The importance of employer branding to startups

Employer branding is the public perception and reputation of your company as an employer. According to the recent Winning Talent report from LinkedIn, 53 per cent of UK workers would not be tempted by role with a high salary if the company offering it had a poor employer brand. Employer branding has the power to both attract and retain new talent, therefore it can hold the key to startups looking to grow their organisation.

In order to find out how other small businesses have successfully used employer branding to grow and attract talent, we have asked UK organisations to share their experiences and insights with us.

First up we have learnings from James Rice, the Head of Digital Marketing, SEO and Content Marketing at WikiJob. Wikijob provides a platform for users searching for graduate schemes in finance.

How important is employer branding to your business? 

It’s really important, particularly on the client side. Every year, major graduate employers have to choose which media to use to advertise their vacancies and engage with graduates. The more established you are in their minds as a brand that speaks to a high volume of graduates looking for roles such as theirs, the better the chances of them working with you. In the last year we’ve put a lot of effort into our employer branding as a consequence.

In what ways do you integrate employer branding to your marketing activities? 

Recently we’ve increased our brand visibility at trade shows, recruitment fairs and conferences, to make us more front-of-mind with our sector audience. We’ve also redesigned our homepage and ‘about us’ page to give a much better sense of what WikiJob is, how it’s potentially helpful and who is behind it. Thirdly, we’ve focused on inbound marketing – working hard on PR and SEO so that we have a stronger link profile and more people can find WikiJob and become familiar with our brand.

Has employer branding helped you to attract new talent?  

In terms of new recruits, I think that’s difficult to say – we’re a small team and don’t recruit all that often. On the other hand, employer branding has certainly helped us to attract some new and prestigious clients, who are happier to work with us having seen our presence at a series of career events throughout the year.

What advice do you have for new startups on developing their employer branding? 

Don’t lose sight of it! And also don’t feel that it has to be a hugely expensive exercise. If your budget is small, as it will be at most start-ups, focus on a few specific areas. First, make your company story compelling, and ensure that your website really sells who you are, and what makes you useful and different. Second, work hard on PR and presence. Go to local and national events, get in touch with journalists and see if you can get yourself interviewed, and keep your content pipeline active so your SEO improves and more people start to find you from search.

Finally we have advice from Catherine Warrilow, MD of Oxford based customer engagement agency Seriously PR. Seriously PR creates customer engagement and digital PR campaigns for travel and leisure brands.

How important is employer branding to your business? 

As a small business in a competitive sector outside of London, it’s really important that the personality and values that we’ve built our brand around really stick out to people; we want them to want to be a part of the adventure from the moment they land on any of our channels online.

In what ways do you integrate employer branding to your marketing activities? 

We’ve worked hard to make sure that our values underpin the way we communicate – that way, our messaging is natural, easy and engaging – it’s not a chore to create content to share with people. It also means that the experience is consistent – if you visit the website, our LinkedIn profiles, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest – they all share different parts of the same adventure but the message is consistent – we’re experts, we work hard, we enjoy what we do and you can join us if you want. This is true not only online but at events, across printed materials and when we pick up the phone – you always get the same us.

Has employer branding helped you to attract new talent? 

Absolutely.  We’ve never had to use a recruitment agency and our employees have always approached us speculatively.  We’ve always hired people based on the fact that they get us straight away and we can see that they’re the right fit.  We’ve always worried less about experience and more about personality, and when you can showcase yours, you inevitably attract the right people.

What advice do you have for new startups on developing their employer branding? 

Keep it simple and start with your values.  Ours include that we are creative, adventurous and challengers.  Even just with those three values you can craft your messages to reflect what makes you tick.

We hope that these insights have inspired you to cultivate your own employer brand in order to attract new talent to help your business grow.