You have several open headcounts and have been promoting those roles everywhere. Even so, you are not getting the online traffic you’d anticipated—and you are seeing competitive businesses in your market scoop up top talent. 

Especially for start-ups or companies new to a market, low brand awareness could be a potential recruitment hurdle. But, by tapping into your consumer branding—specifically, your mission, vision, and what customers have to say—you can begin building a robust employer brand quickly and, with that, increase engagement, consideration and applications. 

Start here: harness the voice of the consumer 

While potential candidates may not know a lot about your business, your most enthusiastic consumers, clients or users do—and that consumer branding is often a good jumping-off point for efficiently building your employer brand.

To get started, look at your internal north stars—what your brand does particularly well—and work from there. These are your organisational reasons to believe in your company and, should a new employee join your business, they, too, will wind up rallying around these core messages and pillars. 

From there, tap into the voice of the customer. 

  • What are consumers saying about your business, products and services?
  • What is behind your positive brand sentiment?
  • What makes them buy into your brand promise—and what keeps them coming back? 

In many cases, you want your employees to believe in your product and identify with the mission—in other words, to understand what is unique about your organisation and leverage that to best promote your firm to future employees. 

Next, sync with employee priorities and experiences 

Beyond that, it is important to understand your market-specific conditions and what top talent wants right now. Especially now, those priorities continue to shift and evolve. Now, for example, 73% of employees consider flexible hours a key benefit and 23% are looking for career advancement. If you are clear on what is important to your core employee audience, bring those benefits and opportunities forward in job posts. 

What Jobseekers REALLY Want

As you are assessing and refining your employer brand, consider what jobseekers want right now—and if you are offering these or other equally compelling benefits that differentiate you from the competition.

  • 73% of employees say they want their employer to offer flexible hours
  • 53% would consider a pay cut if it meant they could have flexible work
  • 56% believe flexibility at work makes them more productive

Source: The Times of India, “Flexible work arrangement is top priority for today's workforce”. Feb 2019.

Then, promote this social proof to employees and jobseekers

With your customer insights and employee-first offerings at the ready, the last step is to promote your message to jobseekers.

Reputation Matters

82% of jobseekers in India agree that it has a significant impact on their decision of whether or not to accept a job offer.

Source: Indeed survey, n=500.

In an increasingly competitive market, reputation matters. Today, it is essential that organisations focus on their employer brand and, specifically, promote a dynamic, authentic story that resonates with both prospective and current employees. Anchored by customer and employee experiences and opportunities built around what talent wants and needs right now, you will build a stronger brand reputation—and strong employer branding—that proactively attracts potential hires. 

Together, these three steps can help you build out a dynamic employer brand that, even for new companies or companies new to a particular market, help drive candidate engagement and consideration—and, ultimately, can help your business compete with well-established, well-regarded enterprises.