but I think there’s a lot more that we can do when we engage with a company and help them out. I would definitely encourage your audience to be using Comparably for the basic tools.

You mentioned fraudulent activity on employer rating and reviews sites that are affecting company’s reputations. Can you give an example of the types of fraud on employer review sites?

Yes. I think there’s 3 levels of things that happens on these platforms that make it more difficult for candidates to understand what’s going on and unfairly hurts employers reputations.

At the worst base level, there is literally just fraud. There are companies that want to purposely hurt the reputation of their competitors. I’ve spoken to 10 employers in the last three months that have had instances of that on other sites outside of Comparably.

I think the 2nd level is that there’s some kind of accountability and accurate verification.

For example, if someone’s been at your company for three years ago, and they were in sales or admin, and got let go because of performance, being a really negative culture team member, or being potentially unstable, and it was uniformly understood across the company that the team member shouldn’t be there.

For that person to be able to go online and say whatever they want about the company, which is going to often be distorted and overly negative, I think is not helpful.

The 3rd thing is there’s often feedback that is too positive that’s asked to counterbalance.

When employers feel like: Oh, we have been so unfairly represented that we need to try to get people to leave overly positive feedback, you can tell. You can tell when someone’s been asked, pushed, or coerced, to leave a review that they don’t want or intend to.

All of that just adds to the complication of, how do you really get to the understanding of what’s going on in an organization?

Those are the things that we set out to fix and we’re not going to be perfect in every instance, but the idea is that if you could just have a conversation with every team member at a company and find out what they really think is good, and what they really think is bad and needs to get improved; and it can be understood and measured in a simple, easy way.

How valuable would that really be for the employer? How valuable would it be for the candidate? And that’s the product experience that we set out to build.

How accurate is Comparably and Glassdoor on salaries?

I would say generally pretty accurate. There’s a lot of value in the quantity of data. I can’t speak to what other folks do but in Comparably’s case we benchmark all user contributed data with data from companies and recruiters.

Every salary record that comes in both goes through the algorithmic check and a check by a human editor who’s an expert in salary compensation. We don’t put a record on the site unless we feel that we’re really, really confident with it.

And in our case, every salary record is complemented by:

• Company size
• How much money they’ve raised
• Equity records that most other people don’t
• Gender and ethnicity, obviously, anonymously, of the candidate that’s left the record
  • Years of experience

So we focus typically on salary records for corporate roles, tech-related roles.

Part of what we’re extremely proud about is that we’ve had multiple organizations and individuals say “this is some of the most accurate data that we’ve ever seen.” In our case, I think we have extremely accurate salary data.

How does Comparably do content collection? Last time we chatted about allowing clients to embed things to automate that content collection.

We set out to build a different experience both for what it’s like to work at a company and how to collect that feedback. Whereas other employee review sites start by trying to get a written review from somebody, which paints a company in really broad strokes whether they’re typically all good or all bad.

We at Comparably get survey data. So we get employees to fill out, you know, 20 questions on the company, they’re multiple choice, 1-10, and yes or no, and we start to understand what it’s like across multiple different facets of an organization:

• • How employees rank their leadership
  • Their feelings on their compensation
  • How they think about their co-workers
  • How they think about the future prospects of the business
  • What they think about their perks and benefits

Through this survey we get really thoughtful, objective, comprehensive understanding of what it’s like to work at a company overall. That’s one of the things that’s been really popular about our platform and it also makes it really easy to collect feedback from your team.

The fact of the matter is that it’s kind of weird and awkward to have to ask somebody for a written review. You feel a little weird being asked, but everybody’s used to leaving a little bit of survey feedback for their company and it’s been a common practice for a long time now.

Whether you’re engaged by your employer, you go directly to Comparably, or you have a co-worker that invites you to do this, that’s part of the way that we collect the feedback that’s a bit different.

Then what we do is try to give a really transparent look at what’s going on at the company.

We pull out the areas they are best, we can help companies get exposed to our Best Place to Work awards, there’s no cost or fee to participate, there’s absolutely no pay for play. They have to earn the scores, so when they do they have the ability to get major national exposure, major national media, and standing out as a top employer.

We want to give those employers the ability to put their best foot forward and showcase to the world, here is where we do stand out, here is where we’re great, here’s where we’re a top employer, as compared to all of our alternatives. Then they can use that on their job postings or the recruitment marketing efforts.

What’s something innovative you’re doing with diversity that other employer review sites are not?

For a company’s diversity and inclusion efforts we give them a gender score and a diversity score. You’re going to be able to see immediately how that company is rated by the women on their team, how they’re rated by people of color, how managers, executive team members and CEOs are rated by women and by diverse employees.

Part of what we’re doing is we really just want it to be more transparent of what that workplace is and how supportive they are for all kinds of employees. Are they employers that are well liked by senior citizen employees?

Are they employers that are well liked by their engineering teams and their design teams? Are they employers that have a good reputation amongst their team members that are people of color or women?

That is something that is core to what we wanted to do with Comparably from day one. It’s not enough just to say this company has five stars. As a candidate, you want to know:

• What’s it like for somebody like me?
• What’s it like on the marketing team?
• What’s it like in the location that I’m joining?
• What’s it like for somebody of a background like me whether it’s my gender, ethnicity, education or skill set.

When someone’s looking to join a company, especially a large organization, knowing that it’s just four or five stars overall I don’t think is what’s most helpful. It’s more for the kind of environment that I’m going to be working with, for the kind of managers I’m going to be working for, for the kind of people that are like me, what kind of experience did those folks have at the company?

That’s what we’ve tried to do with Comparably that’s also different than other platforms. We just make that the forefront of our experience.

If you go to any company page on Comparably one of the first things you’re going to see immediately on every company page is their gender score and diversity score. It’s literally the first thing you see on a company page. That’s core to who we are as an organization.

Can you list out some of the Employer of Choice Awards Comparably is giving out?

You can see all of our Comparably awards here. We do 20 awards for the year. And we do Awards for companies with the best outlook.

We do awards on:

• Companies with the best outlook
• Companies rated best by their own employees for how well they’ll do financially
• Companies that best for women
• Companies that are best for diversity
• Companies that have the best perks and benefits
• Companies with the best compensation
• Companies that have the best managers
• Companies with the best professional development opportunities
• Companies with the best CEOs
• Companies with the best CEOs for diversity and women

We have this really wide variety. We can even showcase what are the best companies by department, and which companies have the best engineering, sales, or design teams.

Part of what we do with our awards that is so unique is that we have data on so many different aspects of a company, we can really show where they stand out in these different areas. What a lot of employers have appreciated about Comparably is that a lot of times they never had a chance to win Best Place to Work awards because it’s hard to compete with the Googles of the world for overall best culture.

But we’ve taken companies that may not have the best overall company culture but are really competitive on pay or perks and benefits. They may have really fantastic managers and earned those scores from their employees and then we get to highlight them as great employers in those areas.

“Maybe you’re not in an A company culture overall, but still a B culture or even a C culture, but you might have this specific area, that you are fantastic in. Those are the things that you deserve to be celebrated for. It’s exciting to see your team get behind, celebrate, and share on social and talk about with their peer group and friends.”

I get a lot of Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing Leaders asking me about how to create a new Employee Value Proposition (EVP), is Comparably helpful at all with an EVP?

Yes, we do a lot of content creation for our customers. We do case studies on their CEO where I’ll do interviews with their chief people officer or CEO and we have amazing journalists that used to work for Fortune and Business Insider on staff with us.

We have a tremendous amount of data on companies, so we loop that into showcasing how companies rank versus their competitors and how they stand in their industry.

Part of our proposition to companies is that we can help them tell that story. We can amplify the values that they already know about, but that we can also be part of their partners and strategists and understanding what things they do that are really special and different because we have the quantitative data to back it up as well. We also have their own employee’s ratings and reviews to mix in with those stories, which is a big thing that we do to help companies out.

Will Comparably end up being a job board?

That’s not our focus at the moment. Our focus is to be the absolute best platform to help companies with their employer brand and recruitment marketing and to give the most fair and accurate representation of what’s really going on. Certainly, we have a huge set of registered users.

They are open and asking for job opportunities. I think that would be a logical conclusion that at some point we’re going to dive more into that.

Part of our offering is matching candidates. We’ve sourced hundreds of thousands of candidates for companies, but the reason it’s important for us to stay focused on what we’re doing is there a lot of great alternatives to drive lots of applications. We’re here to help companies:

• Convert better candidates
• Optimize recruitment marketing strategy — Which helps bring candidates in the door
• Optimize their employer brand strategy — Which helps them bring better quality candidates in the door

But today and for the foreseeable future we’re not a job board, we’re a solution to help with employer brand and recruitment marketing. That’s the area we want to stay focused on and really do something different and special. We want to help out folks in HR, who have employer brand titles, and Chief People Officers.

Should employer branding and recruitment marketing sit within talent and HR, or in the marketing department or some combination?

I think what happens today is that at smaller size organizations employer brand becomes a little bit of a function of marketing. There aren’t dedicated employer brand resources and so those either bleed over from marketing or it’s the responsibility of talent.

People who are recruiters and have the responsibility of bringing people in the door are also told this brand stuff that they should also focus on it as well. Certainly at larger organizations they spend a lot of time, effort, and money on resources.

My point of view is that there is no meaningful difference between a company’s employer brand and their brand overall. It’s one. I think what you’re seeing is that whether a company is 50 employees and fast growing or they’re 50,000 employees and been around for 100 years, they’re really starting to see that our reputation in the market is absolutely critical.

People do thousands of Google searches on companies every single day. These aren’t just candidates. It’s their own employees, press, stakeholders, private, and public investors. Being able to showcase what they’re like as a company, both in terms of products and services and how employees are treated is one holistic picture.

If you’re seeing the tech space lead any charge it’s that a business can’t and shouldn’t just be about profits alone. It has to have a holistic mission, where it’s there to serve its investors, serve its employees, and serve its community.

I think there’s one singular brand that companies are having that encompass all of those activities to the extent that folks are starting to understand that that brand is vital to who they are as an organization.

It’s coming more and more out of marketing and I think it’s sitting not just below a recruiter in an organization, but it’s giving the resources that it needs to do everything as if you were a Chief Marketing Officer at a company tasked with making sure that the brand and products are known as great in the market. I think that’s the shift that we’ve been seen.

Is Recruit/Indeed’s acquisition of Glassdoor good, bad or neutral for Recruitment Marketing/Employer Branding Leaders?

I do think that the acquisition was driven around Indeed as a job site and it’s the largest website in the world. If you’ve seen what Glassdoor has tried to do over the last few years, is they’ve described themselves as the second largest job board in the US.

So I think their combined focus will be on how to be the best job board in the United States and in the world. And I applaud them for that mission and efforts. I think because of that, the original focus at Glassdoor on being a platform around employer brand, clearly isn’t there anymore.

That’s why companies like us exist, because there is a need in the market to do more around just employer brand solutions and recruitment marketing solutions.

Why do you think Glassdoor didn’t IPO?

I think these things are always complicated. They had a large set of shareholders over many rounds. I think management and shareholders look at what are the best strategic opportunities. I think that Recruit is an amazing company and the Indeed acquisition turned out to be one of the best tech acquisitions of the last 20 years.

They should be given all the credit for being able to buy that company for what they did in the late 2000s and turn it into what it is today. I can understand why the Glassdoor team would be excited to be part of that journey.

So I can’t speak to it as I wasn’t in the boardroom. I’m not the right person to say why they chose that path that decides an IPO. I can tell you it’s a complicated decision where there’s a lot of factors involved, having been in those boardrooms were companies that had to make those decisions.

But I also know that Recruit and Indeed are fantastic organizations. I’m not surprised that they’d want to be part of that team.

Thanks, Jason!

Why I interviewed Comparably CEO Jason

I interviewed Jason because a lot of talent leaders ask me for an alternative to Glassdoor.  Comparably’s content meshes well with Ongig’s mission to transform job descriptions to attract top-tier and diverse talent.  If you’d like to see an example of how your company’s Comparably content could look on every one of your job postings, please request a demo here.

The post Comparably: The New Glassdoor Alternative first appeared on Ongig Blog.

If you’re into employer branding, you’re in for a treat. Below is my interview with Andrew Levy. Andrew and I first met in 2012 at a TMP Worldwide/Intuit vendor day. Jason Webster of Ongig/Glassdoor/Greenhouse fame was there too.

Since then, Andrew has worked on the talent branding teams at WeWork, Uber and Autodesk. He’s got a unique background and he shares a bunch of useful employer branding nuggets.

Enjoy!

Does every company need an employer branding lead?

Not necessarily the role itself, but there needs to be someone whose job is written down in their description that’s in charge of defining, measuring, and activating an employment brand.

Too many companies let their corporate brand stand on their own. That doesn’t actually tell prospective employees anything, so they’re in fact doing themselves a disservice by not managing, defining, and doing something with it.

Where should employer branding sit in an organization — Who’s reporting to who? Talent Acquisition, Marketing?

I’ve been in-house, the agency side, you name it. I’ve seen every different iteration of where this rolls up into this type of role.

I don’t think it really matters.

I think it’s a type of role that sits in between, as you rightly note, a whole bunch of different departments: marketing communications, internal communications, branding, talent acquisition, so it doesn’t really belong anywhere.

“You need to find a person that’s really good at building bridges and connecting folks within an organization. That’s your person to run employment brand.”

Uber and WeWork — What are some learnings from scaling those 2 behemoth brands?

Both at Uber and WeWork the role didn’t exist that I ended up taking. I kind of pitched myself into it.

I reached out to someone senior within talent acquisition and said, Hey do you know who is managing your employment brand? Who’s doing your recruitment marketing? Do you have a strategy here?

Both companies kind of scratched their head and thought, interesting, we should have a role like that. So I ended up writing my own job description saying here’s the scope of work that I think this person should have and here’s the size of your team as it grows.

Then from there, just slowly piloted, tested, and scaled up programs within the company and slowly built out teams and the strategy from there.

So it’s very much an experimental approach to this kind of work. And I think most hyper-growth companies will have that mindset. So it was quite a natural fit, actually, at both of them.

Give me something that folks on the outside would be surprised about working on Uber’s talent branding team.

The biggest and most successful channel that we ended up building out and that had an actual team underneath it was very, very high touch personal events for engineers.

It was so successful that during the entire brand crisis that Uber went through, we had a couple of people directly dedicated to this. We would actually import engineers from other countries into the US where there were friendly visa relationships. This accounted for 40% of engineer hiring.

It was unbelievable, huge, huge success. And it was just a couple of people doing these events.

How did these events for engineer recruiting work?

Basically, you go to a particular market, let’s say Mexico City, you do a lot of pre-identification of folks (like sourcing) and then you invite them to an experiential 3-4 day event where they see tech talks, meet folks, go through an exhaustive interview process, and then actually get an offer right at the end of it.

So it’s the recruitment process on steroids contained in a very short period of time.

From there, they get to pick, New York, San Francisco, or another engineering hub location, and actually relocate themselves.

“So really, really involved, but when you’re an engineering company in crisis, needing to grow at massive scale, this channel actually ended up being by far the most cost-effective and beneficial to the company.”

How metrics-oriented is Uber, on the talent side?

Very, that’s actually kind of where I cut my teeth on getting really into marketing analytics for recruiting.

It’s not a thing that people do very often. They’ll buy media or job postings here or there and sort of just spray and pray, putting stuff out there and hope they get something back.

I took an incredibly analytical approach. I actually borrowed a lot of the stuff that the driver acquisition team was doing and shifting that to work for full-time employee acquisition.

The Driver job (for Uber, Lyft, etc.) may be the most important evergreen job to fill in our lifetime. What’d you learn about filling such evergreen jobs?

It’s something I learned a lot from getting really in the weeds with analytics about positions.

“One of the things that I learned at Uber was the applications and the efficacy of a job has a life cycle. So there’s a period of time where you hit a peak and then a valley.”

You can actually look at your system of jobs and optimize their age and when they get pulled down and reposted based on that kind of historical data.

So we’ve learned a ton about like evergreen positions and engineering or marketing and how to manage the group of them. And how to most effectively, increase funnel where and when we needed it.

How competitive was talent acquisition and branding on Uber versus Lyft when you were there?

Uber was about 15 times the size of Lyft. So from a talent perspective, Lyft actually got really good at starting to take our killer folks (both drivers and internal folks), as they sort of matured.

It’s Silicon Valley, we’re all fighting against each other. So I don’t think Lyft was any more of a player than anybody else in the world of talent.

What about WeWork? What’s something folks on the outside would be surprised about in terms of the talent team and branding team?

I joined WeWork at the same point in time as I joined Uber, when it was medium-sized and then going to explode into triple the size in one year.

What was really interesting about my role there was same sort of thing, I pitched myself in and wrote my own job description.

It expanded really broadly very quickly. You think of employment marketing as an umbrella, I was actually talent attraction at WeWork. That included:

• Careers website
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Recruitment strategies
• Campus recruiting

This sort of branding role became like a head of talent role. And I think it’s actually where we’re going.

“The future is going to be more of a sales and marketing type organization, that is your talent acquisition group, rather than your traditional group of recruiters. So it organically got to where I think most organizations will be in the next five, six years.”

What do you think the future structure of talent acquisition teams will look like?

I can talk a little bit about the Uber situation. We got to a point where the team had very specific channel strategies that included:

• In-person activations
• Email marketing
• Performance marketing
• SEO/SEM

When you think of it that way it’s like a true marketing and advertising firm.

At WeWork, there was also some added internal cultural stuff. The brand management, content production, diversity, campus, things like that. It got so broad that, that kind of marketing and advertising function only took the place of a traditional talent organization.

“I think organizations who are worth their salt will start hiring heads of talent acquisition that have a marketing and advertising background. At the end of the day sales and marketing versus the recruiting, they’re the same thing. It’s the same goal, selling a different thing. One is selling a widget one is selling a job.”

You’ve worked with some major applicant tracking systems (Taleo, Workday, iCIMS, even a homegrown one at Uber). How’s the ATS play into employer branding?

Any good talent acquisition organization, once they get past the filling job reqs and get a little bit more sophisticated to understanding the data around their reqs is going to need a really clean and clear, well set up applicant tracking system.

When you think about what employer branding or a talent attraction team does is push qualified people into that system.

“In order to show any sort of ROI or get any sort of insights out of the campaigns you’re running, you have to have that stream from external vendor, to ATS, to hire and onboarding run incredibly smooth. You need to make sure that all your tags, sourcing and secondary sources flow all the way through.”

So an ATS and the knowledge of how to write and track sources in an ATS is critical. Some of them do that and do it well, some of them don’t. The unfortunate thing about employer marketing or advertising is there are tons and tons of channels out there, different ones internationally, it’s all got to come into one spot. There’s a lot of potential breakpoints.

An example of this is companies like Glassdoor and LinkedIn.

You can’t get as deep analytics as you would like, you can’t necessarily understand the path to conversion. From your property (like your landing page on Glassdoor) how does that candidate translate all the way into a hire, that requires pretty sophisticated tagging, and in some cases isn’t possible.

Another good example would international, like Asia or Southeast Asia in particular, they’re about 10 years behind the Western world is in terms of how you can you hook up systems together.

In some cases, you can’t even track application clicks in other markets. You just have to slog through it and understand what you can get and where.

“I think most importantly is at least defining your baseline analytics and really sticking to if you’re going to buy something, you’re going to track it to the best of your ability, and having that hard conversation to say, No, I’m not going to buy something if you can track the efficacy of it.”

You mentioned LinkedIn. What have you heard about LinkedIn’s new applicant tracking system? Anything?

I haven’t actually heard much about it. Just off the top of my head I would probably say no, I wouldn’t be interested in it because of their protectionist approach to data.

I like ATS’s like iCims where you have the capability of bolting lots of things on it, it’s much more flexible. You can set it up however you want.

LinkedIn tends to be a closed system. You get what you pay for. And that’s it.

When you and I met you were working at TMP (the recruitment agency). How should talent acquisition leaders think about working with recruitment agencies?

They’re invaluable.

There are very few brands or companies like your Ubers, WeWork, Salesforces that can build out a team of 15 people to focus on employer marketing.

Getting yourself a good agency is critical, particularly if you don’t have a full-time person managing all this work. They’re the ones with their pulse on the market, and what’s new and hot.

What’s your advice on for a talent leader on picking an employer branding agency?

I’m a data junkie. I would say go with one that has proven ability to show ROI on the analytics first.

For me, I worked most closely with and continue to work closely with Recruitics, which is kind of a performance marketing and advertising agency.

How important is programmatic ad buying these days? Is that sort of the biggest shift with agencies? Is that the big new value add they provide?

100%. I think people tend to stumble on the shiny, flashy things, like video or a big cool brand campaign on LinkedIn, the pretty advertising side of advertising.

If you think of what you’re really trying to do in the talent acquisition organization, it’s fill quality butts in seats.

“The best way to do that is through flexible advertising, like performance advertising. That’s like an Indeed pay-per-click or any of those aggregators. A vendor like Recruitics that is almost like a software platform helps you optimize that spend as you go along very quickly and efficiently.”

I would say, anyone tackling this work… First start programmatic then move up in sophistication towards content marketing later on once you get the basics right.

Somewhere around 2013 you had a lot of awesome ideas about search engine optimization (SEO). How do SEO and employer branding work together?

I think SEO is one of the first things that somebody should do. They should reach across the aisle within the organization to find somebody who’s an SEO expert.

You all know that your careers website and your job landing pages are critical. Those are the ones that you the people who are actively searching will go to first or organically find in search engines.

One of the reasons why I love Ongig is the ability to put highly customizable content, tags, you name it all on one page in an automated way.

It’s incredibly scalable and it will deeply help with your search rankings. There isn’t an ATS that does that for you, there isn’t anything else out there. So absolutely. People will pay attention to it and borrow, beg, steal from across the island.

How much work does an Autodesk, Uber, or WeWork put into their career site and job postings?

A ton! Career sites are usually one of those orphans or stepchild that don’t get as much attention on the .com site as they should, even though they tend to be the most highly trafficked site of your website. That’s actually true to Uber and also WeWork more so than their product sales, they get higher volumes into the career site.

How much time goes into it? It really depends. I designed and launched career sites at each of those brands, Autodesk, WeWork and Uber.

It depends on if you build it all in-house or use a SaaS vendor. Ongig is actually an option for a career site.

“Where I think I see the future going is career sites that are based on some sort of talent CRM. Deep integration with your contact lists, so rather than having the candidate have to search and apply, they can just kind of raise their hand a little bit, give you a name, and an email address and the location or name and age or something like that.”

And slowly, you can nurture them along the process towards getting into the application funnel. That’s sort of where I see the best in class career site.

How do marketing departments and talent departments work together? Where do they work well together, where do they not?

Why I think the employment brand, employment marketing, talent attraction function needs to exist on its own is because of the fact that a marketing department has its own KPIs and measures. Talent acquisition has very different KPIs and measures. You’re never really going to get the attention that you want out of a marketing organization. That’s not to say there isn’t a ton of overlap.

When you get into the corporate branding side of things like storytelling around diversity, employee profiles, or executive profiles, those types of efforts should be hand in hand between your talent attraction function and your marketing or communications function.

It really is all about building that bridge early, doing joint campaigns where you can but also knowing where you need to separate your work and get your own agency and get your own budget. You’re never going to get as much as you want from marketing so choose your battles wisely.

You also did some early work on video job descriptions? We worked on a bunch stuff together at Autodesk. What difference can video make? What did you learn there?

I remember the Autodesk ones. And then I think Yelp was one of your early clients that did a killer job on video job descriptions.

The thing that I love the most about that approach is the transparency.

You immediately know the feel, the look of the office, even the hiring manager in some cases that you’re actually going to talk to. That level of access is unparalleled, you can’t get that on Glassdoor, you can’t get that on the career site.

People are more and more comfortable with this type of video, just shot right on your iPhone or computer. And that’s it. I do think that the more those systems get integrated, I hope that more hiring managers will pop up a 20-second video to enhance employer branding on job descriptions moving forward.

What’s your opinion on using a professional video or amateur video on job descriptions?

I have no problem doing something basic and simple. I think when you get to a point with a multi-billion dollar brand and trying to represent how the talent brand meets up with the corporate brand, that’s when your professional videos are necessary.

On things like a job description page, which are going to be up and down and change, why not put up a quick chat. I see no reason why you shouldn’t. So I think it’s pick and choose your quality of video for the more polished stuff.

Culture Decks. You were part of that Autodesk Culture Code Slideshare deck that took off like wildfire. I believe that Netflix, Hubspot, and Autodesk had the most popular culture code decks ever. What is a Culture Code Deck and what do you recall about that?

So I just looked at it and it’s at 1.9 million views. Unbelievable. This was actually one of those great cross-functional events where I had a really early Employee Value Proposition (EVP).

We wanted a really quick and easy way to visually share what it’s like to work at Autodesk.

• What are cool things about Autodesk the brand
• The projects you would work on

I sat down with a designer and some folks from their team and we just brainstormed and slapped together a quick deck. I mean, this was nothing crazy. It took us maybe a couple hours. We then put it up on SlideShare and did an internal training with recruiters and staff and everyone on how to share and put it on your LinkedIn profile, that kind of stuff. So organically, this piece of content went everywhere.

There were 60 slides. The philosophy behind it was to be almost BuzzFeed style. The title of it was Top Seven Reasons You Should Work at Autodesk. And just bam, bam, bam, bam, click-through the slides, you consume it with the visuals.

I loved that project. To this day, it’s still one of the things I’m most proud of. Zero dollars, and just an incredibly effective piece of content.

I’d say conservatively was probably about five total hours. It came up in the recruiting process all the time, candidates would say I love learning through it, and it totally hooked me and got me in the door.

Any tips on creating a good employer value proposition?

Absolutely. Creating a good employee value proposition depends on how crazy you want to go.

The biggest thing for EVP is having it being:

• Rooted in data
• Based on research
• Having the people who it’s most valuable to participate in the process.

What I mean by that is, conducting focus groups around themes, around your values, looking at your own existing culture surveys, and Glassdoor data. Getting as much data as you can, in one spot, crunch it, and then understand.

“There is an employee experience, an external brand, and somewhere in the middle there is what it’s actually like to work there. And that is your EVP.”

So by all that research, you can kind of get to this one central point.

It’s important to:

• Include those who are most valuable to make sure that it’s a committee working on this
• Use your internal staff to help write it
• Test it within your employees
• Make sure it’s done of the employees for the employees.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t use an external vendor, but make sure that the methodology the external vendor is using is very much rooted within your company and people within your company are helping make it.

In terms of the output of an EVP, it doesn’t matter. Whatever works for you. You can spend $250,000 on an entire brand architecture projects, or you can do it for free in-house with a couple folks that you update your careers website with.

Is $250,000 really something folks are paying for an EVP?

Oh, absolutely.

If you think of a complicated house of brands, like an eBay or Facebook, that is an incredible amount of research and digging into each one of their social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter).

“You have to understand the values of the company, how the employees are experiencing it, and then the actual messaging and architecture for each one of those and how it rolls up into a larger brand. That type of research and brand definition is a colossal amount of time to work. So yes, it could cost upwards of that.”

Let’s talk employer review sites. What do you think of Recruit/Indeed’s acquisition at Glassdoor what does that mean for talent leaders?

I truly believe they’re going to leave them alone.

I think they’re going to stay a separate brand that’s going to sit there for a while and they’ll probably pull some of the awesome stuff from Glassdoor and put it onto the Indeed review sites and stuff like that.

What it means for talent leaders? I don’t think anything.

“I think people need to start paying attention more to it. There’s still this very silly resistance from leadership or HR legal or someone around responding to or managing your Glassdoor side or engaging with it. I just find it silly. I mean, we have a social media response strategy for Twitter and Facebook, etc. And any large brand, why not for Glassdoor.”

I only see it becoming more and more important as jobs become. Whereas the economy heats up, and especially in Silicon Valley, and things get tighter, you’ve got to differentiate yourself somehow.

What do you say to talent leaders who cringe or have a bad feeling because their Glassdoor ratings are not quite where they want them to be? What’s your advice there?

Regardless of if you don’t like it or not, it’s a reality.

This is what your employees are saying about their experience.

I think particularly interesting is to look at what employees say when they leave. Those reviews are very telling and usually very honest about your hotspots. So if you want to change it, change something internally, this isn’t going to be fixed by a PR strategy on Glassdoor.

It’s really looking at the themes and the data and attacking those 3 critical things that employees are saying the most.

That’s actual work that you need actual executives to buy into and sign-off on. But when you start working on it, you will see results in your scores increase. And the recruiting process will be easier.

How would you compare Comparably versus Glassdoor? Is Comparably a Glassdoor alternative?

I’d say they’re direct competitors for sure.

I think Comparably’s differentiators are how they capture the data from the reviewers (employees) and the depth at which they do so. They use a really fascinating kind of CRM-based communications, where they’re slowly gathering more and more information about culture and salary. Much more sophisticated than Glassdoor.

I think over time, Comparably will kill it. They really have a much more fascinating group of data than Glassdoor has now, but Comparably is very, very small compared to Glassdoor at this point. They’ve got some growing to do but I think it’s an awesome platform.

Employer Branding Frameworks — Do you have any frameworks/systems you use to succeed at talent branding and talent attraction?

It’s almost like a management philosophy, but also a data philosophy.

I’ve built out teams that have upwards to 15 people who are working on this stuff all over the world. In order to manage a team like that, you really have to kind of let the reigns go a little bit. That kind of leads me to my philosophy around the measurement of your activities.

“For my teams there’s only one metric that matters to me, it’s the percent of candidates who we are paying for, who make it to an onsite interview. So, percent of candidates who come on site for an interview. That is the metric of success across every channel, every campaign, anything we do.”

Why that makes it so easy to allow for creativity and growth within the team is it allows for tons of space to play around.

If you want to try something crazy out there and you measure the percent of candidates that make to an onsite interview, you will get very clean and comparable data across your channels…for paid and free candidates.

That just makes it so easy to tell a really good story with data. That would be my one piece of advice to anyone getting into this space is:

“Pick your one metric that matters the most for your organization and hold your teams to it. That will change your world in terms of marketing campaigns and just knowing how you’re doing.”

Last but not least. Employera. That’s your new company that you’re joining. It seems like a really cool intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition. Why did you join Employera?

Employera is like a management consulting firm that’s focusing on employment brand, the talent lifecycle, internal communications, employee value proposition.

Why I joined? I have a deep and profound respect for the founding members like Andy (Getsey) and Kirsten Davidson from Glassdoor.

I’ve been in the hyper-growth startup phase for many years now and taking companies from a couple thousand to 20,000. I really wanted to shift into building out something small, digging in with a couple folks and really getting more back into the client base work where you can really dig in with a client and deliver something awesome to them.

So that was my logic behind it, I’ve just joined and I’m super-excited about what’s coming up.

The post Employer Branding Strategies from Working at Uber, WeWork and Autodesk first appeared on Ongig Blog.

It’s a simple yet powerful example of effective candidate experience and employer branding for you employers with multiple locations.

Epsilon is rolling out the red carpet for new employees (and candidates!) in every office with details about each location.

Here’s the Welcome to Epsilon (Auburn Hills office) page:

And here’s their Honk Kong welcome page:

Epsilon seems to do this for every office:

This welcome page is of course useful to any new employee but it benefits candidates too.

Candidates find the one page, for their desired location alone, a sense of the look and feel of that office. And they can review the different Welcome To location pages to see how the culture of the offices differs.

When you’re recruiting candidates into multiple offices, it pays to differentiate between each office.

Hong Kong’s office has a Starbucks in the building — very convenient!

Afterall, no two offices (or cultures) are ever the same.

Nice work, Chris Hanson, Matt Perry and the Epsilon leadership team!

The post Epsilon’s Unique “Welcome to…” Page for Candidate Experience first appeared on Ongig Blog.

The opening 2 sentences of some of their latest U.S. job posting includes 3 words about what the candidate has the potential/power to “BE”.  E.g.,

• “Be the expert”
• “Be a team player”
• “Be ambitious”

Check out the opening 2 sentences in these 2 job postings on LinkedIn to see some examples (it looks like they have about 20 of these “Be [fill in the blank]” taglines):

Then, in the last line of the job posting, they reinforce the EVP:

It’s great to see such employee value proposition examples on the job posting level and not just the career home page. The job ad is often the first impression a candidate has of working with you (i.e. they come in through Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Google, etc.).

Ongig enables you to do absolutely anything with job content coming out of your ATS. You can add employee value propositions, video, pictures, chat, ratings and reviews, employee testimonials and much, much more!

The post Colliers Adds Employee Value Proposition Taglines to Job Postings first appeared on Ongig Blog.