4 Ways You Can Improve your Employer Branding

You already know why employer branding is essential, but if you’re stuck on the ‘how’, we can give you some pointers.

The trouble is, many hiring managers know it’s important, but they just don’t know where to start — and what constitutes strong employer branding, anyway?

Your reputation as company matters. It matters much more than it used to because the employees you’re hoping to attract want more from a job than money — they want an employer they can get behind. 

So are you focusing on the right things when it comes to employer branding? Let’s find out.

1. Focus internally first

You can’t shout about how great your company is if it needs some improvement internally. You want to speak truths; otherwise, you stand to attract criticism — potentially damaging your employer brand.

Understand what current employees want from your company. Perhaps they don’t feel heard, or they don’t get the appreciation they deserve for their hard work, or maybe they want flexible working options. (Over 70% of employees want flexible remote work options to continue. But over 65% are craving more in-person time with their teams. You can see there’s an obvious case for flexible working here.) Whatever the common problems, address them first and build benefits and perks that work well for your employees.

How can you uncover these issues? Anonymous employee feedback forms and regular one-to-ones. Catching up with employees is crucial to building a strong employer brand; communication is key.

How employees ‘exit’ your business, is crucial also. Many companies focus too much on what new employees think but don’t forget about their former employees. Make your exit transitions as smooth as possible — don’t burn any bridges.  Always stay focused on your employer branding — what the job community thinks of you matters.

2. Bin the ‘off the shelf’ strategy

Although your interview process will be largely consistent (how else do you compare candidate skills?), the rest of your recruiting strategy doesn’t have to be a copy and paste job. Every candidate is unique.

Insert personalisation into the process. Tech talent is thin on the ground right now when compared to current job vacancies, so they’ve got the power. Study their skillset and experience, tell them why you’re a good fit for their skills and how your company can support their career ambitions.

You want to show candidates that you care about your employees and why they should consider you for their next career move. And remember, bad recruitment experiences are spoken about amongst other devs. Always give candidates feedback after their interview, regardless of whether they were successful or not.

3. It’s not all about the money, it’s about your company values

According to Harvard Business Review, 9 out of 10 employees are willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning at work. Whether you take a stance on important social or societal issues, you’re passionate about sustainability, or recycling is a number one priority in your office — whatever your company is passionate about, you need to make it clear through your recruitment process.

Millennials (who will make up 75% of the workforce in 2025) want to work for companies that are socially responsible. This generation cares about climate change and making a difference. So show you care, too. If you don’t, you’ll already be a mile behind many other tech startups.

In the same vein, it’s still a bit about the money. Two in three candidates are more likely to apply when a salary is displayed on a job advert, which is fair enough. Don’t just state ‘competitive salary’, benchmark industry average salaries and keep up-to-date with this info. You can use Salary Design to keep on top of tech salaries by country to make sure you continue to remain competitive. Or check out our salary blogs for frontend and backend developers, data and analytics and DevOps & SRE.

4. Get involved in their communities

40% of employees are considering making a job change, so start real conversations amongst the tech community to build a relationship between your company and the potential pool of candidates. The tech community talks — they share good and bad recruitment experiences as well as discussing the latest tech trends and updates. 

Be privy to their conversations about job expectations and proactively make changes to reflect the patterns you stumble across. 

And don’t be afraid to build your brand further afield; you no longer have to focus on country-specific hires, particularly if you’re willing to support relocation or remote work opportunities. The world is your oyster — just make sure you’re authentic, transparent, flexible and consistent.

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