As a professional services provider, you sell expertise. And there are people behind that expertise which means that one of your top priorities is attracting top talent. How do you do that? It’s all about developing your employer brand, which is really your reputation as a place to work.
TRANSCRIPTION:
As a professional services provider, you sell expertise. And there are people behind that expertise which means that one of your top priorities is attracting top talent. How do you do that? It’s all about developing your employer brand, which is really your reputation as a place to work. Now, there are really six steps that I want to take you through to think about when you’re developing your employer brand.
The very first step to take is to think about your overall growth strategy. Are you primed to grow organically? Are you primed for acquisition or are you thinking about a blend? Understanding your path to growth is going to impact the way you position yourself as an employer and the type of talent you need to attract.
Step two is to research your prospects and your competitors. Why not research your candidates? Well, understanding how your prospects are responding to the marketplace, how they’re making decisions, and how your competitors are selling the same types of services and expertise that you are, helps you in turn understand how you need to be positioned to attract the top talent to set you apart.
The third step, then, armed with an understanding of your overall pathway to growth and how your prospective audience is going to respond and who your competitors are, you’re ready to develop your strategy. This is all about knowing how you need to be positioned as a firm, and as an employer, to attract the right talent that’s going to get you to that growth path.
Step four is to build the tools to then communicate that brand strategy that you have just built. It’s going to be part infrastructure, like a website, like templates. It’s going to be part marketing techniques and part strategies. Building all of that together in your toolkit is what will help you communicate this employer brand that you’ve just built.
Step five – you’re ready to launch the brand. Now this is not about a press release that says you’ve got a new website and you’re ready to be the employer that your strategy says you’re going to be. Launching the brand is actually something that happens over time. And this is about proving and living that employer brand that you’ve just developed through things like a thought leadership strategy, allowing your prospective employees to experience the expertise that you’ve build your brand around.
Now you’re ready to take the last step in building your employer brand. This is about optimizing for visibility as well as impact. So think about getting your reputation out there, the word of who you are as an employer through thought leadership, through guest publishing, through social media posts. All of these things will help you get more visibility around your brand and be more impactful for the folks you need to attract.
Now if you’d like to learn more about building your employer brand, I encourage you to go to hingeuniversity.com/courses. We’d love to see you there!
