According to Harvard Business Review, in 2014, 36 percent of global employers reported talent shortages, and in a more recent 2015 survey, 73 percent of CEOs reported being concerned about the availability of key skills. What does that mean for employers? Any time there is a shortage of talent, employers of necessity must become more competitive to attract the talent that is available. It is a simple matter of supply and demand. In this regard, employers can take a page from the marketing playbook. In the highly competitive hunt for consumers, marketers make a concerted effort to bolster their company brands to attract business. In a similar way, employers must make a concerted effort to bolster their employer brands. What an Employer Brand Is Recruiting.com gives this simple and direct definition of an employer brand: “An employment brand is the market perception of what it’s like to work for an organization. In other words, it’s the image that your prospective, current, and past employees have in their minds about the employment experience at your company. This includes characteristics like the organization’s company culture, work environment, employee benefits, and employee value proposition.” At one time, an employer brand was largely built on the advertising of job positions and some recruiting literature available to job candidates. Now, however, much more is required to build a strong employer brand. The HBR article states: “Times have changed. The rise of social media has made companies a great deal more transparent. People are far more likely to trust a company based on what its employees have to say than on its recruitment advertising. This means that talent attraction relies far more heavily on employee engagement and advocacy.” Why Strong Employer Branding Is Important Building a strong employer brand is important for a variety of reasons. Here are just a few. A strong employer brand: Enables you to attract the right talent: Your employer brand is intrinsically tied to your company culture. Therefore, by building your employer brand, you help candidates who are not a good fit to opt out of the recruitment process early on, saving you time and money. At the same time, you enable candidates who are a good cultural fit to understand quickly that your company offers something of value for them personally. Template: Creating Ideal Candidate Personas – Our free persona template will help you improve your talent acquisition by identifying who your ideal candidates are and how best to reach them. Enables you to compete with something other than compensation: In many cases, some of your competitors may be able to edge you out of the competition for top talent by offering more in the way of compensation and company perks. However, it is important to note that not every candidate puts his or her main priority on compensation alone. Strong employer branding helps you broadcast your value proposition to candidates more clearly. It is likely that it is in your value proposition that the true difference between you and your competitors lies. Enables better employee retention: Because strong employer branding helps you to set proper expectations for future hires, it is more likely that new hires will stay with your company over the long term. Increased employee retention saves time and money and strengthens your organization in the process. The Takeaway Strong employer branding creates a chain reaction of the best kind for your company. It helps you attract the best talent and then engage that talent and promote better employee satisfaction. This, in turn, leads to better employee retention, which saves time and money for your organization. Thrive TRM is a talent management system which facilitates the building of your employer brand. With cutting-edge technology, Thrive TRM enables robust communication with your candidates and real-time reporting metrics that keep your talent management team on point and on track every day. Schedule a demo to see what Thrive TRM can do for your organization today.