When most people think of marketing and branding, they’ll focus on bringing in new customers. While that’s natural, it isn’t the only thing many entrepreneurs will need to focus on. Instead, they’ll need to worry about their employer brand.

This dictates whether potential employees will want to work for your company, as well as whether you’ll get high-quality applicants for jobs. You’ll need to create an employer brand that attracts these potential employees and makes them want to work for you. So when you are ready to start hiring new employees by utilizing hiring and recruiting tips and strategies, you will find people who are a perfect fit for your company.

While this can often be complicated, you can be practical about it and take a few specific steps. You’ll end up bringing in more than a few potential employees once you do.

Create An Employer Brand: 5 Practical Steps

1. Define Goals & Objectives

When you’re creating an employer brand, it’s worth spending some time figuring out what your goals are. See these as things you should work toward and a measurement of your success when you’re creating the brand. Some of the more notable of these goals include:

• Increase traffic to your career page
• Improve the quality of job applicants
• Reduce your cost per hire
• Increase the offer acceptance rate

Once you’ve defined these, you can figure out the best path forward to actually meeting them. You’ll be in a much better position to create an employer branding strategy that works for you.

2. Engage With Employees

One of the more notable places to start when you want to create an employer brand is with your current employees. They can serve as advocates for your business and testify about what it’s like to work for you. When people want to find out what this is actually like, they’ll naturally start with the people already working for you.

When your employees – both current and former – talk about this, you’ll want this to be positive. The only way to actually do that is to engage with employees and treat them well. Do that from the moment you hire them, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

3. Offer Flexible Schedules

Speaking of engaging with and treating your employees right, it’s worth going out of your way to offer them the right benefits. While many of these will relate to their compensation, they’re not the only things you can focus on. Working conditions can be some of the best areas to look at.

With workforce scheduling software, you can offer flexible schedules that your employees will appreciate and be happy with. They’ll be more likely to actually like working with you, improving your employer brand as part of it. Add in similar initiatives, and they’ll even work better for you.

4. Ensure Positive Candidate Experiences

At some point or another, you’ll get applications for various jobs. While you’ll naturally focus on filling the roles, it’s far from the only thing you’ll have to worry about. Make sure that the people who apply for the jobs have as positive an experience as possible, even if you don’t hire them.

Once you do, they’ll be far more likely to think better of you in the long term. They could even end up wanting to apply for other roles in the future if they’re not successful the first time. It’ll end up working much better for your business.

5. Optimize Branding Channels

You’ll use more than a few channels when you’re creating and enhancing your employer brand. It’s the same when you’re marketing to customers. Like traditional advertising, you’ll have to put time and effort into optimizing the channels you use. Make sure they actually work for you and represent you well.

Your website, online professional networks, and social media will be the most notable areas to focus on. Spend some time investing in these and making sure they make your business as attractive as possible for employees. While this could mean investing in them, you’ll be in a much better position because of it.

Create An Employer Brand: Wrapping Up

You’ll need to create an employer brand that potential applicants like if you want to bring in high-quality employees. That can often be easier said than done, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Quite the opposite. It’s simply a matter of being practical with it and knowing which steps to take.

While it might take you a little bit of time to get done, it shouldn’t have to be a hassle or even stressful. Once you’ve put the work into it, you’ll have better-quality applicants, and your business will thrive because of your workers. There’s no reason not to put the effort into it.