How to build a strong employer brand in Tech

As Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon 曰く, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.“

How do you make sure what is being said reflects what it’s like to work at your organization? According to LinkedIn data, 80% of talent acquisition managers believe that employer branding has a significant impact on the ability to hire great talent.  Given the gravity of this statistic, employer branding should be your priority in years to come.  Here’s why.

Benefits of a strong employer brand

• Recruiting advantage,

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Findings of an academic study by Melián-González & Bulchand-Gidumal(via PR Newswire) indicate job seekers “are more interested to send their resume to a company after seeing a positive review versus a neutral or negative review.” Additionally, research from LinkedIn shows you get twice as many candidates in your talent pipeline when you build and maintain a strong employer brand.

Salary implications,

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According to a Harvard Business Review and  ICM Unlimited study, negative reputation costs companies at least 10% more per hire. Furthermore, research from Melián-González & Bulchand-Gidumal (via PR Newswire) shows participants who saw positive reviews of an organization required a lower pay increase (35%-40%) than those shown neutral and negative reviews (45%-50% and 55%-60% pay increase respectively).

• Dealing with a lack of trust and fear of change,

Based on LinkedIn data, not knowing what it’s like to work for a company is the #1 roadblock to changing jobs. A strong employer brand gives people the confidence they need so much and helps them make the move into the unknown.

• Cost-per-Hire & turnover reduction.

によると 統計, a strong employer brand cutsCost-per-Hire by 43%.

How to build a strong employer brand in tech

1. Design an employer branding strategy for tech candidates

Have you got an employer branding strategy? According to CareerArc, only 57% of employers do. Do you know industry benchmarks and what they are in comparison to your own results? You definitely should. The ideal scenario is to have a written document you can go back to in order to ensure your efforts are always in agreement with your desired outcome. You also need a plan you can bring into action step by step to make sure progress doesn’t stall at any point.

How to get started? I’d advise you to sit down with your talent acquisition team and think about the following factors:

• What do developers find appealing in your company? Do you use this information in your employment process?
• Do you know the biggest problems of hiring in tech? How can you address them in your content? Do you currently talk about these subjects in your content?
• Do you know your biggest hiring obstacles and make a conscious effort to steer away from them?
• Does your communication stand out? What can you do to steer from generic job ads? Do you think you’d benefit from being more creative in your tech recruitment efforts?
• Where do you focus your employer branding efforts? Is it your website, your Career site, your company page on LinkedIn, or somewhere else?
• Are you present and/or active on developer-specific sites like Stack Overflow and GitHub? If so, are your efforts there planned? How do you evaluate your outcomes?
• Who is responsible for employer branding in your organization? How many people manage your employer brand? Do these people speak in unison or make your image inconsistent?
• How do you measure your employer branding? If you don’t, it’s the best moment to start doing it. CareerArc data shows “only 33% of employers track employer branding initiatives to at least one HR performance metric (eg. CPH, retention rate, cost per application, etc.)”. You’ve still got a head start as this area is clearly unappreciated.

Here’s a handy infographic from TalentLyft about creating an employer branding strategy in 5 steps:

2. Target tech workers with dedicated ads

There are many examples of creative HR in tech, but the secret is making a reference to what makes developers who they are. One way of doing it is to use ads written by people who understand the specifics of the job, or even better, create a challenge for the potential employee. This makes content more relatable and establishes a relationship early on.

One such example is this ad from Microsoft:

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The reason why it is so appealing is that it can only be understood by a certain group of people with a very specific way of thinking. There’s a sense of belonging, exclusiveness if you like, of the coding club. These types of ads attract people who enjoy challenges, puzzles, mathematical problems and are generally into problem-solving.

Here’s another example:

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Ads of this kind strengthen your employer brand because they establish a clear association of being a tech-savvy organization which can provide growth opportunities for developers particularly. A word of caution at this point is to make sure that whatever comes after your creative advertising is top-notch because it sets expectations high. One way to do it is to imitate Google’s innovative “foo.bar” campaign. It was essentially a series of challenges which people could find after googling some code-related queries. Google sent them a clear message: “You’re speaking our language. Fancy a challenge?” and asked them to complete a series of puzzles. What I like about the campaign is that successful candidates were reinserted “in the usual Google recruitment programme, albeit with a big head start.” Don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken. Instead, try to find new ways to get your pipeline full.

Need more examples of creative recruitment in tech? Check out this great post presenting “8 absolutely crazy recruitment campaigns".

3.Turn your weaknesses into strengths

Let us now have a look at GE’s “Owen campaign”. Here’s a couple of the ads from the series:

Part of the reason why the campaign was so successful is that it acknowledged how some people think of the company and worked to change it. Owen is excited about his new job but others are rather cool and don’t understand that a company like GE gives developers a chance to grow. They seem more excited about some weird cat app which has little to do with engineering based on a very simple association that apps = developer jobs.

GE was able to strengthen its employer brand because it challenged people’s associations and worked to change them.

4. Build new associations with storytelling

Not only does GE challenge their stereotypical image, they also work hard to build a new one. One of the ways to achieve this is via storytelling ads like these:

“What my Mom does at GE”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co0qkWRqTdM

(MUST. NOT. CRY.)

“Meet Molly, the Kid Who Never Stops Inventing”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sucKTktHYA8

These ads work so beautifully because they humanize the company and make viewers emotionally involved. First of all, they create an image of a female-friendly and parent-friendly workplace, but they also show what sort of projects employees deal with in a subtle way. What I find particularly attractive is that these don’t show offices, pool tables or computers but tell you a story of GE’s employees. As an example, the Molly advert shows how working at GE naturally fits the employee and not the other way around.

5. Strengthen your position at universities

によると LinkedIn research, 66% of people who changed jobs recently were aware of the existence of the company before hearing about the job opportunity. There are a number of ways to increase brand awareness early on, and universities are one of the best places to start. That said, traditional student fairs are only one way of doing it, and not the most innovative one to be frank.

Need fresh ideas?

Check. This. Out.

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Isn’t that gorgeous? No, that’s not Daftcode’s office space. It’s the result of DaftCode’s cooperation with The University of Warsaw.

DaftCode is a Warsaw-based company that decided to “