How are you building your employment brand?

“Employment brand” is a popular buzzword these days. Fifty-six percent of 4,125 global talent leaders in 31 countries surveyed for LinkedIn’s 2015 Global Recruiting Trends said they believe cultivating their employer brand is a top priority. We know a strong employment brand increases retention, employee engagement and productivity.

But the importance of employment brand does not just apply to your clients, it applies to you, whether you are just running your own desk or you are part of a small boutique.

Your brand is simply defined as people’s perception of your business. Every interaction with a client or candidate either helps build or hurts their perception: your emails, website, social media posts, phone interactions, status reports, and more.

You can instill confidence in clients and candidates (potential or actual) with a clear, consistent, professional delivery of your message. I’ve seen top executives derailed by the smallest details — an errant comma, a poorly worded sentence, a text-dense slide, a verbiage slip-up .

And let’s not forget about the power of a candidate in today’s environment — similar to clients, they are choosing which recruiters they want to work with. You want talented individuals to reach out to you first when considering their next job move. How great is it when a candidate comes to you or is always willing to take your call about a new opportunity instead of having to hunt for them?

What brand rules do we live by here at Loxo?

• Remember our vision — “Loxo’s vision is to empower ambitious people to accelerate their career trajectory and achieve their greatest potential, so they are able to live life the way they want.” Wouldn’t that get your blood going and make you excited to go to work?
• Be guided by our mission — “Loxo’s mission is to be the the most trusted, user-friendly software platform that intelligently matches talent to opportunities, enabling recruiters to achieve their greatest potential.” It’s clear to us what guides everything from our product decisions to customer interactions — building trust with customers, creating a tool that is easy for them to use and helping them achieve their goals!
• Exemplify our values in all of our interactions — our email tone, blog post content, conduct on conference calls, these all need to reflect and reinforce what we stand for!
• Pay attention to detail — This is “table stakes,” but is often overlooked. If we can’t take the time to check our work and take pride in our work, why would you believe we care about your business and your reputation?
• Treat a client/candidate how you’d want to be treated — Frustrations always arise and mistakes happen in a today’s time-constrained, high-pressure work environment. But we value building trust and relationships, so we try to take a step back to remember we’re all human and focus on finding a solution.

Maybe you can’t quickly outline your ‘brand rules’ or there isn’t team consensus on your mission and vision. It’s ok — but take action! Investing the time upfront to know how you want to be perceived in the market will pay dividends on the back-end as clients and candidates willingly align themselves with you.

Image Credit: Managing Americans