In the current climate, recruitment is the last thing that organisations are thinking about. There is more talk about staff cuts, pay reductions and cost management. But we have never had more jobseekers active. On Google alone in June there were over 124,000,000 searches for “jobs”.
When recruitment is a priority, companies spend significant sums of money on their employer brand, promoting and protecting its value. Yet nowadays, when recruitment activity has dropped down the priority list, there is a huge risk that damage is being done to the employer brand.
In our digital world candidates are looking for employer information in all sorts of places; they Google, use job boards, social networks, business networks and anything else that will give them access to potential employers. The question is; what will they find? Organisations that during times of active recruitment are planning and implementing their employer brand and attraction strategies down to the last tiny details are now completely hands off and not managing their visibility in a proactive way at all.
If you search the internet for a company name you might find listings that talk more about job cuts than career opportunities. On job boards, links can take you to a section that says “We have no current opportunities” or even worse, to a blank page.
On social networks such as Facebook and Twitter there are “groups” of disgruntled employees and ex-employees voicing their views on the employer. This is obviously not the kind of candidate journey that people expect, and it can damage the employer brand. After all, it is not inconceivable that within a year these are the very candidates that are again in high demand.
There is now no down time in the world of employer branding. The digital world is all around us and the need to manage your employer brand and visibility cannot be left to the bottom of the list. It is something that requires a forward-thinking plan that will ensure that employers are well positioned for the upturn that will inevitably come, and with it more jobs and the desire to hire the best candidates.
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A minimal investment in your employer brand today will bring rewards in the future.
Andrew Wilkinson, chief executive, TMP Worldwide
