Employer Brand Strategy Overview

Included below are a recruiting marketing funnel, job description templates, down-funnel tips
(the key things to touch on later in the process), pitch outline, and various other tools and
content tips that you can use.

Understand the touch points throughout your recruiting

Map out the Candidate Journey

One way to understand your candidate experience is to map out the ideal candidate journey for your company. Start by choosing several touch points you would like to improve or enhance. Having a holistic understanding of what a candidate is going through and how their experience is impacted by your marketing efforts will help you better convey your brand.

On a broader level, establishing your employer brand can be as basic as surveying your company on what it means to each employee to work there or exploring how your product brand applies to your company as a place to work. Here are some questions that can help with finding your employer brand guidelines:

• What sets us apart as an employer?
• What are our employer values?
• What are our guiding principles?
• What do our employees value most about our company?
• What is the experience of working here?
•  What are our employees engaged with? (e.g. our product, our benefits, our ERGs)
• How does our employer brand manifest in our practices? (e.g. mindfulness is an important value; we have no meeting Wednesdays to allow uninterrupted work)
• How do we want to message our brand?
• What are the ideal candidate feelings when they’re thinking of or interacting with us?

Define What & Who Matters

Before any initiative is taken on, it helps to have an understanding of the Goals, Audience, Channels,Creative requirements, Timeline, and Stakeholders. A clean way to do this is to create a project brief where you clearly define six items above. 

Job description templates

Provide a structure and guidelines for your recruiters and hiring teams to compose job descriptions. An important part of the employer marketing funnel, job descriptions can encourage or deter applicants. Having clear, consistent guidelines around writing job descriptions will help teams express what they are looking for as well as keep them within your company’s style boundaries. Candidates should feel they know the team, understand the role itself, and whether they are suited to apply.

Example Structure & Guideline for Consistent Job Descriptions:

About [COMPANY]

JD’s typically start with an “About” section. I recommend thinking through that section as more of a “Why consider us?” This should be consistent and answer questions such as; 

• Your Mission
• What your product or service is
• Milestones & Big Wins such as name brand customers, funding, revenue etc
• A hint at more to come and space for whoever is reading this to make an impact. 

This role is on the [INSERT Function Team] at [COMPANY] is…

• A paragraph outlining the role of the department with the [COMPANY]
• Why would they want to be a [INSERT FUNCTION] at your company?

We are looking for a…

• Short paragraph about what you’re looking for in a teammate and a bit about what they will be doing. 
• Write as if the person you hire is reading this. Use “you” and assumptive language as though they already have the job.
  • “This is what you’ll be doing and what you’ll get to contribute to”
  •  “We’re looking for a Product Marketing Manager to join our Marketing team and help us scale our operations. You’ll be strategizing and executing cross-channel marketing campaigns that focus on scale and optimization”

This section is tailored to each job

• We are looking for an A that has B
• You must C and D
• You have E
• You get to do F
• Here’s a bit more about the role

Responsibilities

Simple list with some clear responsibilities they will have on the job.  Keep this between 4 to 6 bullet points.

Requirements

Simple list with any requirements you have for the role. Be careful how you write requirements and make sure to not discourage perfectly qualified candidates from applying. If you are unsure if something is a requirement consider adding an additional section for “Nice-to-haves”. For example, you might be open to candidates without a college degree and add a bachelors degree as a nice to have. 

Ending the Job Description Conclusion

A closing paragraph to make the candidate feel comfortable and included, encouraging them to apply. Here’s an example

Does the above sound like it might be you? Then we’d love to hear from you. Our goal is to provide a hiring and working experience in which all people feel they are equally respected and valued. We’d love to see what you might add to our team and how we may fit in your career aspirations!

Recruiting is Sales & Marketing Combined

Think through how you will “sell” a candidate so that they’ll become an advocate for your company (an employee!). This includes making sure you are marketing the correct information about the following topics in more detail than you would publicly. If this information is available via neutral sources (ex: TechCrunch article) even better!

• Business
• Business model
• Key metrics
• Investors
• Vision
• What is your mission?
• Culture
• Team

Always be Closing Recruiting

Every time you engage with a candidate through any medium you are communicating your recruitment brand. This starts as early on as a candidate reading about you or visiting your website. Regardless of the stage in the process, it’s important to have clear guidelines for your employees and recruiters to follow when it comes to pitching. Employer brand collateral that is a must to support this is a document that outlines the following points, 

– Get to know the candidate

– Explain your product and mission

– Why does it matter?

– Talk about the business and how it’s doing

– What is being worked on right now?

– Why is joining your company a ripe opportunity right now?

– Why you (personally) love working there

Tools and content

Recruiting brand tools:

• Glassdoor: use status updates and respond to comments and reviews! This is a great authentic branding tool.
• LinkedIn: content sharing, leveraging influencers, and ads are great tools on LinkedIn
• You should also research the appropriate niche community recruitment brand channels (ex: The Muse for women & RippleMatch for university candidates)

Content

A huge part of a recruitment brand. Through content, you’re able to communicate with candidates about a wealth of topics across many channels—your blog, Medium, partner blogs, press, LinkedIn, etc.—here are some ideas:

• Look at a day in the life of your employees
• Feature teams across your company
• Showcase your office space or your remote first culture
• Tell stories about the work your company is doing
• Provide thought leadership in an area that is relevant to your product or team

These don’t all have to be produced by your recruiting team or recruitment branding team. Part of the authenticity of these pieces is to have them come from real employees at your company! 

​Content distribution: You can produce all the content in the world but your brand will not grow unless it’s distributed. Recruiter correspondence and Sourcer reachouts is a great way to do this. It can be helpful to provide a guide that explains at what stage and which content you want your team sending to different types of candidates. For example, you may send a first hand blog post from an engineering team member discussing how they prepared for a technical interview out to upcoming interview candidates. 

Here are a few additional ways to get your content in front of your candidates’ eyes:

• Social media sharing
• Advertising and paid promotion
• SEO

Hopefully this helps you get started and on your way to creating or scaling your employer brand!