ERE has a number of ‘how to’ articles on Employer Branding that I’ve written over the years. The first in the series is at:

http://www.ere.net/articles/db/249C274881214A5393A726333E06FD0A.asp.

The ‘long story short’ of the ‘how’ is this: If you know what factors and practices create an inspiring/engaging work experience, and then you work with your management team and frontline employees in creating a workplace and work experience that is inspiring and engaging, THEN you’ll have something to tell the labor pool.

My experience is that most organizations try to do the ‘tell’ before they actually create the great work experience.

In the three part series of that article, you’ll find a step by step process.

If you’re a recruiter, but not involved in the day to day employee experience, then I see your greatest influence coming from sharing with HR and management articles and research on the ‘Why’ – why it’s in their best interest to do the HOW. Once they get that it’s worth the time, effort, and financial investment, then share with them the articles on the ‘how’.

If you go to the articles section of my website, you’ll find both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ articles.

Also, at ERE.net, there’s an article that challenges the typical approach to Employer Branding that you might want to share. It’s titled:

Before You Waste Your Time and Money on So-Called Employer Branding

http://www.ere.net/articles/db/2BF6D117C4BD431389D1E7C0A6F26B48.asp

Hope this helps.

As a recruiter, how can we make this happen?

I don’t want to delve too deeply into the following as I’m working on an article regarding this topic, however what I would like to briefly note is the following:

1. Employment Branding initiatives are critical and necessary as a PARITY POINT. In terms of game theory, it is not feasible to sit back and do nothing while your competitors supercharge their marketing efforts.

2. ‘Standing for something’ or communicating to your target market (in this case, your target candidate pool) what your organization and workplace stand for is a true step in the right direction . . . if and only if someone cares to know (and/or they happen to come in contact with your employer value proposition).

What I have observed about employment branding today is that the emphasis is on communicating overarching values as opposed to what marketers would term ‘value proposition management’. For example, most would agree that Business Unit A and Business Unit B of the same organization have very different personalities and strategic objectives (consider New Product R&D versus the Marketing Department of the org’s cash cows). As such, the same message that would resonate with a candidate for Biz Unit A may be quite different than the message for a target candidate of Biz Unit B.

In my eyes, this represents the future of employment branding – a progression from placing overarching values on a website or marketing brochure to actual targeted value proposition management (VPM) initiatives that are supported by the Sourcing function of corporate recruiting units. Targeted VPM is what I’m seeing actually occur within ‘Candidate Development Teams’ . . . it’s just the marketing messages (employment branding tools) used to support the recruiting effort are more overarching than targeted.

Candidate Development is SELLING . . . and Employment Branding is MARKETING . . . the issue is marrying the two together in unison to drive better results.