How a Strong Employer Brand Can Better Attract Candidates

The moment a job candidate lands on your careers page and applies for a job. Your talent acquisition team’ process of engaging and advancing these leads throughout their recruitment process. When a strong-fit prospect accepts an offer and starts working at your company.

During all of these facets of the end-to-end recruiting process, your employer brand is a major factor that is actively present — and influences a variety of decisions made by prospective hires you speak with.

Of course, building your employer brand isn’t something one person does. Rather, it’s a legit team effort by all hiring stakeholders and organizational leaders at your small business, with one main goal:

• Steadily improve your reputation as an employer so you can better attract and retain top talent.

In short, a good employer branding strategy has many moving parts — and requires all of the aforementioned hiring team members and executives at your org to manage your employer brand over time.

8 ways to boost your employer brand strategy

Continue reading our blog post to discover how you can collectively strengthen your employer brand strategy — and position your SMB as an ideal company to work for among active job seekers today.

1) Redesign (or refresh) your brand website

When we did a complete web redesign last year, we also updated our company profile and jobs pages. We made sure to include photos of individuals and teams and to celebrate their achievements.

• We also shared our company values and expectations.

This helped to reveal us as a strong, open, and friendly team. Since making these developments, I often hear from candidates about how our company looks like such a great place to work and how approachable everyone appears.

Those we’ve hired have turned out to be incredible team players.

Jarir Mallah, Human Resources Manager, Ling App

2) Implement a fair-chance hiring approach

By reducing the barriers for the nearly one in three Americans that hold criminal records, we’ve opened ourselves up to attract high-quality candidates while simultaneously evening the playing field for great talent that face a load of traditional roadblocks, misperceptions, and biases.

• In turn, we’ve improved our employer branding and let our values shine above all else, which has attracted even more great candidates our way. 

Some of our top team performers have been fair chance hires. It’s a beautiful process to watch play out. It also gives us even more reason to keep our value-driven products moving forward.

Denise Hemke, Chief Product Officer, Checkr

3) Ensure execs provide visible leadership

Improving our employer brand has significantly aided us in attracting better candidates. Through concentrated efforts, we always communicate our company’s values, culture, and opportunities.

• This, in turn, creates a positive perception among job seekers.

One impactful strategy we implemented? Making me, the CEO, the face of our brand. This decision added a personal touch and authenticity to our employer brand. Ultimately, it worked to our advantage, as candidates appreciate seeing a visible, accessible leader who embodies the org’s vision.

My active involvement in promoting the brand boosted our credibility. Just as critical, it also instilled trust in potential candidates. This approach allowed us to connect on a deeper level and show our commitment to transparency, leadership, and a supportive work environment.

Harry Morton, Founder, Lower Street

4) Boost your employer value proposition (EVP)

When we invest in building a strong and positive employer brand, we create a compelling image of our company as an employer of choice. This attracts top talent who are not only highly skilled but also align with our company values and culture.

A strong employer brand helps us stand out from competitors and differentiate ourselves in the talent market. It establishes credibility and trust, making candidates more likely to consider us as their preferred employer. 

• If we showcase our unique company culture, employee benefits, and growth opportunities, we create a strong appeal that resonates with top-tier candidates.

As word spreads about our positive work environment and employee experiences, it creates a virtuous cycle, with more high-quality job leads seeking out our org as their desired workplace.

Luciano Colos, Founder and CEO, PitchGrade

5) Showcase your company’s core values

Overseeing our digital marketing agency, I’ve experienced first-hand the transformative power of bolstering our employer brand. We recently embarked on an initiative to enhance our company’s image.

• During this process, we infused our core values into every facet of our online presence. This helped us show off our commitment to innovation, teamwork, and work-life balance. The results were stellar.

The quality of candidates applying for roles saw a big uptick. Intriguingly, many said they heard about our vibrant culture through word-of-mouth. A testament to the magnetic effect of our employer branding. 

Their expertise and motivation were superior, breathing fresh life into our projects. This experience attests to the crucial role a strong employer brand plays not just in attracting not just candidates, but the right ones.

Joe Troyer, CEO and Growth Advisor, Digital Triggers

6) Highlight your culture and employees

Improving our employer brand has been instrumental in attracting better candidates for our org. By enhancing our reputation and image as an employer of choice, we have positioned ourselves as a desirable destination for top talent. 

A strong employer brand communicates our company culture, values, and employee experiences, giving candidates a compelling reason to choose us over our competitors.

• It has allowed us to showcase our unique employee value proposition, highlighting the benefits and opportunities we offer. 

As a result, we have seen an increase in the quality and quantity of applications from highly skilled and motivated individuals who are aligned with our org’s goals and values.

Vikas Kaushik, CEO, TechAhead

7) Boost social visibility

In sales, the metric that most businesses want to improve is their conversion rate. The same could be said of how improving our employer brand helped us close deals with the candidates we targeted.

Although everyone wants to have a positive employer image, it means little if it does not convert to candidates accepting offers.

• Therefore, we worked diligently on increasing our visibility on social media channels, incorporated our current team members into our outreach strategies, focused on building social proof, and highlighted our opportunities for professional growth.

By improving our employer brand, we were able to move beyond pitching the attributes of our business and get talented candidates to commit.

Derek Flanzraich, Founder and CEO, Ness

8) Lean into employee advocacy

Our org has been using employee advocacy to enhance our employer brand and attract better candidates, and this has yielded positive results.

• We recognized long ago employees are the finest brand ambassadors and have never stopped encouraging them to share their positive experiences on social media to help our employer’s brand since then. 

LinkedIn posts about positive work experiences, seamless guidance from workplace leaders on career growth, a flexible schedule, and an ingenious corporate social responsibility (CSR) plan from our dedicated employees have truly helped us reap the benefits of employee advocacy.

In turn, we’ve overcome the barrier of tedious job search by candidates and attracting them to apply.

Marc Hardgrove, CEO, TheHOTH

Learn how you can elevate your small business’s employer brand strategy with our purpose-built ATS for SMBs.