As a sourcer, you are an influencer for your company. Each interaction that a person has with your company contributes to the perception they have of your company brand. Many people initially associate the term “brand” or “branding” with commercial products, but it also can correspond to the professional organization or company that you represent.
Oxford Languages defines touchpoint as “a point of contact or interaction, especially between a business and its customers or consumers”. In recruiting, this includes a message, a connection request, seeing a social media post or job description, a career-focused company advertisement, and an employee testimonial, to name a few. Research shows that it takes several touch points before an individual will decide to move forward with a decision. For example, a person may need to see a company advertisement five times before they decide to purchase a product. In the world of talent acquisition, it may take seven touch points before a prospective job candidate will apply to an open requisition. The faster that we can help individuals connect the touch points that they have been exposed to, the easier it will be to convert the prospect into an active candidate.
A brand-focused strategy should be implemented as a part of your sourcing strategy. It is not necessary to be a marketing professional to understand and leverage branding to increase the quality of your efforts. Here is how you can elevate your sourcing performance by adding a focus on strong, cohesive branding.
Messaging
Messaging is arguably the biggest area of opportunity to exercise consistent corporate branding. When messaging candidates, a sourcer has the space to tell a story about the company they are sourcing for. When a message is consistent with the company branding, the touch points will begin to connect for the message receiver. They may remember a time that they saw a commercial for your company that had similar verbiage. Similarly, they may recall a job description they read while searching the night before that would have otherwise been lost in the sea of opportunities. If your message’s tone and verbiage are consistent with the overall tone and branding of the company, connections will form subconsciously in the target candidate, and they will develop a positive connotation and attraction toward the brand.
The first step to execute this strategy is to immerse yourself into company written communication. A company careers page is a great place to get started. Take note of how the writers articulate the benefits package, the culture, and the hiring process. Look for the types of calls to action they use to generate clicks on the site. If your company has a careers or people-focused social media account, this is another ideal spot to research the tone and dialogue that focus specifically on your company’s employer brand.
Although the audience is different, customer or consumer facing communications will also help you gain an understanding of the tone of the brand. Reading through other areas of your company website or marketing materials will improve your knowledge of the company’s brand. You will need to think about your target audience, prospective candidates, and how to reframe the messaging to focus on their wants and needs.
At first, it may feel irrelevant to change your tone or verbiage to mimic the company’s tone, but there is a solid reason why branding, tone, and voice are at the center of focus for marketing and communication teams across all areas of business. These small changes to your messaging will create consistent branding and contribute to the larger picture of building a story about your company that will draw in the ideal candidate.
Candidate Pool Selection
In regard to the ideal candidate, the individuals you add to your pipeline also should be in alignment with your recruiting brand strategy. It is still imperative that you eliminate as much bias as possible while sourcing, so adding a branded element is not suggesting that you can bring bias into your sourcing. Sourcing with a branding lens suggests that the type of prospects you add to your pipeline should align with the skill set your brand is looking to fill. This is undoubtedly a tricky line to toe, but if you are able to do so, your sourced to hire metric will increase.
Your Personal Brand
It is easy to assume that your influence on the candidate’s perception stops after you send a message, but most times it goes further than that. Whether it is clicking on your LinkedIn profile or company bio, or conducting a quick Google search of your name, the prospect will likely be looking into who you are. If your personal brand does not align with the company’s brand or showcase desirable attributes to a prospective colleague, this will negatively impact your sourcing.
An easy way to tell a consistent brand story through your personal brand is to share social media posts about your company as a workplace. There are tools that will automate social media distribution and platforms that create an internal database of approved social media content with a recruitment focus. If your company is not choosing to leverage these tools, an easy and arguably more effective way for you to convey your company brand is through sharing your personal experience. A simple and effective example of this is a LinkedIn post sharing about a trip utilizing your company’s generous time-off policy. For example, I highlighted a company benefit through my LinkedIn and reached 10,650 accounts while only having 600 connections. The organic reach of a post like this is almost unfathomable.
The Results
The ability to communicate in a consistent manner that aligns with your company brand will take practice and intentionality. The results of these efforts include increasing and expediting conversions from prospect to hire, more accurate candidate pipelines, and an overall more accurate depiction of your company as an employment destination. As a sourcer, you are a frontline representative for your employer brand. The practice of utilizing a consistent brand strategy will elevate your expertise as a sourcer and a talent acquisition professional leading to increased performance.