Talent Branding

A topic which I have been toying around for sometime now, is Employment Branding, a term most of the times neglected or under valued, and often confused or made good with Organization Branding activities. Most of the organizations use the same funda for pitch which is used to get clients. The message you give or use to pitch in for a client is different from the message you give to acquire an employee.

Employment branding includes but not limited to talent identification, talent acquisition, talent management and talent retention. so why not call it "Talent Branding", as everything we do in Employment branding is relevant to "Talent" for and in the organization. A study by CareerBuilder India comes out with some interesting results;

When looking for a new job, workers cited the following factors as the most important in evaluating a potential employer:

· Good work culture (62 percent)
· Stability and longevity in the market (61 percent)
· Reputation for being a great place to work (60 percent)
· Good career advancement opportunities (53 percent)
· Ability to offer flexible schedules (49 percent)

When asked what would most likely get them to respond to a job listing besides competitive pay and benefits, workers ranked different factors as follows:

· Company’s stability and growth potential (50 percent)
· Clear sense of what the job entails (49 percent)
· Good career advancement opportunities (47 percent)
· Training and learning opportunities (42 percent)
· Programs for healthy work/life balance (37 percent)
· Sense of ownership in one’s position (34 percent)
· Camaraderie, family-like work environment (33 percent)
· Employee recognition programs (28 percent)

All these are the "Pull" factors for candidates to look at prospective employers. Are these messages communicated to prospective candidates and employees on a regular basis? But how do you convey all this as message to the talent community at large and consistently? That's where the specialized "Talent Marketeers" come into picture - utilizing the print media, online media, blogs, community forums, job / education fairs, etc, to convey this message. If these "Pull" factors are used effectively internally, within organizations, it would result in retaining talent and keeping it motivated.

Are we as consultants, doing justice in communicating all this about our clients to prospective candidates? Do we consciously discuss on these lines when they are scouting for talent? I feel if we are able to do this effectively, the backout / offer declines could be reduced by a large margin, as we and the client, together would have sold what the candidate wants. On the other side, have we as consultants, been able to educate our clients on the importance of realising this and continuously talk to the candidate community?