A career in employer branding and recruitment marketing has its unique challenges. Whether it’s getting budget or buy-in, explaining what you do, getting stakeholders on board or just having a career path, it can be difficult. So I decided to put together a dream list of sorts, of the things I (and let’s face it, we) really wished we had. We might have one or two of them, and the lucky few might even have all of them. For the majority of us, especially as solo talent branders, this really is our wish list!  

We can all do things without a budget, but having one, however big or small really means we can make things happen. Giving us more budget and more of that money wouldn’t hurt either. Because you know, we can do great things.

If everyone understood what we did as employer brand professionals this would save us so much time, right? Explaining what we do can take up so much effort – yet when those same people see the results of our work, it just speaks for itself.

33 things we wish recruiting and HR knew about employer branding

STRONG RELATIONSHIPS WITH…

Pretty much everyone. Most importantly you need a strong relationship with the social media team, and marketing and comms teams if you don’t sit directly in them. Talent acquisition is obviously a given. But without those strong relationships at the start, our jobs become almost impossible to do.

…AND AN EVEN STRONGER RELATIONSHIP WITH LEADERSHIP… AND BUY IN!

Leadership buy in and support is critical for what we do. If they are ultimately supporting and behind what we do, then it becomes easier to do our jobs.

CLEAR OWNERSHIP

It would be great to have clearly defined lines of who does what. Like “Internal communications you are orange, social media you are green, and enter employer brand, a clear shade of blue”. It can be challenging when our roles can cross over into other spaces. There can be so many cooks in the kitchen that everyone wants to own EB… but we know our space, we are the expert.

UNDERSTANDING THAT WE ARE GREAT.. BUT NOT MIRACLE WORKERS

If only key business stakeholders could understand that results don’t happen overnight. Employer brand is such an exciting concept… but sometimes after delivering an idea, stakeholders think results will happen overnight when as we know, it takes time to build an employer brand. Many large global organisations may only have 1-2 EB professionals with minimal or no budget/ agency support.

We can generate leads and influence referrals, applies & hires across all digital touch points, but brand awareness, experience and culture is a journey we’re all on! It takes time...

Social employees are a hidden diamond. When employees naturally share news, their stories, and their achievements on social media, it makes what we do so much easier. The impressions you can get from organic contact can be amazing. Brand awareness is so important. Having a workplace that inspires employees to organically want to be brand ambassadors is so powerful. If it’s forced, it’s not genuine and the misrepresentation of reality will backfire and can be damaging.

We all love data. (If you don’t, it’s never too late to start). Data opens so many doors for us… including those budget and headcount conversations. The better the data, the more conversations we can have about the results we are driving and investment into our department…  

Diversity, equality, and inclusion plays such a crucial role in employer branding. It would be incredible if we had a dedicated D&I person focused on our talent brand, as well as a leadership team committed to actually standing up for diversity issues.  

Being able to plan ahead rather than spending a lot of time ‘firefighting’ would be a dream. Having quarterly workforce plans, and an insight on quarterly hiring goals and priorities way ahead of the next quarter starting would help us become a lot more strategic.

What now?

I know what you are thinking. How does this wish list become reality? Being honest - it won’t happen overnight. Whether you are a solo talent brander like me or in a team, it’s hard to tick everything off this list. If I had to start with one thing… relationships. Strong relationships open the door to getting things done, to the buy in you need from leadership, and the better the relationship, the more people understand what you do, and more importantly, why you are doing it.

Get great data. Find ways to measure what you do, because activities can always be measured. Combine relationships and great data and you get a snowball effect of other doors slowly starting to open. Have your big picture, your plan, know what you want to achieve. Because armed with strong relationships, great data, and your big picture, that budget conversation which might not have been an option at the outset might now be on the table.

As for the twin? Still dreaming.

About our TBA member, Claire de Souza

With a background in marketing, Claire has spent the last few years being a solo talent brander and loving every single moment. With a love for storytelling, she is passionate about creating meaningful content that engages candidates and gets to the heart of why they should join an organisation. She is currently at Atlanta Group, one of the fastest-growing insurance brokers in the UK where she leads on their employer brand and recruitment marketing activities - and is currently creating their employer brand from scratch. Prior, Claire worked for one of the world's largest safety organisations, again as a solo talent brander, developing their employer brand in over 75 countries.

If she isn't doing something around employer brand, she can usually be found reading a good book, putting pen to paper for her blog, cooking up a new recipe or drawing something new in her other life as an artist.