EMPLOYER BRANDING IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Around 400 employer brand professionals from 40 countries gathered in Budapest on April, 27 for World Employer Branding Day 2017. Some of the largest global brands, Facebook, Virgin Media, Tommy Hilfiger, Ferrero and LinkedIn – to name a few – took the stage on what was accurately promised to be the most significant international employer branding event of the year. Being on stage as speakers among such brand giants was definitely a milestone in the life of SSC Heroes as well.
According to Brett Minchington, number one employer brand guru and founder of the ’World Employer Branding Day’, the results of employer branding within the business process have already become measurable, thus leaders have started to deal with employer branding on a strategic level. Let’s not forget that we’re talking about a profession that 20 years ago did not even exist.
Turning point: should employer branding focus on candidate experience within the recruitment?
For Virgin Media, candidate experience is key when finding, engaging and retaining talent. A company needs to change its mindset and offer a much better candidate experience to candidates than they originally expect. This is how the 'vow effect' starts and remains in a candidate and then in our future employees.
SSC Heroes is a pioneer of this thought here in Hungary. We believe that one needs to look at the recruitment process as one of the key channels of employer branding and make sure the candidate experience is “awesome” even if the candidate is rejected. We encourage companies to open up to the next generation job seekers by enabling them to apply through video interviews, providing more information, fun facts and company videos that capture their attention. As the Employer Brand Manager of Facebook highlighted at the event, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than words, and 80 % of the global internet traffic in 2019 is going to be videos.
According to the Communications Director of Tommy Hilfiger, it is a huge challenge for HR to realize that that the line between consumer brands and employer brands has become blurry. Indeed, we are well aware that candidates approach show a significant trend: that of choosing a workplace similar to the way you shop your clothes and tech gadgets. Simply based on brands.