COVID-19 has created a candidates’ market. As engineering, manufacturing and infrastructure industries have surged in demand, businesses need immediate resource to service their increased requirements and are turning to a myriad of contingent labour and permanent staff to fill that gap.

Additionally, due to the rise in redundancies made as a direct consequence of the pandemic, many previously full-time employees are considering contracting as an alternative and more viable option than seeking out permanent roles.

In combination, these trends mean that workers have been empowered to be more selective than ever when choosing their next role – they have a wealth of opportunity in front of them; they can take the time to select a business that appeals to them and which is most in line with their values. In fact, more candidates prioritise culture over salary, with Glassdoor’s multi-country survey revealing that a compelling mission, culture and set of values are critical to attracting and retaining top talent.

As such, your employer talent brand has never been more important.

Every company has a talent brand, whether they choose to acknowledge and invest in it or not. The way we recruit and retain talent has changed significantly due to advancements in technology and the increase of communication via social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and Youtube, as well as career review sites such as Glassdoor, mean the communication from and the maintenance of your public-facing brand should be an essential part of your wider recruitment strategy.

According to research, nine out of ten candidates feel more inclined to apply for a role when they can see the brand is actively maintained. That’s because your brand and communication are key to demonstrating what your company offers, how you treat your people, the opportunities available to them, the investments you make in them and why candidates should choose to join you over any other. Particularly following the challenges of the pandemic, it’s more apparent than ever that this part of your business should be a priority.  

There are major benefits from investing time and money into your talent brand. Research shows those with an active talent brand reduce the time and costs associated with hiring, attaining and retaining a better quality of talent and are able to better reach niche skillsets – pivotal in the highly technical industries that have experienced growth in the last 12 months.

Not every business has the resource to allocate time to this, though. If you don’t have an internal team focusing on your talent brand, you should consider outsourcing it.

Our Morson Digital Studio was established for this reason – it exists to enable organisations to stand out from their competitors, helping them to get the right talent in the door and build transformative teams by creating engaging talent brands.

The tactics required to improve your talent brand vary. It might consist of web content writing to improve your SEO rankings, or you might benefit from a dedicated social media feed that’s focused on recruitment. Perhaps you need a microsite dedicated to attracting quality candidates, while some creative video content might drive more applications for the talent you’re seeking. The best videos not only work to attract candidates, but they augment your talent brand, with Morson Digital Studio producing short, snappy videos perfect for social, through to longer-form content which immerses the viewer into your culture. 

From developing bespoke websites and social media campaigns, to video production and on and offline events, Morson Digital Studio will enable you to become proactive in storytelling, cultivating and elevating your employee value proposition (EVP). We’ll promote your values and unique qualities through targeted talent brand marketing, developing multi-channel branded content designed to meet demands of prospective talent and elevate you ahead of your competitors.

We’ll work in close partnership with your internal communications teams and hiring communities, and follow these three steps:

1. Discover

We’ll identify who your target candidates are, any gaps in your talent attraction strategy, and where and how you’ll engage with them in the future, to discover which platforms and tactics will best achieve the results you strive for.

• Attract and convert

We’ll overlay your insights with our own, in-house data and experience to design solutions, create concepts and form an attraction strategy, which combines not only what to say about your talent brand, but how and where you need to say it. We’ll then deliver the goods, helping you create inclusive, authentic content and, most importantly, getting that content to your target audience, via the channels most relevant to them – be it digital attraction, virtual events, social platforms, through to more traditional touchpoints such as direct mail. Once you’ve launched, we loop back to test, measure and refine.

• Create an experience

We’ll use engagement technology to get real visibility on how engaged candidates are with the roles available and your candidate material. This will enable you to select a candidate, book interviews and place workers with greater confidence. Plus, it gives candidates a truly engaging talent experience, increasing their appetite for your organisation. Technology can also be used at the onboarding stage to create immersive materials to kick-start an exceptional new starter process.

Having a clearly defined talent brand will enable you to attract, engage and hire qualified and culturally aligned people to help drive your business forward. The experience your candidates have throughout the hiring process has a huge impact on a talent brand, and in today’s challenging and complex recruitment landscape, this is more important than ever before.

Taking action now will ensure you attract, attain and engage the industry’s leading talent and ensure that, whatever the future holds, you’ve developed a workforce that helps you gain serious traction on your competitors.