The war for talent is alive and kicking. One of the greatest challenges companies face while acquiring talent is competition, says LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends Report. In today’s market, candidates can afford to be picky, meaning companies need to up their game to attract the best people. Creating a strong employer brand is now a top priority.
How does your company compare to the standard approaches around the world? I have summarized the most important facts. Let’s take a look at the key results of the 2014 Employer Branding Global Trends Study.

1) Who is creating the employer brand?

Creating an employer brand is commonly left up to HR (36% respondents), however it isn’t unusual for the marketing department (11%) or the CEO (8%) to take control of this. Establishing a clear strategy is something that needs to be worked on across the globe. More than a third of the companies (35%) have an employer brand strategy but believe it can be further developed.

2) Social media leading the way

This one doesn’t surprise me: The top approach to brand enhancement is social media (58%). This is the preferred method for Australia, Scandinavia, Spain, USA/Canada and India. Other popular methods for brand establishment are:

  • through the development of the company career website (56%, primary approach for Asia, New Zealand and Poland)
  • recruitment advertising and employer marketing (52%)
  • recruitment branding (45%)
  • induction program (45% and top method for Romania and South Africa)
  • developing brand strategy (39%)

For 2014, the main mediums for communicating the employer brand were:

  • career website (Asia, USA/Canada, Europe (other), Belarus, Romania, Russia, South America, Turkey, UAE, UK, Ukraine)
  • social media (Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Spain)
  • career fairs (Poland)
  • on campus activities (India)
3) What do candidates want?

What I find really interesting are the following stats. What are candidates attracted to? Actually, this differs from country to country. Here are the top factors in attracting candidates:

  • compensation and benefits (Asia, Spain, Poland, Romania)
  • corporate reputation and culture (NZ, UAE, South Africa, South America)
  • leadership (Australia, Europe (other), Scandinavia, UK)
  • work environment (USA/Canada, Turkey)
  • recruitment and induction processes (India)
4) Here you go – The biggest challenges

Different countries have different challenges to overcome:

  • being creative to distinguish their employment offering (Spain, Belarus, Turkey)
  • senior leadership engagement (Europe, New Zealand, India)
  • obtaining an adequate budget (Australia, Scandinavia, USA/USA, Russia, South Africa, South America, Ukraine)
  • communicating key employer brand messages across different departments (Asia, Poland)
  • coordinating key employer brand messages across different departments (Romania, UAE, UK)
5) How do they measure employer branding, actually?

At first glance, it might appear difficult to measure your employer branding success. However there are some KPIs that you should take into consideration. Let’s have a look at how countries around the world are measuring employer branding R.O.I.:

  • employee engagement (Asia, NZ, Scandinavia, USA/Canada, Turkey, UAE)
  • retention rate (Spain, EU (other))
  • number of applicants
  • quality of hire (Australia)
  • cost of hire (UK)
6) The main benefits from having a strong employer brand:

The outcome of a strong employer brand is considerable: it helps you get lots of qualified applicants and reduces your cost-per-hire. But have a look for yourself:

  • ease in attracting candidates (Asia, Australia, Europe, Scandinavia, USA/Canada, Romania, South America, UAE, UK)
  • decreased time to fill (Belarus, Russia)
  • increase in unsolicited resumes (South Africa)
  • higher job acceptance rate

We can see that approaches and benefits of employer branding differ distinctly throughout the world. However it is clear that despite these differences, companies are united in the fact that developing a strong brand is a high priority in attracting and retaining the best employees.

What is your company doing to strengthen you employer branding? What worked, what didn’t? Let me know!