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- Talent Management Starts With Employer Branding - January 26, 2015
- 5 Ways HR Executives Can Boost Employee Retention - January 12, 2015
The emergence of Talent Management as a best practice in enterprise companies is a major step forward for employers and candidates. It’s exciting for candidates looking for companies where they can grow personally and professionally. And it’s exciting for enterprise companies who can become market leaders through the professional growth of its employees.
As Talent Management becomes an integral best practice in Human Resources, it has an increased impact across all aspects of the company. From hiring to on-boarding to learning management to performance reviews, Talent Management has taken center stage. For that reason, it’s critical to understand how Employer Branding relates to Talent Management.
In fact, what you will ultimately find is the Talent Management starts with Employer Branding.
Here are three keys to this thought process.
1. Get the right candidates excited about working for your company
You’ve got to get top talent interested in working for your company before you can manage their career path. That’s not to say you shouldn’t have an excellent plan in place for when top candidates join your company. It is to say that you need to have a plan for attracting the right candidates for the career
path to have a positive trajectory. That’s why your Employer Brand is so valuable to Talent Management.
Your Employer Brand is the first interaction candidates may have with your company. It’s what friends or colleagues will say to a referral. It’s a shared job posting being clicked in a LinkedIn news feed. It’s the research a candidate does on Glassdoor after being contacted by one of your recruiters. All of these connection points tell your Employer Brand story. This is the gateway to Talent Management, and your opportunity to get the right candidates excited about working for your company. A strong Employer Brand can help you build a pipeline of strong candidates excited about the career path your company provides.
Be sure to create a strong connection between Talent Management and Employer Branding in your organization. This will mean bringing together Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, and Marketing in enterprise companies. Make sure you are lockstep on messaging and the stories you want to tell. You can work together to make sure the stories are authentic, and get the right candidates excited about working for your organization.
2. Provide candidates with a clear connection between opportunity, effort, and rewards
Candidates make a job change for multiple reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that they want a clear path to reach their goals. Employer Branding provides an exceptional chance to communicate the opportunity your company offers. And even more important, the effort it is going to take to obtain the rewards a candidate is seeking.
Look at sales positions for a good example of this. Many companies advertise sales compensation in terms of On-Target Earnings (OTE). Candidates will look at an OTE salary number like $200K/year, and they see $200K/year as what will end up in their pocket. The reality is that they’ll likely be paid a base salary around $120K, and get to $200K if they’re hitting their goals.
This is an instance where your Employer Brand can help filter candidates to make your screening process more efficient. Let the sales candidates in this case know exactly what it’s going to take to hit their OTE. Salespeople tend to be very motivated, so let them know up front what it will take to hit the OTE advertised. Will they be expected to hit 100% of an aggressive quote off the bat? Is there a ramp in place for compensation while they get up to speed? Top sales candidates are thinking about these questions.
With Employer Branding you’ve got an opportunity to discuss these questions in an open forum with your candidate base. You can discuss these questions in your job descriptions, on review sites, on social media networks, etc. The truth will set you free in Employer Branding. And the truth has a significant impact on the pipeline of candidates who may be headed toward your Talent Management practice once hired.
Be specific about the effort it will take to reach the rewards you advertise.
3. Let candidates know what your company expects from day one
The beauty of Employer Branding is that you can set the table. A true and authentic brand leaves no surprises while revealing very clear cultural expectations.
Think about the candidate who comes into your office for their first in-person interview, and knows within 10 minutes it isn’t a good fit. Or hiring managers that spend several hours of their time interviewing and assessing candidates who decline your job offer. These are situations an enterprise company can 
avoid by showing an authentic Employer Brand. This is your opportunity to show candidates exactly what your company culture is all about.
There’s a clear connection between communicating your culture and Talent Management. This is because a clear career path only works if you’ve got the right people in your company. When a candidate can clearly see your culture and expectations through your Employer Brand, and willingly applies, you’ve got higher odds of getting the right people. And having employees who are a cultural match is critical to the success of your Talent Management practice.
I’ve experienced the negative impact a lack of proper branding can have. In my early days as a recruiter, I had problems with candidates backing out after verbally accepting a position. In retrospect, it was because I was so busy talking them into taking the job that I never tried to talk them out of the job. I later found that if I tried to talk them out of the job by being clear on company culture and expectations, my back-out rate was far less. The candidates fully understood the situation, and knowingly made the decision to move forward. The same opportunity holds true with the link between Employer Branding and Talent Management.
Providing a clear career path to candidates who clearly understand your culture and expectations will increase your company’s opportunity for growth.
Ongig is the first ever Employer Branding SaaS — it allows enterprises to create, distribute and measure interactive job descriptions at scale. American Express, Autodesk, CDK Global and Yelp are among the early users of the Ongig SaaS.
Images: The Pitch, DriverLayer, Business News Daily, Red Careers
