Recruiters benefit from employer branding.
Specifically, recruiters benefit from a deliberately crafted, consistently maintained content ecosystem that is a vital component of employer branding strategy.
There are two states of EB recruitment, and a quality content ecosystem helps them both
As it pertains to recruitment, there are two states of an employer brand: ramping and homeostasis.
Ramping is when you’re facing an influx of hires. Maybe a round of funding has just come through, or you’re opening a new facility, or the Super Bowl is coming to town and you anticipate the need to significantly increase your workforce. Suddenly, it becomes very important to have an available ecosystem of high-quality content that will appeal to your ideal candidates.
It’s not uncommon for talent teams to start seriously considering employer branding when they see a ramp approaching or otherwise find themselves in a hiring crisis, and that makes sense: While a few successful organizations have been building employer brands for decades, for everyone else, employer branding is a relatively new experience. At Job Portraits, we know everyone starts somewhere, and we’re equipped to meet your company where it is and get to work doing the next right thing.
But the ideal time to focus on employer branding is during homeostasis, when things are relatively stable at your company and there is no urgency for making hires. During homeostasis, you have the luxury of investing the attention and effort needed to thoughtfully and strategically communicate the truth of your employer brand. Because homeostasis does not mean you’re on autopilot.
Creating and communicating a content ecosystem for your employer brand is a long game
Ultimately, our goal is to cultivate a passive audience of people who are already watching what your company says and does. When you continue to feed relevant content to a smart and curious talent network, you contribute to the longevity of your brand.
There will be people in your talent network who do nothing but read your headlines for years—until they see the right opening. There will be people in that network who consistently connect to your content and amplify it through sharing it in networks of their own. There will be people who apply for something right away, and there will be people who opt out of your communications because they’re just not that into what you are doing.
Every single one of those outcomes are good. And all of them position you well for your next ramp.
When you cultivate a quality content ecosystem, you cultivate a quality candidate audience
Sharing a blog post here and there does not create a quality content ecosystem.
It takes strategy and time to create a cultivated, captive audience—and it also takes feedback. The more a brand communicates, the more feedback there is. And the more feedback there is, the easier it is to find common ground with your ideal candidate audience.
When you know your ideal candidate audience well, it becomes possible to create tailored messaging for segments of your audience, and then to distribute those messages through increasingly targeted networks. All that equates to receptive readers who are ready to act on what you offer.
At Job Portraits, what we hope to achieve for all of our clients is a satisfying state of homeostasis, one that thoroughly and honestly communicates the truth of a company, and that can respond to shifts in the weather and climate of the candidate market. That way, when the next influx of hiring opportunities arises, recruiters will have the tools they need to rapidly reach their ideal candidates.
