What is modern employer branding? To answer the question, we must make comparisons.
I have been in HR marketing roles since 2002. When I started in HR, the only marketing available was print advertising and a few upcoming online job boards, such as the Monster Board and Stepstone. Putting a bigger, 4-color print ad on the Sunday newspaper once a year was considered employer branding. If you had means to do anything else, it was mainly to add a nice photo image on the top of your online job posts.
The world of HR marketing is very different today. The birth of social media was perhaps the biggest gift HR marketing practitioners will ever receive. We now have the means to:
- Build our audiences – very targeted and very specific audiences.
- Engage with them, learn about them, build rapport and relations with them online in very cost effective ways.
- Get to know each other way before we need to hire or they are in a need of a new job.
These are at the core of modern employer branding.
Podcast episode content & links
This podcast episode answers to the questions:
- What is modern employer branding?
- How does it work?
Length of this introductory episode: 12:49 min
Key differences between modern and traditional employer branding (in my opinion)
The key differences between my modern method and what I refer to as the “traditional” way to employer brand are in the target audiences, most typical marketing goals, the consistency of the actions and the messages.
I am a huge fan of Simon Barrow and Richard Mosley who first coined the term employer brand. They published the Employer Brand -book in 1996, and I came across to it very early in my HR career. That book and how Barrow and Mosley describe what employer brand is, is still relevant, and very much inline with my thoughts about modern employer brand.
Traditional employer branding has always focused on amplifying current recruitment success through advertising campaigns.
Yet, the traditional employer branding has always focused on amplifying current recruitment success through advertising campaigns. While the modern employer brand also amplifies recruitment success, of course, the most significant differences are when and how.
- Traditional employer branding tends to be focused on either getting more applications or getting better applicants right now.
- Modern employer branding is paving the growth company’s way to future recruitment success, enhancing employee commitment to company mission, delivery of the customer promise and expanding the recruitment audience to fans, advocates, spokespeople and to talents who would not consider the company as a place of work based on what they now know.
- With the traditional employer branding focus on increasing the number of applications, the target audience will always be only those job seekers who happen to be actively looking for a job at the same time of the campaign.
There is a fundamental difference, a paradigm shift, between the traditional way of employer branding and my modern way. This podcast invites you into my world and my head, and hopefully you will find it inspiring and educating.
5 key elements of Modern Employer Branding
- Positioning the Talent as the Hero of your employer branding story.
- Planned, consistent and an on-going activity exploiting the opportunities of targeted social, digital and content marketing.
- Invites the ideal talents to a Candidate Journey with your company.
- Converts your ideal talents into your followers, advocates, fans and future employees.
- Positions your business authentically different from other companies hiring the same talent.
About the Building Modern Employer Brand -podcast
Building a Modern Employer Brand -podcast is a weekly podcast bringing you a modern breath of air into HR marketing and employer branding dedicated for all modern growth companies and modern employer branding practitioners who want to do a job that influences talent audiences and adds value to growing and scaling modern businesses. This podcast is sponsored Employee Experience Agency Emine and hosted by Susanna Rantanen.