Is your Talent Branding working for you?

Over the last few months, I have noticed the topic of talent branding become more prevalent on across the board from job adverts to CEO articles. But what does it mean and how can it make you stand out from the competition?

You may think you have the best company in the World with the best product, however by not conveying the correct way to potential candidates may result in entire talent pools overlooking your organisation.

What is Talent Branding?

In the simplest terms, talent branding is about creating a unique and consistent message that attracts, engages and retains talent. If you’re looking to attract candidates, it’s critical that you have some sort of talent brand strategy in place to tell the market something truly unique and meaningful for a variety of audiences.

It’s not about having great swag or stock images of people shaking hands or laughing in front of the company logo, instead about having a message so strong that it pulls top performing talent from their current role where they've been overachieving their targets or working on interesting projects and getting them to explore an opportunity with your business.

Talent branding is about creating an experience for internal and external talent that makes them feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves and they play an active part in branding the business. It takes time to develop and maintain, but it will pay off in the long run by ensuring that you have a consistent multi-channel message so that people know what to expect from working at your company.

Here are some tips for developing your talent brand:

- What makes your company unique.

Every company and I mean EVERY company think they are the only ones with a great culture, that can offer career progression and are a great place to work. If you take a helicopter view of what multiple companies and their messaging, there is very little that separates them when you peel it all back except, they have a different dog wearing the company swag.

In order to make sure you have a unique message you have to ask yourself some potentially difficult questions:

·      Are you a market leader?

·      What business issue are you solving?

·      Are you working with cutting edge technology?

·      Is the business going through a transformation

·      How are your products viewed by the external market

·      Are you paying enough to attract the type of talent you want to hire.

Develop a consistent multi-channel message.

Your talent brand should be consistent across all channels. This means that you need to have the same values and messages when communicating with candidates, internal team members employees and customers

Get the business involved

In order for a talent branding message to work you need to get stakeholders buy in from all levels of the business involved and make sure that everyone understands how important it is. The messaging and reasons why a talent brand is being adopted need to be communicated clearly from the top down. Every hiring manager needs to understand the messaging when they are reaching out to candidates, when they are interviewing and as part of their day-to-day leadership duties.

In the technology sector the demand for talent has always outstripped supply and having a compelling talent brand will make you stand out from the others

So, talent branding are you feeling equipped to stand out from the competition?