How to Improve Your Employer Reputation & Attract Better Candidates

In this state of ever-increasing talent acquisition costs, we are dedicating our next few articles to things your team can do to attract quality candidates at little to no additional cost. These initiatives take a little time and commitment, but the impact they can have on your recruiting is significant.

We're kicking off this series with tips and action items to improve your employer brand reputation online.

As we've discussed, a combination of elements and the pandemic have enabled people to rethink their work life and their approach to actively participating in the workforce. In addition, “Gig Economy Jobs," like Uber drivers and dog sitters, now offer attractive pay and benefits with the added flexibility that workers highly value. With this in mind, employer brand reputation has never been more important, and candidates are looking for more than just money in today’s market.

Why else should you make your employer brand reputation a focus? Because job seekers check:

• 94% research a company during the application process.
• 64% are influenced by online reviews when deciding where to apply.
• 65% say a company’s reputation impacted their decision to accept a job.
• 140% of employers see an increase in job seekers who begin their visit to Indeed on company pages.

Where should you start? Let's dive right in. These valuable updates will immediately make your pages more credible and trusted by job seekers:

• Claim or create your Glassdoor and Indeed company pages.
• Update your company logo.
• Make sure your basic company information is complete.
• Add a concise summary of “why work for us.”

Next, you'll want to evaluate and improve your ratings and reviews. While an initial drive with employees can improve your score significantly, you'll need to make it a point to continually encourage reviews from employees to maintain and further improve your overall rating over time and elicit more positive reviews, not to mention optimize you for search results with more recent activity. Here are some tips and steps to accomplish this, both initially and longer term.

Initially:

• Identify a group of employees who are performing well and from whom supervisors have received positive feedback. If you're seeking to make a significant impact up front, this group should be at least 30 employees or up to 10% of your employee population.
• You may find it useful to identify this group by surveying your employees for feedback or through already-recurring supervisor one-on-ones.
• Through those one-on-ones or a personalized email message, encourage those employees to submit ratings and reviews, and link them directly to where to do so on Glassdoor and Indeed. And be sure to thank them afterward!

Ongoing:

• Supervisors should make at least a 2-hour commitment per quarter.
• Identify and document a minimum of 4 employees who are performing well and enjoying their work.
• Schedule 30-minute one-on-ones with those employees, and follow up with the online reviews request.
• Consider any challenges you face in this process, and evaluate how to overcome those with collaboration between supervisors and company leadership.

What should you talk about during these one-on-ones, and how do you ask for the review? Structure the conversation and give your employees open-ended questions to discuss their experience.

1. Recognize: “You’re doing great work. Thank you.”
2. Engage: “You seem to be enjoying our company and the job. How are you doing?”
3. Request a review: “Other people would love to hear about your experience. Would you mind posting a review on Indeed or Glassdoor?”

After the meeting, follow up and make it easy for them by emailing or texting them direct links to post a review, and allow them to use company time to post their reviews. This is also an excellent opportunity to ask them for referrals, which we'll discuss more in an upcoming article.

For leadership, this means holding supervisors accountable through email or a tracker (like a spreadsheet). Be sure to ask pointed questions, such as who supervisors spoke with, when, and what they learned from the conversation. This also creates an avenue for critical feedback that can be addressed and resolved to ensure employee satisfaction and longevity.

Your goal should be to achieve a 4+ star rating on primary employer review sites. Ultimately, this will help enable you to attract more and higher quality candidates and to engage and retain your best people.

While this effort has minimal monetary cost, it will take a bit of time and dedication from your team, and if you choose to partner with Source2, we’ll do the bulk of the work to best set you up for success.

Source2 has decades of experience in recruiting, as well as success in the current market, and we can help with wage analysis, brand positioning, and recruiting on the right channels with the right content to help find the employees businesses on the front line need. Stay tuned for the next article in this help series on simple and cost-effective ways you can better position yourself to acquire talent, or connect with us directly for a conversation now by emailing solutions@source2.com.