When people talk about ‘brand’ they often think solely from a customer perspective. However, a strong ’employer brand’ is also critical, in order to attract the right talent to your business. A company’s employer brand is twice as likely to drive job consideration as its company brand. With a shift in skill-set requirements across most industries, and Gen Y entering the workforce, it’s more important than ever to attract the right potential employees.

So how do you go about attracting great talent to your business? Laura Weaving, Founder of Duo Global Consulting has the following tips:

Your Employer Brand

Gen Z and Gen Y candidates are 61 percent more likely to choose a job based on the perception of the business as an employer. When you have a role to fill, make sure you:

• Describe the great working environment in your job description and publish this on your website and on social media
• Add a careers page, with details on the company culture as well as the job
• Provide some insight into company life, or why people would want to work for you.

Establish your Employer Value Proposition

This is your unique set of offerings, associations, and values that positively influence target candidates and employees. Overall, companies without an employer value proposition and a weak employer brand, report a cost per hire that is almost double that of companies with a strong employer brand. Without it, it’s extremely hard to attract the right potential employees and even harder to hire someone who is the right fit for your company.

When it comes to attracting talent, a strong employer brand therefore not only increases consideration, it is also a smart business investment.

Additionally, if an organisation has a strong employer value proposition and employer brand, especially one that resonates with current employees, it will also have a significantly lower staff turnover rate. Companies with a stronger employer brand have a 28 percent lower turnover rate than companies with a weaker employer brand.

The first step to developing an employer value proposition and effective employer branding is to assess your audience. Organisations need a strategic platform, with a compelling message at its core. This message should be the result of a thoughtful research program which assesses target audiences, tests messages and highlights the mediums in which ideal talent pools will consume your employer information. Without them, you will most likely execute the same recruitment programs over and over again, with the same average results.

Communicating your Employer Brand

Build personas of the types of talent you’d like to hire. And from here you can build your profile of your ideal candidate. These can include:

• Education
• Work experience
• Personal activities
• Aspirations and goals
• Values
• Personal life and family situation.

Once you have that profile, build your questions to ask in order to ascertain whether potential employees fit your ideal profile. You can tailor the advert and medium to speak to that profile.

Succession Planning

You should be looking at what positions you will need to hire in six to twelve months and what skills are required so you can build an internal talent pipeline. You don’t want to be working against the clock when the need arises to hire. Work ahead of that point and build a relationship with your ideal candidate. Additionally, with a lot of ideal candidates being already happy in their current roles, you will require the time to build that relationship.

Ensuring that your employer brand expresses your culture, environment, values and strategic vision is important. Investing to strengthen your employer brand, if done right, should help increase consideration of your company, lower recruiting costs, and decrease voluntary turnover.