How to adapt Employer Brand focus to different moments of your company.

Usually, Employer Brand is associated with high volume hiring moments - when the company is already desperate for the brand to be known and recognized across the target audiences -? But many forget that when it comes to brand image building there are no magic snap-finger solutions, it requires time and consistency despite your market (sexy or not), type of company (B2B, B2C, B2B2C), and the roles that you are hiring for. To ensure you are ready, and your brand is known and attractive to your target audience you need to be working it with consistency but adapting your strategy to what’s going on in your company and in the market. Today I’ll bring some of the best strategies for different company moments: Scaling up, steady but massive hiring for specific roles, steady hiring or hiring for replacements, not hiring at all, or even downsizing.?

Scaling up

This is when companies usually build the Employer Brand function, and in my opinion, this is already too late - because Talent Acquisition is probably behind what they need to deliver and Employer Brand is one the last resources implemented as a lifeline for recruiters.

If you get hired at this point, my advice is to focus 100% in activate the brand with what you already have and supporting the Talent Acquisition team. Understand who are you trying to hire (define the main Personas) and put every cool thing about your brand in front of them.? You will have time to work on the foundation when things calm down, or after showing results when you can hire a team :)

Some Ideas: Ads on main Social Networks, Simple videos featuring your people, and work with influencers.

Steady but massive hiring for specific roles

If you are developing your strategy to hire for this type of role you may be working in an established company that had an Employer Brand in place (or at least this was my?

experience at Uniliver) or you need to support an Operations function doing volume hiring. Either way, my take here is usually to focus on the markets you are responsible for, identify the hubs where the people you want to hire gather (can be Universities, Cultural Centers, or even online communities), and ally with them.?

Some ideas: Ambassadors, Develop challenges, contest, and activities that ensure the target audience interact with your brand in a fun and relaxed way but still related to the job.

Steady hiring or hiring for replacements:

If you managed to wide down the fire, or get hired at this point, the focus is a bit different.?

What I usually see and did is to really understand where the company is coming from and where is going: are we planning on sustaining this hiring flow? If the answer is no, you can anticipate yourself and start drafting a strategy for any of the other stages.?

If the answer is yes, then you can ally with the People partners to understand where hiring will come from and create a plan for these needs at the time you start building a foundation?

Some Ideas:

Activation: Ambassadors, organic content plus a great dose of pre-build video content.

Foundation: Employer Value Proposition, Content Strategy, Internal activities to boost engagement and share it on social media.

Not hiring at all or downsizing:?

This is when things get interesting! How to prove the value of Employer Brand and ensure you are ready when your company resumes hiring?

This is the scenario of many companies at the moment, and for me is when we can really prove that Employer Brand is something that needs to be worked with consistently over time. So at this point, there are two main things to do: damage control to ensure the downsizing does not kill everything you’ve worked so hard to build and foundation development to help with damage control (boosting belonging among those staying) but also to ensure you are ready when hiring picks up.

Some Ideas:?

Damage control: work on an alumni network, moderate Glassdoor, and be transparent about the whys.

Foundation development: Candidate Experience review, Employer Brand Proposition, and Employer Value Proposition, Brand Guidelines, Ambassadors Program,? Internal activities to boost engagement and share it on social media.?