6 Employer Branding Mistakes You Need to Avoid
Publié le 6 June 2022
Improve your connection with clients and job candidates by understanding 6 employer branding mistakes you need to avoid.
The work environment has changed, with employees not lacking in choices when selecting a workplace. The balance of power has shifted from employers to employees as the latter are now demanding more from organizations.
For instance, today’s employees prefer a company with a hybrid environment. They want to be trusted to do their best and be allowed to grow in their profession with minimal supervision. This shift has made attracting new talent more challenging than ever. The image that a company presents to applicants is crucial in the hiring process.
Here are 6 employer branding mistakes you need to avoid to recruit the right talent.
6 Employer Branding Mistakes You Need to Avoid
- 1. Undefined branding strategy
- 2. Lack of social media engagement
- 3. Reusing old content
- 4. Neglecting feedback from existing staff
- 5. Ignoring negative online reviews from former employees, candidates
- 6. Not monitoring your brand image
1. Undefined branding strategy
An undefined branding strategy is one of the typical employer branding mistakes companies make when recruiting for potential employees. An undefined strategy fails to articulate a company’s purpose. It occurs when a company fails to convey to employees or consumers why they exist, what makes them stand out, or what values they stand for.
An undefined strategy also occurs when a company doesn’t understand how it wants to be perceived as an employer in the first place. The result is that its employer branding marketing collateral is not consistent.
Let’s take the example of a fictitious company called “Robot Food.” Let’s say the company lacks an undefined strategy. So at one point their job ad has a friendly tone like this one:
When they want marketers, Robot Food may send a job ad like this one:
This inconsistency between job ads is proof that the company lacks an undefined strategy for recruitment branding.
A report by Deloitte on company core beliefs and culture showed that 76% of executives and 57% of employees identify a clearly defined business strategy as a factor that contributes to a company’s success.
An undefined branding strategy results in poor visibility in the marketplace. It discourages potential employees from applying to your job vacancies as it’s not clear what your brand is all about. Prospective employees can’t tell whether you’re a quirky brand that gives employees flexibility or if you’re a serious brand that values traditional employment notions such as the 9 to 5 work schedule.
You can correct this employer branding mistake by following the steps below:
You need to determine your purpose, set the right goals, and create the right content to help you reach those goals. If you decide you want to be a serious brand, you should produce content that reflects that brand personality to fill your vacant designer position.
2. Lack of social media engagement
Most organizations fail to realize the power of social media in recruiting the right employees. Yet social media is one of the best recruiting platforms as 79% of job seekers use social media in their job search. If you’re not taking advantage of social media in your recruitment process, you’re missing out on engaging active and passive job seekers.
You should always make your posts filled with high-quality and authentic content. When people reply to your posts, you should personalize your response by addressing each user’s name. This can be a time-consuming task, but using social media moderation tools can help streamline the process, as they allow you to monitor and manage comments and messages across multiple social media platforms from one place.
One ideal way to boost engagement is by posting high-quality images. If you’re not comfortable with the technical aspects of design, you can AI image generators to produce customized mages and templates for all your graphic design needs. Just be sure to add a human touch to preserve the level of authenticity that your audience will want.
An excellent example of a company that has actively used social media in its recruitment process is Dell. The company’s strategy in social media is relatively simple, “Be helpful and interesting.” If you check out their Facebook page, you’ll find quotes from employees, photos, and questions relevant to the brand.
Source: Dell Careers
An excellent social media recruitment post encourages potential employees to consider what it would be like to work in your company. Some job seekers are likely to engage in the conversations, and talented candidates will be encouraged to apply. Make sure you don’t neglect your mobile recruitment strategy.
3. Re-using old content
Re-using old content is an employer branding mistake. Many companies copy-paste the content of their “About Us” page from their website to LinkedIn and other platforms. Their “About Us” page starts with “Our company was founded in 1983 and now operates in 60 countries.” That isn’t good practice, though. People don’t like companies that don’t take the time to think about what content to write on each platform.
The use of old content also negatively affects the recruitment process. Companies that reuse old job ads will likely attract the wrong people to the vacancy. Just imagine getting this ad published for a video editor vacancy that requires knowledge of Adobe Premiere Pro, not just basic Adobe Premiere:
If these applicants get to later stages of the hiring process (they meet the requirements of the old job ad, after all) only to be told they don’t have the necessary skills for the job, that will harm your employer reputation.
It is best to continually update the material you use on any platform for recruiting. In writing your updated material, try not to use buzzwords. Instead, coordinate with the hiring manager to determine which requirements are non-negotiable and which ones are optional. Being able to demonstrate the flexibility of your organization can help recruit qualified applicants, who strongly value this quality from their employers.
In addition, you need to perform SEO on your updated content. If your updated recruitment ad isn’t optimized for SEO, the chances of suitable candidates seeing it would still be slim, especially if they use search engines to look for jobs.
4. Neglecting feedback from existing staff
Sometimes companies can be so focused on hunting for fresh talent that they forget to pay attention to existing staff. However, this is one of the worst employer branding mistakes you need to avoid.
Around 86% of job seekers research a company’s reviews and ratings before deciding where to apply for a job. When you have negative feedback from existing employees online that you haven’t addressed, you will be sending the message that your business doesn’t value its employees.
A feedback-driven culture can help you avoid having employees broadcast their complaints on review boards and social media. Such an open-door policy as part of your workplace culture allows employees to air out their feedback through conference calls and meetings.
You should also listen to employee feedback about the recruitment process itself and make the necessary changes to improve the process. Your employees were once applicants themselves and understand the ins and outs of your recruitment process better than anyone else.
Use employer feedback to your advantage to ensure a good employer branding reputation.
5. Ignoring negative online reviews from former employees, candidates
We talked about the feedback of existing employees. Now let’s talk about the feedback of disgruntled former employees no longer with the company and candidates who did not get hired.
There’s a growing trend of people going to popular websites to post negative reviews about the companies they worked or applied for. Ignoring such reviews affects your employer branding. A report by Randstad found that 57% of employees won’t apply to a company with negative reviews.
The best way to handle negative online reviews is by coming up with a response strategy. That entails designating someone to respond to the reviews. The person should embody the company’s values and should be articulate.
Here’s an example:
The secret is to try and keep calm when receiving and dealing with negative feedback. The person assigned to respond shouldn’t view the complaint as a personal attack on the company and seek to understand what’s going on. They should be respectful by using professional language. You should also investigate the issue and explain the next steps the company is taking to address it.
Your designated person should also thank former employees and candidates who leave positive reviews about the company.
6. Not monitoring your brand image
Employers should continuously monitor their brand image to ensure that it’s aligned with what they had intended it to be.
You can use brand monitoring tools for this. Let’s say you wanted your company to be perceived as a fun employer. Then, you’d look for keywords related to “fun,” such as “enjoyable,” “entertaining,” “amusing,” and “great,” among others.
You can also use brand perception surveys to determine how people perceive your employer brand, along with employee satisfaction surveys to learn the attitudes of existing employees.
There’s more to brand mentioning than tracking and collecting brand mentions. You also have to take deliberate action on the information gathered, for instance, by identifying areas of improvement and implementing strategies to improve them.
Wrapping Up
In such a competitive job market, the last thing you want to do is ignore your company’s branding. That’s why you need to understand these 6 employer branding mistakes you need to avoid and take steps to do so.
Avoid an undefined branding strategy and a lack of social media engagement. Also, don’t reuse old content and neglect feedback from existing staff and former employees and candidates. Finally, be sure to continue monitoring your employer brand image.
Job seekers conduct a background check of companies before sending their applications. It’s up to you to ensure the proper branding to attract the best talent.
