Why authenticity matters in marketing your company to new hires.
When it comes to marketing and advertising, authenticity matters. Just look at what happened recently with Ronaldo, one of the biggest sporting influencers in the world, choosing bottled water over the 2021 Euros brand sponsor, Coca Cola.
This clear dismissal of their product placement cost them, a whopping 4 billion dollars.
So why didn’t it work out? Plain and simple. It lacked authenticity. Coke isn’t the drink of choice for athletes before or after a big game at the Euros, or any sport.
And so that product placement made Coke’s shares drop by billions, as soon as Ronaldo swapped in those cokes for a nice bottle of Agua.
What has this got to do with your employer brand?
When it comes to new hires choosing your company over another, they look to see if you are a perfect fit for them – that’s where authenticity comes in. If you are not authentic in the way you present yourself as a brand, messaging and recruitment process will fall flat. Which will mean you will lose out on bringing on new hires.
So, what can you do about it?
Set your company values
If you don’t already have these in place, now would be a great time to create your unique company values and be open and honest about how you integrate these into your business.
Core values are the fundamental beliefs of your organisation that help to dictate the culture of your team. But before you get started it can be helpful to look around to see the values of other businesses in your industry to help guide you. Some good examples of company values come from the likes of Sony and AirBnB.
Sony outlines their 4 core values with a short sentence to give a good understanding to their employees.
Dreams & Curiosity - Pioneer the future with dreams and curiosity.
Diversity - Pursue the creation of the very best by harnessing diversity and varying viewpoints.
Integrity & Sincerity - Earn the trust of the Sony brand through ethical and responsible conduct.
Sustainability - Fulfill our stakeholder responsibilities through disciplined business practices.
Airbnb keeps it brief with short and concise values, which effectively describe what they are.
Work with what you already have
When it comes to creating your values and making sure you are encouraging an authentic employer brand, working with existing employees that understand your culture well is key. When focusing all the attention on attraction, companies often forget about the ones they have already got.
Get them involved in your brand development and developing your core values. It is also a great way to find out what is currently working in your company and what needs to be changed.
Encourage employee champions
Your current employees are your best influencers/champions. They are your Ronaldo. Let them be your voice. Encourage them to use social media as a platform to create employee-generated content, that will help to organically grow an authentic employer brand.
Potential employees want to know what it is like working for you, and by giving them a voice and a platform to outlet this, it will show you value the opinions of your employees too.
Keep it consistent
Whilst having the values and great social posts from your employees is a great start, you need to make sure that the authentic voice of the business is also consistent across all channels that all potential employees have access to.
These include the careers page on your website, all social channels, internal collateral, and print documents, as well as the interview stages through to welcoming your employee on their first day of work.
These steps to creating an authentic employer brand, through aligning your values and giving a clear understanding of what’s on offer, not only help in the initial stages of getting great employees on board but also go a long way in increasing high performance in their role and retaining top talent.
The key thing to remember is Authenticity matters. You can’t fake a company culture without someone finding out about it – just look at Brewdog for example.
With the way of working being turned on its head this past year due to lockdown and a global pandemic, more workers are reassessing their priorities and are less willing to compromise on their values.
This also means candidates no longer take a role at face value, they are more likely to dig deeper, investigate your social media channels and see what your current employees are up to.
All to find out if you are the right company for them; an authentic brand, with a proposition that echoes its values.
We cover more about why your employer brand is more than a logo and a foosball table here.
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