Today, finding the best talents and encouraging them to work for your company is not an easy task. Nowadays, employees want to have a choice. They want to work for companies that share their values, understand their needs and listen to them. And that’s where employer branding steps in and saves the day.
How young people look for jobs
In April 2022, Deloitte published a study on generation Z (people born between 1995 and 2010) in the workplace. According to their findings, young people now entering the job market are very practical when it comes to finding and keeping a job, which makes employer branding even more essential:
- 77% of respondents said that working at organisations whose values align with their own is important to them. “Gen Z no longer forms opinions of a company solely based on the quality of their products/services but also now on their ethics, practices and social impact” – Deloitte says. (Another study published by Edelman Trust in 2022 says the same thing: 60% of the general public will choose a place to work based on their beliefs and values. )
- Young people are drawn to work that supports the greater good, such as education (41% of answers) and healthcare (37%).
- For generation Z, diversity is also very important. And it’s not just related to race and gender but also to identity and orientation.
Values over money
Today, for the vast majority of young people, a job is not just what they do to make money. They want to work for organisations that have the same goals and share the same values. They want to be heard and have a choice. And they want to feel like they belong, no matter what ethnicity, religion, gender, or group they represent.
That’s a huge challenge for modern companies. Today, we’re witnessing a massive shift in the way we work and how we feel about work. If your company wants to keep up with these changes and win the engagement of the best talents out there, it has to adjust to these changes. And recruitment campaigns are the best way to show that you care about your future employees and you treat them like real individuals, not just ticket numbers.
The importance of employer branding (EB)
As we mentioned earlier, for almost 80% of young candidates, it’s of paramount importance to work for a company that has the same values. Employer branding is the way to show your future employees what you believe in and what you do about that. Of course, you have to be authentic about what you communicate. If the environment is important to you, show your real actions – what do you do to reduce your company’s carbon footprint or decrease plastic waste? Employer branding is never about lying or embellishing reality. It’s a natural effect of what you actually do.
Employer branding is frequently treated as a part of PR activities, primarily because it’s essentially a PR activity directed toward potential employees. And it really works. According to CR Magazine, 92% of people consider changing jobs to a company with an excellent corporate reputation. And how can you build that “excellent corporate reputation”? Through EB, of course!
What can you do to create a positive image of your company as a friendly and ethical workplace?
Create and build a strong employer brand
According to LinkedIn, the top three channels for improving employer brand are:
- Company website (69%)
- Online professional networks (61%)
- Social media (47%)
That’s what you ought to focus on. With these three channels, you will be able to create and maintain a brand of a good place to work. And don’t neglect social media. After all, that’s where almost all young candidates are. Aberdeen Group reports that 73% of millennials found their last position through this channel.
Treat employees with respect and create a safe workplace
That seems obvious, but it’s worth mentioning that poor opinions about your company can irretrievably ruin the company’s image. Make sure every manager and every director knows how to treat employees and provide people working at your company with a safe way to report misconduct incidents.
According to McCann Truth Central, 6 in 10 respondents believe the best thing a brand can do is look after its employees.
The ESG policy – the way to attract more candidates
If you’ve never heard that acronym before, ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. It’s a set of standards for a company’s operations, primarily when it comes to investments, but not only. Today, ESG has a broader meaning that comprises almost everything the company does, a form of CSR. As PwC reports in their study from April 2021, ESG commitment can truly drive employee engagement. Over 80% of employees said they were more likely to work for a company that values ESG matters:
Put a strong emphasis on these aspects of running and growing a business, and you’re on the straight course to engage more candidates in communication with your brand. Undoubtedly, many of them will be highly interested in working for such an aware and responsible organisation like yours.
Interesting employer branding campaigns
Employer branding campaigns are more and more common today. We want to show you four that we deem especially interesting.
Google: problem-solvers needed
Google has the comfort of being a company that many people would like to work for. The challenge, then, is not to attract candidates, but to find the right ones. In 2004, the company was looking for people with one particular trait; they were looking for problem-solvers. And how can you find a problem-solver? With a problem to solve, obviously! Google put a mysterious billboard in Silicon Valley looking like that:
The billboard puzzle was a kind of recruitment task to find prospective Google employees. As it happens, the billboard warmed up mathematical and engineering forums, and that publicity gave Google relatively cheap access to problem-solvers they were looking for.
Burger King: we’re looking for pyromaniacs
This example may not directly relate to company values or even more to ESG, but we wanted to show it as creative and bold. In 2018, Burger King conducted a recruitment campaign in Germany with a clear message: “Love fire? Contact us.” This way, they established their image as an edgy employer that has been “flame grilling since 1954”. It was a great way to stand out from the competition and show a fast-food chain from a whole new perspective.
Verizon UK: health and wellbeing in the workplace
Verizon’s UK HR team, along with Gloo employer branding agency, created a campaign that aimed to raise awareness of the activities and services available to employees that help support their health and wellbeing in the workplace. This is a good example of a campaign showing an employer who cares about its community and wants to have a social impact. One of the slogans that Verizon’s UK used was “we are a part of something bigger”.
Lastly, we want to show you the campaign that we conducted to find the best designers out there.
Admind recruitment campaign: #360daysofrecruitment
Not everyone knows that we’ve had an ongoing recruitment process for over six years now. We look for the best designers and branding experts on the market. To attract them, we needed to create something these artists have not seen before and thus create the WOW effect.
Our inspiration for this project was a specific challenge on Instagram called “36 days of type”. Designers participating in this project have to design letters from A to Z and numbers from 0 to 9 in 36 days. This challenge has over 360,000 followers on Instagram! And some of the best designers in the world participate in this project. That was just up our street. We came up with the idea of a recruitment campaign: “360 days of recruitment” (in reference to our all-year-round recruitment campaign).
The power of illustrations
We contacted the most interesting artists participating in “36 days of type” and asked them to participate in our project. Their task was to create illustrations of the letters that begin with the names of the strategic positions at Admind.
B for Brand Designer
C for Client Partner
G for Graphic Designer
M for Motion Designer
P for Project Manager
S for Senior Graphic Designer
Moreover, these letters had to contain elements that were related to the given position. We chose the illustration form because our previous highly successful recruitment campaign was based on illustrations created by external designers.
Our design experts were asked to post their works while using the hashtag #360daysofrecruitment. Here are some of the artists that we worked with so far:
- David Oku
- Jan Kallwejt
- Yeye Weller
- Ana Duje
- Artur Tenczynski
- Kamil Kowalczyk
We didn’t stop there! W will soon conduct an OOH campaign in two large Polish cities – Cracow and Warsaw. Moreover, we are preparing a competition for students. The challenge will be to design the letter J (as in Junior Graphic Designer). The jury of the competition will comprise designers who designed the rest of the letters for us, i.e., stars in the world of design. This way, we want to encourage students to participate in the competition. The prizes will be quite amazing, too. Awarded participants will win money and… a position at our agency. If you are interested, just follow our social media.
