Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: How to Unify Your Employment Branding Efforts #SHRM15

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

These days, employment branding is on the hearts and minds of many talent acquisition leaders. Even though it seems to be everywhere, it is still a relatively new phenomenon and subset of the recruitment industry. The concept is developing rapidly and catching on, but it’s still in its infancy. One of the ways that the concept is growing is through conversations happening all over the place. Employment branding thought leaders are sharing their own best practices and evangelizing in the field through communities like the newly formed Employment Branding Chat on Twitter, or #Ebchat. I love all the conversations, resources and questions shared on these social peer communities. It helps professionals learn from each other and helps in identifying trends as this subset of recruiting and HR continues to develop.

One of the issues that I’ve been able to identify as a problem for many companies and HR or recruiting teams is what to do when you have too much employment branding. This is both a challenge and an exciting problem to have. This means that your people are actively promoting the employment brand and truly get it, though the team’s efforts need to be consolidated and focused.

Consistent, fluid and focused messaging

It’s amazing to have buy in on the idea of employment branding from many team members, but like traditional marketing, it’s important for your message and conversations to be fluid, in line with the current campaign and clear. When you are a large organization it’s hard to get a handle on the massive amount of recruiting and talent acquisition materials and information that recruiters and hiring managers want to be shared, but there absolutely has to a consistent, fluid and focused message, and all your people must embrace it.

In order for this to happen, your organization should exercise employment branding unification, which is essentially the simplification and organization of your employment branding efforts. When you unify, all communications, media pieces and collateral materials are in line with the brand.

With these four steps you can unify your efforts to ensure employment brand success, which means that recruiters have what they need and candidates aren’t overwhelmed:

Conduct an employment branding inventory

Research, absorb and account for all media, materials and branded elements used in the recruiting and hiring process. Talk to your recruiters to ensure that no one has gone rogue and is using materials or messaging they created independently.

Organize and sort your materials

Develop categories so that materials are easier to sort through. You can sort by topic, candidate type, when in the process the material is used or really any other way that makes sense for your team.

Prioritize and purge

Find out what messages resonate with your employees and candidates and hone in on those. Those that don’t should be set aside or recycled for another later campaign. Quality should be the focus, not quantity.

Create employment branding buckets

Authorized materials for different campaigns can be stored in each bucket. Your “bucket” could be as simple as a Google Drive, Dropbox or could be housed within your TalentCircles Talent Network. Give your candidates options of information and resources to absorb and engage with while also providing recruiters and hiring managers with materials and guidelines based on the specific campaign.

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Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.