How to Protect Your Employment Brand in 3 Simple Steps

Matt Gill — February 15, 2017

As Senior Marketing Executives at this point in our careers, we’ve all been on both sides of the hiring process―as a candidate and as a hiring manager.

I find it miraculous at how quickly some (meaning many) forget about their experiences of being a candidate, both good and bad. As a whole, the candidate experience is bad. Once hired, many simply forget about how frustrating the lack of feedback, unanswered emails, phone calls, or even abandoned communication all together is. Not only does it reflect poorly on the employment brand, as a company, but it has a negative impact on overall company performance.

Three Simple Steps to Protect Your Employment Brand:

1. Set expectations for the hiring timeline. Do this in the first interview. There are moving parts to every hiring process that can change this, but if you know your company takes six months to hire, let the candidates know that. As you move through the interview process, be more specific about timing and the process going forward.

2. Set guidelines for communication. Let the candidates know who they should be communicating with regarding the process and when that communication will take place. Many times, as the hiring manager, you are relying on your overworked HR team. Provide the candidate a back-up contact person (ideally you as the hiring manager) if they are not getting responses. It’s very important that you communicate when you said you would. Dead air kills hiring.

3. Don’t ignore candidates. How simple is this? Hiring processes take turns, speed up, and slow down for a variety of reasons. There are cases when the reasons can’t be shared with the candidate but not communicating a change to the process is not an excuse to ignore a candidate. It’s OK to let them know the process has changed or slowed down and is so much better than ignoring them.

There are a few reasons for implementing these three simple steps into your hiring process. The first, professional courtesy. If that’s not incentive enough, these tactics will also convey a stronger employment brand than your competitors vying for the same talent.

Having access to top talent with a strong employment brand will help you to hire the best, and that will help you and your company succeed. It’s simple, simple stuff but, unfortunately, I see firsthand the lack of execution on something so simple that can have such a strong impact on you and your company.

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