You might be tired of your employment brand…but your candidates aren’t!

That’s real.

This happens all the time in organizations.  Talent acquisition isn’t feeling successful, or they’re getting pressure to do more/better/faster, and they start looking for excuses.  The one excuse that always comes up is ‘our employment brand is old/tired/sucks, etc.’   It might be that it is old/tired/sucks, but it’s usually just an excuse.

Here’s what happens internally at your organization.

1. You have an employment brand. If you say you don’t, you’re lying to yourself! You do, you just didn’t have a part in making it!

2. You’re having trouble attracting the talent you want.

3. You believe having a really cool new employment brand will help attract the talent you can’t attract.  Which it might, but most likely not.

4. You use your old employment brand as a crutch to why you can’t be successful in talent acquisition.

The real problem has nothing to do with your employment brand.  For most companies, your candidates have little knowledge of what your actual employment brand really is.  Most candidates equate your employment brand to your consumer brand.

So, externally your employment brand is what it has always been.  The real problem is we get tired of our employment brand really fast because we are dealing with every single day.  We forget that most candidates only will engage our employment brand usually once in a lifetime.  So, they aren’t tired of it at all!

Any time I hear a talent acquisition pro tell me they can’t attract talent, and blame their employment brand, I question their ability to actually recruit.  Being able to attract talent has very little to do with your employment brand, and more to do with your own perception of your employment brand.  Our reality is most candidates have hardly any idea of our employment brands, until we engage them with it.  If you are great at selling your brand, the candidates are more than likely going to have a positive perception of your employment brand.

If you believe your employment brand sucks.  More than likely so will the candidates you’re contacting.  It comes back to your attitude about your company.  I’ve never seen or heard from a recruiter who desperately loved their organization who said they couldn’t find talent!   Coincidence?  I think not.  If you love your organization, and you recruit, you usually are pretty successful.  If you don’t like your organization, and you recruit, you usually are pretty crappy at it.

Just because you’re tired of your employment brand, doesn’t mean everyone else is.