Monster reports on why employer branding is crucial to attracting talent

Candidates invest a lot of time in the application process. After all, recruiter not only expect complete, up-to-date documents, including a detailed CV and certificates: The letter should at best clarify whether the candidate also fits well with the corporate culture, and in conversation, professional and personal knowledge should be presented in great detail. 

"In many places this is now the other way around, and companies are ultimately applying for the workforce of good candidates," said Dr. Tim Weitzel, Study Director and Professor at the Chair of Business Informatics, University of Bamberg. "It's about identifying consistently as a good and credible employer at all stages of the Candidate Journey - from initial contact to onboarding. In addition to exciting job content, the company culture and working environment are becoming increasingly important to applicants. They want a look behind the scenes, a 'realistic job preview'. Employer branding is the keyword here, which is why we have made it a focus topic in the current recruiting trends." 

The fact that the companies are already working on their image is shown by the studies of 2018 and 2019 of the Center for Human Resources Information Systems (CHRIS) of the Universities of Bamberg and Erlangen-Nuremberg and the career portal Monster.

Authenticity and honesty are what the candidates want

The fight for talent is great, as candidates know. They have more choices, and so do their job and employer needs, as 74.3 percent of respondents confirm. The current recruiting trends show that companies require credible employer branding along the entire candidacy journey. The employer brand plays an important role already in the phase in which candidates become aware of a company and begin to obtain information. In terms of the prospective employer, mutual appreciation and open communication are particularly important to candidates, with less than half (48.1 and 41.4 percent respectively) of the candidates performing with their current employers.

Last year's study (Topic Employer Branding 2018) showed that 68.4 percent of the candidates did not apply before after finding out that companies did not keep their employer branding commitments. Honesty is important. After all, the experiences a candidate makes during the candidacy journey with one company, starting with the hiring process, are passed on to others - 87.5 percent of all candidates said they had positive experiences, 83.3 percent the negative, the study found. Thus, a bad application process can gnaw on the corporate image - an effect that many companies underestimate. 

How do companies provide a look behind the scenes?

How should a candidate recognize, based on a standardized job advertisement full of buzz words, whether the company meets his wishes and expectations? And how does a company have to go beyond the application process in order to be perceived as an attractive employer brand and suitable employer?

In the job advertisement, it is important to stand out from the competition: Monster's Studios app gives you the opportunity to use a video to make the ad more vivid and personal, giving the candidate valuable and authentic insights into the position to be filled, the corporate culture and the future. 

"The goal of every company today must be to optimize employer branding and to show where candidates make the decision: in the job advertisement," says Sylvia Edmands, Managing Director of Monster in Germany. "We know that this is very time-consuming. The new Monster Studios app gives recruiters the ability to record videos themselves with the smartphone and quickly and easily attach their job ads. In the video they introduce themselves authentically to their candidates, provide insights into the company, let 'corporate ambassadors', such as the future team, have their say and thus show their employer brand on the ad. At the same time, video content significantly increases their visibility and attention in the target audience."

Employer branding has to become more resilient

Once a candidate has successfully arrived at the company, it is important to keep the employer branding promise - and the onboarding time is particularly critical. "Appreciation" (75.4 percent), "good training" (69.7 percent) and "getting to know the company" (69.5 percent) are the most important topics for candidates and are expressed, for example, through trust and a welcoming culture. However, this is not self-evident: The majority of employees have experienced errors such as "being unprepared", "unsympathetic personality of existing employees" or "time problems (unpunctuality, no time for new employees)" in the onboarding process. Companies are aware that they still have room for improvement: one in ten of the top 1,000 companies say do not give the candidates any appreciation - a malady that needs to be rectified. In order not to harm the image of the company, consistent employer branding along the entire candidate journey is essential.

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