Is Your Talent Brand Losing You Candidates?

Are you having difficulty recruiting in the job market for open positions? Does your pool of talent know you exist — or worse, do the very candidates you want look down on your company? The culprit could be a poor talent brand.

A “talent brand” is the messaging that current and former employees share about your business, as compared to an “employer brand,” which is driven by the company itself. Ideally, your talent brand and employer brand will be in alignment. When they’re not, it could cost you candidates and increase turnover.

How Strong Is Your Talent Brand?

When employees feel valued by and connected to a company, the employer brand and the talent brand are naturally in alignment. Worried that your talent brand and your employer brand aren’t quite matching up? Here are some of the warning signs of a talent-employer branding disconnect:

• Employee Turnover Is High: When employee turnover is high, it’s a very clear sign that employees are not having a good experience. Some employers dismiss high turnover rates as typical for their industry; some blame a series of bad hiring decisions; and other claim the employees themselves are responsible for the turnover rates. If the only employees who stick around for any period of time are senior managers or relatives of the owner, it’s likely you’ve got problems.
• You’re Seeing a Lot of Poor Online Reviews: Thanks to social media, former and current employees can really own online conversations about an employer. Online reviews on platforms like Glassdoor are where a business’s talent brand is most readily on display. If much of the online conversation surrounding your business is negative, there’s probably an talent-employer branding breakdown.
• You Can’t Seem to Attract Candidates to Your Job Postings: If a company’s talent brand takes enough damage, candidates will steer clear of the company altogether, no matter what the organization’s employer branding message says. If your business can’t seem to attract candidates to your job postings, you could be suffering from a poor talent brand.

Cleaning Up Your Talent Brand Takes Effort

Maybe you have problems with your talent brand — now what? What can your business do about it? Try some of these tactics:

• Investigate How Your Employees Feel: Is your employer brand authentic ? Do employees connect with the message? An inauthentic employer brand can breed a bad talent brand. Try holding informational interviews with staff members to find out why they stay at their jobs. Try to find out whether and how they feel connected to the company. To start rebuilding your talent and employer brands, you’ll need to first start listening to your employees.
• Refocus on Your Talent: A strong talent brand is, of course, about talent. It may be that your business has been so focused on making money that you forgot to focus on the people who make that happen. To refocus on talent, start by uniting the team and improving the work environment.
• Respond to Your Online Reviews:If online reviews are painting a negative picture of your talent brand, log on and respond. The key is to be gentle and genuinely concerned about improving the situation. It’s easy for business owners to take a negative review personally and say something dismissive or rude, but this kind of behavior can actually make things worse. Instead, take a gentle and humble approach toward negative reviews. Focus on how you will address concerns instead of trying to “fight back.”
• Visually Engage With Your Talent and Candidates: As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” How true this statement remains in today’s fast-paced digital world! Pictures are great ways to reinforce your employer brand and encourage a stronger talent brand. Try sharing photos of your smiling team at events or hanging out in the office. These kinds of visuals encourage others to view your business favorably and connect with it as a great place to work.

The reality is that no employer can control all the information about their company anymore. You can present a wonderful employer brand, but if your talent brand is off, good candidates may be deterred. Start paying attention to what your talent is saying — and then start building the kind of workplace that makes them happy.