In recent conversations I have had with companies on their recruitment process, it has become clear how their own recruitment strategy is a jumble of trial and error and outsourcing it to agencies. Not many take into account how their own employees are feeling, working and performing.
How can we expect to recruit the top talent if we don’t know how our current workforce is feeling? This is where the internal branding idea comes in. Internal branding is the story that an organisation tells. This in turn reveals it’s true culture and elements that motivate, engage and encourage its top performers. It is this that speaks to potential candidates.
Larger corporations, such as IBM have been doing it for a while, and have a proven methodology around it. Before we look at that, I want to present to you the advantages of implementing an internal brand.
The advantages of getting clear on your internal brand
- Ability to find candidates exactly like your top performers
- Discovery of what makes your company unique which can then be used to produce creative communications to help attract top talent…
- This top talent can then experience the culture of your company before they join, which leads to…
- Improvement in employee retention
How to find your internal brand
We believe the best approach is to use both research and science combined, which can be divided in to 3 areas:
(Source: IBM)
Cultural Analysis
Finding the personality of your organization is crucial. That’s why conducting a cultural analysis is an integral part of employee branding. It must be built around facts, truths and personality.
Candidates want a company to be honest with their values and expectations. Therefore showing the internal culture on the outside works to huge advantage. It not only teaches candidates what to expect but it can also be used as an assessment and engagement tool.
Creative Sourcing
Creative sourcing combines top performer research, competitive market research and company culture assessments.
Identifying and selecting top candidates – this is where a company talks to their employees who are experts in their fields. Then they recruit people who have these very similar traits and experience. It can help with the whole process of who to target, where to find them and what to say.
This can help lower recruitment costs, discover non-traditional media outlets to reach candidates and optimize an organization’s referral programme. This can compliment recruitment outsourcing (if you’re not quite ready to give that up yet).
Career Site Development
Sitting between the corporate website and the company’s recruitment technology is the perfect place to recruit new candidates. This is where the Career Site comes in. This should be the first and most used means of communication for potential new hires. It is where the overall internal branding should speak its words in the form of showing the company’s environment, the expectations and existing employee values.
If the potential candidates like what they see, they can dive in and look at the available careers and openings. This is when they embark on the journey through your recruitment process, which would all integrate, into your HR systems.
(Source: IBM)
To summarise:
- Carry out culture research on your existing top employees; find out what makes them tick, where they can be found and how they speak. You can do this by using cultural analysis surveys, interviews, informal chats
- Use this information to create a unique personality for your company that can then be used in marketing and the Career Site.
- Integrate your Career Site with your recruitment technology and HR systems
