Why companies don’t invest more in employer branding & marketing?

LinkedIn had published a study on “Global Recruiting Trends”that is still very relevant, surveying 4,000 talent acquisition professionals across 35 countries. The data gathered yields a few interesting insights:

Firstly, recruiting the right talent continues to be a top priority: In fact, 83% of respondents said this is their #1 priority.

Furthermore, recruiting will be even harder in the coming years and there is an increasing focus on quality of hire: how long a new employee stays at the company, hiring manager satisfaction and the time to fill the position.

As a matter of fact, the major challenge recruiters highlighted is the competition for talent. One of the most effective ways to do that and differentiate from your competitors is to work on your employer brand and fine-tune your message that is the right blend between what your target candidates are looking for and the unique culture and value proposition your company can offer. This “correct by design” process allow you to attract the “Best-fit”, increasing retention and satisfaction, and optimizing the recruiting flow.

With that in mind, are companies planning to invest more in Employer Branding? Here we find an interesting picture: Over 80% of talent acquisition managers acknowledge that employer branding has a significant impact on their ability to hire talent and would like to invest more on that. But in practice, they continue to invest most of their budgets in job boards and staffing agencies.

In product marketing, this would be somewhat equivalent to advertising in the “broad” media and selling in supermarkets, instead of finely targeting your message to reach the right audience and working on your company branding to get customers to look for you instead.

If people realize they should be investing more in employee branding – why isn’t this happening? Perhaps part of the answer is that employer branding doesn’t always display a direct measurable ROI - as in other aspects of marketing. But maybe the following data set can shed some different light into the question: In most cases, Employer Branding is done by recruiting staff – who doesn’t necessarily commands marketing techniques; or by marketing folks – who often are not intimate with the recruiting nuances. Employer branding is a unique discipline that requires thorough understanding of both worlds.

At ShareOn Marketing, we specialize on all aspects of B2H marketing and employer branding, encompassing the HR&recruiting side and leveraging our experience in marketing and branding. This ensures the best results in such a critical aspect of your business.