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An employment brand is a new breed of marketing and is the most advanced form of social recruiting. Bret Minchington, who authored the first book on employer branding defines it as, “The image of your organisation as a great place to work.” With Bret’s definition, employment branding is more than just social recruiting. It’s a new way to communicate, educate your audience and sell job seekers about your company through the eyes of the employee or prospective employee. Employment branding is a long term recruitment and candidate engagement strategy.

At the heart of the employment brand is a company’s career page where company information is shared, videos are housed and job seekers are able to search for job openings specifically at the company. Your careers page is the center of the employment branding solar system when building your strategy. See below, your employment branding strategy and company career page is fueled by nine primary channels that drive traffic, conversations and community surrounding your company’s

recruiting and employment brand marketing. Remember, my belief is that your company career page is the center of your employment branding although it serves as a branding channel. It is the most importance piece of your recruiting marketing strategy.

9 Types of Channels to Build Your Employment Brand

Employee Referrals.

A traditional candidate recruitment tool, employee referrals accounted for sometimes 30% of my hires. We live and work in the new engagement economy where personal and professional testimonials and recommendations make a difference today. These referrals are made even sweeter when employees receive compensation for sharing job openings to their friends, peers and family.

Social Media.

I’ve often said that social media is not a stand along recruitment strategy. It’s one channel to drive engagements, relationships and conversations that happen around social media including Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Visual Effects.

Visual branding like pictures and video are a great way to reach your target audience in a photographic and interesting way. Visual social tools like Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube can be used to help elevate your messaging speaking to a different audience than a blog post, press release, or transitional print media can and would.

Print.

Although print has forever been changed as a result of social media and the internet, print can still be a powerful tool to build a brand especially when reinforcing your online employment branding campaigns and messaging. Print while declining isn’t dead. There is something about holding a magazine, book or reading a traditional billboard that can send a powerful and meaningful message to the right candidate.

Other Websites.

By other websites I mean websites that are not your company site, company career page or social media profiles. These other sites can be in the forms of blogs, news outlets or online communities like Glassdoor.com, SalesGravy and TheDailyMuse.com.

Brand Ambassadors.

Brand ambassadors can be employees, advocates for the brand and partners who help recruiters make contacts or speak positively as well as negatively about your company. Hopefully, it’s the former. This includes bloggers and spokespersons who are paid and unpaid for brand evangelism opportunities.

Job Boards & Aggregators.

Job boards remain an important part of your recruiting and employment branding strategy. While these tools often promote current job openings through their platforms, these sites remain important as candidates take a number of touches learning, exploring and engaging with your recruiting team before they make the buying decision to apply.

Career Events.

Online resources, websites and tools are powerful but sometimes the best way to build relationships and brands is through good old fashion in person career events including open houses, job fairs and informational sessions about your company. Certainly, these in person events don’t always have to be recruiting focused but are executed with hiring in mind. My favorite event of time’s past was a invite only, tailgating party my OfficeMax team and I had before an University of Oklahoma football game to woo prospective employees.

Your Career Site.

It’s the key to your employment brand as it’s a destination point for all the channels described above, but it also remains a jumping off point for candidates to learn about your company which makes navigation, branding, and consistency so important that aligns with your company’s marketing and customer branding strategies.

Subscribe to the Workology RSS feed to not miss a thang here at Workology. This is a new and ongoing series on employment branding. Click here.