How to Attract Passive Candidates: Practical Guide to Start Building A Strong Employer Branding

For so many companies out there, hiring new talent is considered by many of HR Department people as a one-way selection process, where it is all about a potential employer who will choose to hire a potential employee, and not vice versa.

However, when HR Department people meet with highly qualified passive candidates, the selection process has suddenly changed and it’s rather becoming a two-way selection process, where a potential employee will also make a critical decision whether he wanted to join this potential employer as his/her next career move, or decided to stay at his current employer.

It is where employer branding becomes an important part of recruitment or hiring process, especially to attract highly qualified passive candidates who might not be looking for a new job but will probably interested in working at your company because of its strong employer branding message.

Wikipedia defined employer branding as the organization's reputation as an employer, and its value proposition to its employees, as opposed to its more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to the customer. It is mainly applied not only to attract obvious talents but also to engage and retain existing talents within the company.

In my personal experience, the core foundation of an engaging employer branding is one of the primary responsibilities of the organization’s founder or its top management people, and it actually started with a very simple question, “In one single word, what would you like your company to be perceived by existing and/or potential talents?”

The answer to the above question would give an excellent starting point to develop your employer branding objectives based on these criteria:

• It must be aligned with the company’s vision and mission
• It must be brought into line with the company’s work culture
• It must reflect the central positive attitude of the existing talents
• It must be communicated effectively, both internally and externally
• It must be implemented correctly and consistently

How to communicate your employer branding message is crucial, because at the end of the day what matter most about employer branding is how your company would be able to attract qualified passive candidates and retain existing talents with minimum investments.

Most companies nowadays utilize the power of social media, such as Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, and many others, to incorporate its employer brand proposition more effectively and efficiently to the targeted segment of their potential future employees.

"What matter most about employer branding is how your company would be able to attract qualified passive candidates and retain existing talents with minimum investments."

Last but not least, don’t forget to ensure your company can fulfill all your promises to the hired candidates. Nothing else could devastatingly ruin employer branding efforts than empty or broken promises to your newly acquired talents.

Note: This is an old article that I published on our corporate blog sometime in 2011, only a slight revision was made to make it more relevant to a recent hiring trend.