We all know the role the Irish Mammy factor can play when you’re a recent graduate and on the job hunt. Not only are they your greatest advocate but they are the people you want to make most proud when you secure that first job. They will typically know of the best places to work due to the company's high media profile and you aspire to secure a job with one of these organisations, which will make them happy and proud.
Employer branding reaches far beyond the recruitment fairs and jobs websites. It is integral for securing the best employees and retaining your highly qualified current employees who already have in-depth knowledge of your business an
d have been trained up the required levels to help drive your business growth.
In a highly competitive employment landscape – especially for high tech and multilingual roles – your company has to be seen as a great place to work. If you were to look at your own business, can you confidently say that you are doing enough to recruit and retain employees? Are you promoting all the good things about your business, your achievements, CSR activities, your future plans for expansion or entering new markets?
Putting some PR practices into place, highlighting the growth of your business and the success you, together with your employees have achieved, can help create a stronger image of the business in the eyes of employees. Businesses can very often overlook the power of a news story such as business growth appointment of a senior new employee, or even an award win that can make them stand out from the crowd or make the current employees a little more proud of where they work.
Google is a great example of an organisation that has a dedicated and powerful employee branding strategy in place. Human resources expert Dr John Sullivan said, “Google, through its branding, PR, and recruiting efforts, has made itself so well-known and attractive to professionals from every industry and university that they have essentially changed the game of recruiting forever.”
For those of us on the outside, looking in at Google, the majority of us have bought into its image as a fun and exciting place to work, that it is employee centric and puts all of the systems and perks in place to ensure a motivated and happy staff. This, coupled with its impressive business messaging, identifying a growing and expanding organisation, makes it a very attractive prospect to people at all levels on the career ladder.
According to the ICT Ireland website, there are 75,000 people employed by ICT companies in Ireland and an estimated 4,500 immediate job vacancies within the sector. With the current skills shortage in the IT sector having an employee branding strategy in place can help any business stand out from the growth in the highly competitive market.
People want to work in companies that are seen to make a difference. If you’re a job seeker, you want to work for a company that you can be proud of. A company that you can tell your Mammy or family members about and they may just have read about them in the paper, heard them speaking on the radio, or saw an interview on the RTÉ news about the expansion of the business! Those who keep their heads high will continue to steal a march in terms of attracting the best, compared to those who prefer to hide their light.
