Need to stand out to candidates? Here's how hiring tech can help improve your employer brand

5 mins, 36 secs read time

There’s a lot happening in the talent landscape right now – from the Great Resignation and quiet quitting to high-profile layoffs. In this environment, it can be hard to know where to focus your energy. Whether you’re hiring at full pace or taking a pause, it’s worth taking a closer look at your employer brand.

The way you communicate your values and what it’s like to work at your company is key to standing out and getting candidates invested in your company and your mission right from the start. And there’s more good news: you don’t have to do it all on your own. There are now all types of technology that can support your employer branding efforts.

We caught up with Greenhouse’s Head of People Experience Layla Kajer and Talent Acquisition Managers Adrina August and Pamely Gomez to get their tips for building a standout employer brand with hiring technology.

Why invest in your employer brand right now?

It might seem a little counterintuitive: if you’re not hiring as intensely as you were in the past, then why shouldn’t you put employer branding efforts on pause, too? There are plenty of reasons why improving employer branding is so critical right now.

If hiring is slowing at your company, it’s a good time to reallocate some of your time and energy to evaluating and strengthening your employer brand. “The time to prepare isn’t during the race, it’s in the months leading up to the race. In the same way, the time to build our reputation, to share the unique stories of our culture and our offering, is now,” Layla explained. For example, you might spend time conducting surveys to narrow in on your employer value proposition or collecting employee stories for your company blog and social media campaigns.

The Great Resignation is being driven by workers who are dissatisfied with the status quo. “As candidates search for their next opportunity, they are often looking for a place where there is a sense of belonging, where they’ll have a purpose and where they can drive impact,” Pamely said. “Candidates are now looking for an organization where they are valuable, professionally and personally.” Creating streamlined communication – from your career page and outreach emails to the questions you ask during interviews – can help you ensure you’re sharing a consistent, appealing message with candidates.

And don’t forget that your employer brand isn’t just for attracting candidates – it’s a key to retaining your existing workforce. As Adrina put it, “Your current talent knows they have options, but they will never forget how you made them feel during a time of confusion and instability in the market.”

With so many tech companies laying people off as a quick means to shift their balance sheets and reduce expenses, today’s candidates are taking a deeper look at the culture and the leadership philosophies behind a company – it’s no longer just about the compensation and benefits or household name recognition. They’re going to look to see who fought to not do layoffs. They want to know who put their people first and made hard decisions to protect jobs. Layla Kajer, Head of People Experience at Greenhouse

How hiring technology can improve your employer branding efforts

There’s a lot of great technology available to help you build, maintain and measure your employer brand. Here’s an overview of some of the biggest benefits and hiring tech you can use to get them.

Offer consistent communication to candidates
One of the fastest ways to lose candidates is to leave them in the dark, whether it’s about a hiring decision or what to expect next in the process. You can use hiring tech like Greenhouse Recruiting to set up templates and automatic reminders about when to follow up and create informative messages like those sent by marketers or salespeople to build awareness. “You’re able to develop strategic, targeted and branded messaging templates throughout the candidate's recruiting lifecycle that can be shared across the talent team,” said Pamely. “These messages can not only include insights about what they should expect from your interview process, but also resources, videos and blogs that speak to your culture and brand.”

And the conversation goes both ways. With a hiring tool like Greenhouse, you can send automated candidate surveys at a specified point in the candidate journey (after the hiring manager interview, for example). This allows you to consistently measure your candidate experience and identify areas for improvement.

Communicate your values at every stage of the candidate experience
Because mission and values are critical for today’s candidates, make sure you’re communicating yours at every stage of the employee experience. Layla said, “Tech can help strengthen your employer brand by offering a simple, elevated interview and candidate experience that delivers on the brand that candidates read about before they applied.” A structured interview process (made simple with interview kits and scorecards) ensures you ask all candidates the same questions and assess them against the same criteria. It also gives your hiring team the opportunity to reinforce company values because you can build culture-add questions directly into your interviews.

Share employee stories on social media
Don’t just rely on the recruiting team to promote your employer branding efforts. You can spread your message far and wide with a little help from everyone else at your company. If you’re worried that people outside the recruiting team might not have the time to come up with content, employee advocacy tools make it easy to share prepared stories on social platforms quickly and consistently.

Track your successes and use data to drive future campaigns
Like every other aspect of recruiting, it’s important to collect data and use it to drive future decision-making. Greenhouse Recruiting customers get access to pipeline history reports that highlight bottlenecks, report on milestones and show consistent metrics across the company. And employee advocacy tools make it easy to track the success of shared content and give you good indicators about what matters to candidates right now.

Ensure your external brand reflects the internal experience

Wondering what steps to take next? “A brand is only as strong as the experience,” said Layla. “In order to deliver on an employer brand we’re sharing externally, we need to be living it internally.” To accomplish this, Layla suggests creating a comprehensive map of the employee lifecycle, from initial interactions during the interview process through to onboarding, learning, growing and eventually leaving, to understand what a great experience would look like at every touchpoint. “Identify the gaps between the current experience and the ideal, brand-aligned experience to prioritize your work.”