10 Best Employer Branding Services:
01. ThirtyThree US
Provides employer branding, internal communications, and employee engagement services.
02. Symphony Talent
Symphony Talent uses data-driven consumer marketing best practices to personally engage a business's employer brand and candidates. They also simplify and streamline the recruiting process.
03. SPLICE
SPLICE uses a more creative style to communicate a business's brand in the form of videos, landing pages, infographics, and social media campaigns. They also assist with sourcing and recruiting candidates.
04. Envol Strategies
Helps businesses solve complex hiring and retention challenges through a wide range of services, including employer branding, recruitment, and human resource solutions.
05. Borenstein Group
Offers a range of PR, branding, and marketing services to help businesses improve brand awareness in the B2B and B2G space.
06. Employer Brand International
Employer Brand International is an online site that offers coaching and certification in employer brand leadership. They teach company leaders how to plan and implement a strategic employer branding approach and gives them the opportunity to collaborate with business leaders around the world.
07. Powerhouse Talent Inc.
Provides employer branding services, as well as recruitment marketing and talent attraction strategy.
08. Exaqueo
Provides strategic employer branding services aligned with a business's employee value proposition.
09. Blu Ivy Group
Focuses on driving tangible business results by helping businesses to connect with job seekers and employees.
10. Radancy
Radancy is a global leader in talent technology that uses industry experience and data to help businesses with innovative strategies for sourcing and recruiting top talent.
Just like you would do with your customer brand, you need to mind every aspect of the way employees experience your company, from your job ad to the hiring process, onboarding, employee value proposition, and beyond to create a consistently positive brand experience. The best way to improve your EVP — and employee retention — is to create an employer branding strategy.
Employer branding can clearly provide some advantages - companies with a good brand reputation get twice as many applications as companies with negative brands, and they spend less money on employees.
So now more than ever, it's important to build a positive employer brand.
To help you out, we asked the experts, "What is your number one piece of advice for companies that want to improve their employer brand?"
How to Improve Employer Branding:
A step-by-step guide to sharpening up your employer brand so it can attract and retain the best talent.
Establish employer brand ownership.
Get leaders involved in the branding process.
There is often some disagreement and confusion about who should own employer branding. CEOs think they've got it under control, human resource leaders say they do, and some of the ability to shape employer brand has shifted to employees, too.
The Harvard Business Review presents a strong argument that, because of the increasing strategic importance of talent acquisition, CEOs need to get more involved in employer branding and recruitment.
Craft your employer brand message and be consistent with it.
"So often with employer brands, efforts are coming from all over the place because no one is exactly sure who owns it. The messaging and outputs aren't consistent. So my main piece of advice is to agree on what you want to say from the top down, and don't forget that the employee experience in real life has to mirror what you're communicating via the brand." – Alexandra Levit
Make employee experience a top priority.
"In our case study on emotional intelligence at FedEx, we shared Fred Smith's model for creating value: People-Service-Profit -- people are first, and if you really believe that, it completely changes the meaning of leadership. If employee experience is one of your leaders' top 3 priorities, you will need to measure it and evaluate leaders on how employees feel being part of your org. The goal: be the place talented people thrive." – Joshua Freedman
Know your employees like you know your customers.
Listen to your employees.
These days, being generic is death to branding. The second someone detects a canned message, whether it's in a Tweet, an emailed job alert, a Facebook post, or a job ad, they can turn to a number of different channels for something better.
How do you get out of generic employer brand management mode and make your employer branding relevant?
Understand your audience and speak directly to their needs and interests.
"To improve your employer brand, understand as much as you can about your target audience. What are their hopes, fears, and motivations? How do they act online? Who influences them in their career choices? There's so much bland content out there, largely because companies either don't know enough about who they're trying to attract or are too concerned about trying to be everything to everyone. Know your audience, and speak to them." – Todd Wheatland
Stay interested in the people who are interested in your company.
"Don't give up because you think it's too difficult. Keep moving the needle by listening when you need to, make changes when it matters, continue to be introspective at all times, and take a keen interest in the people who are interested in your business." – Cyndy Trivella
Make sure your message is sincere.
"My advice would be to stop. Literally, stop. Employer branding promised much 20 years ago but it's become a bureaucratic, generic quest of pointlessness. Sorry to be so negative but if I meet one more company with innovation, integrity, respect and excellence I will despair." – Mark Ritson
Let employees help create an authentic branding message.
Share the voices and experiences of your employees.
There is one key group that understands your present and future employees better than anyone else: your employees themselves. Once you've listened to their needs, cares, and aspirations, invite your employees to participate actively in the process of creating a powerful employer brand.
Allow them to share their experiences, make them a part of any promotional videos and images you plan to use, feature their work on the website, etc.
Use employee experience to craft your core messages.
"Like most things, employment brand is evolving. It's no longer about focusing on the message that the company should craft and share about what it's like to work there. More than ever, it's about sharing the voices and experiences of your employees. To effectively communicate your employment brand, focus on sharing current employee experiences!" – Jennifer McClure
Show people what its like to work at your company.
"In my opinion, the key to a successful employer brand is the people behind it. Make the personalities of your staff shine through, have your staff tell their stories, feature case studies of how people’s careers have progressed – and ensure your recruiting team are on hand to interact with candidates across your social media. If yours is a company that people aspire to work for, then that’s powerful. But if yours is a company where people feel they know and like your team already, then you’re well on your way to winning the battle to be their next employer." – Tony Restell
Show the company's leadership, culture, and experts from the perspective of employees.
"Showcase the organization's culture, subject matter experts, and leaders by enabling regular employees to share stories in their various talent communities both online and offline. These should be aligned to the reality of the actual organization's culture. Ordinary employees should opt-in, though there can be incentives for them to participate. The starting point should be a great organizational culture, engaged employees, and an awesome job seeker experience." – Gautam Ghosh
Determine a starting point for improving your employer marketing.
Conduct an employer brand audit.
Start by unpacking and analyzing your social recruiting efforts, recruiting strategies, hiring process, employee engagement, and onboarding process to find out what is working and what needs improvement.
"To improve your employer branding efforts I suggest conducting an employer brand audit. This will help you identify what your company is currently doing right (and should keep doing) as well as the areas your company can improve on, with actionable insights to better inform your employer brand strategy. I recently wrote a blog on how to do this." – Will Staney
Hire diversely to increase brand reach.
Showcase your company's commitment to diverse hiring.
With the degree of influence employees now have over your employer brand marketing, it should be no surprise that who you hire says something about your brand, and helps determine who it will reach.
Aside from gaining the numerous benefits from a diverse workforce, hiring a job seeker from a community you haven't yet hired from, creates a messenger for your brand in that community.
"An overlooked aspect of employer branding is diversity in hiring. Hiring unique, out-of-the-box thinkers and displaying their work/talent goes a long way. It can reach out to people in different communities and let them know that what your organization does, goes beyond running a business; it wants to have the best, most unique minds to strive to new heights." – Jeff Fermin
If you're really out of your depth – call in the experts.
Contact an employer branding agency.
Running a business is time-consuming, so it's good to know that an employer branding agency can help you design a unique employer branding strategy. There are also a variety of employer branding tools to help your business with content creation, candidate experience, employee advocacy, and employer branding statistics.
Next Steps:
Looking for more ideas on how to attract great employees to your company? Check out our article on writing job ads and finding employees.
