Insight

The current tight job market makes it a challenge for employers to attract and retain critical staff. These conditions have naturally resulted in upward pressure on wages as companies compete aggressively for talent. However, paying ever-higher salaries is not a sustainable recruitment or retention strategy.

Many employers are now attempting to engage potential and current employees in a more holistic manner. In this “seller’s market” of low unemployment and critical skills shortages, a key HR challenge is to cultivate the perception that your organization is an “employer-of-choice”.

Welcome to the world of Employer Branding - the development and communication of an organization’s culture as an employer. Done right, it represents a powerful opportunity for your company to differentiate itself in the competition for talent.

The basic objectives of employer branding are to:
1. attract top-shelf talent to join the company,
2. continually engage current employees to cultivate a sense of belonging, and
3. ensure that employees actively identify with the company’s vision and mission so as to achieve the desired business outcomes.

Cultivating the image

The emergence of so-called Web 2.0 tools has brought new ideas and possibilities to employer branding and recruiting efforts. The essence of Web 2.0 is dynamic applications like blogs, social networks and community portals, which derive their value from the extensive connections and collaborative relationships that they foster.

In the employment realm, this means that what a company says about itself is no longer as important as what job candidates, employees, partners and customers are saying about the company in the “blogosphere” and the social web. These “real voices” can make or break corporate reputations and recruitment outcomes.

Anyone can easily publish comments on his or her experience with a company and thus generate an authentic, first-hand feel of the user-experience associated with the corporate brand. Tools like Internet Search, RSS Feeds and Social Book-marking mean that critical content can be delivered to the right recipient with precision.

Companies will have to embrace these technologies if they are to be successful at employer branding in the networked economy. These very same Web 2.0 tools also represent a tremendous opportunity for progressive companies to screen and engage potential job seekers, particularly IT-savvy talents from the upcoming generation.

Smart Recruiting

Many recruiters have been actively exploring the digital realm through viral marketing with blogs and wikis, tapping into professional social networks like LinkedIn and Jobster and using hi-tech contact points like mobile phones, iPods and YouTube. Some have even shown up as avatars in virtual worlds like Second Life.

Earlier this year, Hewlett-Packard (HP) participated in a virtual job fair in Linden Lab’s Second Life. Job seekers and recruiters interacted using avatars in the virtual world. Other companies are turning to Internet video streaming technology to market themselves to potential applicants. Ernst & Young, Google, JP Morgan, Apple and BMW are just a few of the top companies that are using video clips to offer an inside perspective on their businesses via sites like CareerTV.com.

While posting openings on electronic job boards has become a relatively common recruitment tool, more savvy recruiters are staring to tap into professional networking sites such as LinkedIn to search for and engage promising candidates who may not even be actively looking out for new jobs. These sites offer powerful data-mining capabilities that enable recruiters to effectively screen potential candidates on the basis of skill sets, locations and previous experience.

Innovative, more focused platforms, such as techTribe, have also begun emerging. techTribe uses community referral and feedback algorithms to enable IT companies to get one-on-one with promising mid and senior-level workers and gauge how well they would fit into the organization.

Don’t Be Anti-Social

With the rapid pace of change in the industry, trying to embrace Web 2.0 technologies often feels like trying to engage a moving target. However, companies that avoid the social web risk seriously undermining their efforts to attract and retain talent in the longer-term.