With the added budget and resources being allocated to Employer Branding going into 2022, many leaders are considering how to build out their employer brand bench. Faced with growing a team that will be solving many new and emerging challenges in the future of work, leaders are often balancing hiring for skills (experience doing certain tasks), and capabilities (ability to overcome situations).

In many cases, the most obvious hire for these professionals, will be a skill based one for a role like a recruitment marketing specialist or perhaps an expert social media manager. This is a good place to start, but it’s important to remember that, to be effective, employer branding must do more than recruitment marketing.

A full-fledged Employer Brand program equipped to impact retention and recruitment amid the Great Resignation requires a diverse set of skills and capabilities that are often nearly impossible to find within a single hire.

To help you as you build your own hiring plan, we’re sharing some insights on key attributes that we’ve found essential to an effective Employer Branding team.

Core Skills for Employer Branding

We think of skills as the building blocks of a resume — the knowledge professionals gain through experiences on the job. These are the kinds of experiences we look for in the Employer Branding space:

Talent Acquisition, Recruitment and Retention

An in-depth understanding of the full talent life cycle is key to understanding how recruitment and employee experience can be leveraged to boost results.

Social, Search and Media

Planning and managing organic and paid outreach requires a complex set of skills as well as expertise in a multitude of changing platforms.

Creative Development

Employer Branding is all about storytelling. Experience telling employee and brand stories in a variety of formats and with compelling results can make all the difference.

Employee Engagement and Events 

Increased employee engagement leads to amplified productivity and innovation. Creating and amplifying meaningful events is challenging — but can lead to high returns in engagement, Employer Brand awareness and employee satisfaction.

Research, Analysis and Strategy

Experience with gaining concrete results in the areas of employee engagement, company culture, DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging), talent attraction, and employee retention is tremendously valuable.

Key Capabilities for Employer Branding

In today’s constantly changing world, it is often necessary to operate without a rulebook. This means that underlying capabilities — such as resilience and creativity — can be more valuable than previous experiences.

Evaluating candidates based on their capacity for growth rather than their previous opportunities can also make your hiring process more inclusive.

These are the capabilities we’ve seen make the most impact on Employer Branding teams:

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Living through the COVID-19 pandemic has changed how people think about their work — and has given job hunters a wide variety of priorities that reach far beyond simple compensation concerns. An appreciation for the feelings and needs of candidates and employees will be essential on the Employer Branding teams of the future.

Teaming

More than ever before, Employer Branding teams need to be building new partnerships throughout their organizations. They must form alliances, gain buy-in, inspire action and collaborate effectively. An affinity for teaming is key.

Critical Thinking

This one is self-explanatory. Without critical thinking, you can’t define and investigate problems, synthesize information and test new solutions.

Creativity

In the new labor marketplace, all preconceptions must be reevaluated, and innovative approaches will be required to rise above the noise. Creativity is essential to innovation.

Resilience and Curiosity

With the Employer Branding landscape constantly changing, not much is cut and dry. New approaches will likely require many iterations to develop properly. A tolerance for failure is key — as is a willingness to engage in open-ended exploration as your team refines its techniques.

About Us

Blu Ivy Group is a global leader in employer branding, organizational culture, and recruitment marketing. We help organizations across the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors build extraordinary employee experiences, magnetic employer brands and high-performance cultures.

From C-Suite to Employer Brand and Talent Acquisition leadership, we partner with our clients to transform their organizations and design the most compelling workplaces of the future.

For inquiries, please contact sparker@bluivygroup.com.