It's a new year, which often means new, aggressive hiring goals. If this is your situation, you may want to consider investing in your employer branding efforts - which can play a critical role in your talent acquisition strategy and have a big impact on the candidate journey. For inspiration, we brought together a few experts to share how they approached the conception and execution of authentic employer branding programs. The panelists included:
- Anna Sayre, Director, Employer Brand Marketing at The Trade Desk
- Colleen Finnegan, Senior Manager, Employer Brand & Recruitment Marketing at Instacart
- Tarek Pertew, Chief Creative Officer at Uncubed
Check out the full recap below. For more great HR Webinars, stay in touch via our Resources page.
Why employer brand is important
Before we dive into program ideas, let’s first establish why employer brand is so important. In today’s competitive job market, employees are no longer just looking for a place to collect a paycheck - they’re looking for a place where they can be offered an attractive compensation and benefits package, focus on their personal and professional growth, and bring their whole selves to work.
Given that the majority of job seekers turn to third-party sites - such as Glassdoor - to discover information about potential employers, your company’s brand perception and reputation is more critical than ever!
Employer brand program ideas
Now that we have a solid understanding of the role that employer brand plays in talent acquisition, we want to share a few of the program ideas that our panelists have implemented at their organizations. You’ll find that many of these initiatives are low-hanging fruit that you can introduce at your company as well.
The Trade Desk
Employer Brand Collective
The Trade Desk formed a group called the Employer Brand Collective and is comprised of individuals across the talent acquisition, marketing, and people operations teams to tap into everyone’s areas of expertise. The purpose of the Collective is to get employer branding initiatives off the ground, make sure everyone internally understands why this exists and is aligned on the narrative, and then take the program externally. The group, Anna describes it, “makes sure everyone is singing from the same song sheet.”
Visual Values
When The Trade Desk launched its new values, they hired illustrators from locations where they have offices and created visual representations of their new pillars that are authentic to their culture. But they didn’t stop there. They embedded these values on swag to keep them top of mind for employees. For example, the team printed their values on postcards and encourages their employees to write and send handwritten notes to each other - whether it’s for a “thank you” note or to share a kudos!
Uncubed
Video Assets
You may be wondering how companies with remote workforces keep their employer brand narrative consistent. This is a huge part of the narrative at Uncubed, so they’re currently working on a video series. The company’s video team recently filmed Tarek and the leadership team at their homes to share a behind-the-scenes look into their remote work lives. This is a powerful asset because it not only shows one of the great benefits of working at Uncubed, but it’s also a very personal way to connect with the leadership team and is specific to their culture.
Instacart
Sage Advice
Instacart, being a grocery delivery company, is big on food-related puns and is also known for its thoughtful, kind, and empathetic employees. To merge these two important parts of their brand, the team created “Sage Advice,” a social series that highlights employees, the wisdom they live by, and their favorite grocery store item. This campaign lives across social channels, job boards, our careers site, and internal screens. It has proven to be a great way to recognize employees humanize the brand, lean into their unique culture.
Recruiter Pitch Deck and Training
Instacart also developed a deck and training module that gives recruiters and hiring managers a consistent, exciting, engaging, and easily repeatable narrative to answer the question “why Instacart?” Colleen and her team rolled this out to the team, along with an improv training, and will be translating the deck into L&D modules as well. As a result, Instacart recruiters reference this on calls daily, and it has been incorporated into recruiter onboarding and training as well.
We hope these examples inspire you to get started on your own authentic employer branding program this year! To learn more about how Blueboard can help and get in touch with our team, simply reach out to request a demo.
Stay tuned for more valuable webinars and upcoming events here on our Resources page - we can’t wait to see you again online!
