Companies involved in the retail sector know the importance of branding. The brand of your store, the brands of the products you sell, etc. Your employer brand is just as important as all of these. The efforts your company takes in attracting and retaining your employees can make a difference between a person working for your company and your competitor’s company around the corner.
The retail sector is a much sought after industry when it comes to recruitment and creating a strong employer brand really does make a difference. 55% of retail employees rated an employer’s reputation as a great place to work highest, even more than salary (48%) when assessing their next move up the career ladder. It is important to develop a positive reputation as an employer for any retailer. A poor employer brand or a lack of one can make it harder to find the right people and to fill roles.
It can have serious financial implications too. Last year, LinkedIn research found that a poor employer brand could cost larger companies over £4m per year in additional wages needed to draw candidates in.
To stand a chance of enticing the best candidates, retailers need to establish that strong, positive employer brand. As well as making a company appealing to external candidates, having employees that are proud to work for a company is an indisputable way of finding new hires through referrals – widely accepted to be the best source of talent.
ATS vs. Recruitment Marketing platform
An ATS allows you to track your candidates throughout your recruitment process from the initial application stage. However, one of the biggest pains today in recruitment is actually attracting quality candidates. In order to do this, you must lead them through the stages of their candidate journey: awareness, consideration, and interest. This is where recruitment marketing comes into action.
Recruitment marketing allows employers to showcase their employer brand and create a dual recruitment & marketing strategy to help attract talent and bring their process to life. An ATS then comes into play allowing you to streamline your candidate selection and process and bulk up your talent pool.
The trouble with this is many professionals in the recruitment industry think that they have to choose one over the other when in fact there are many platforms out there that allow you to have both. This means that you don’t have to sacrifice either and instead you can implement a full funnel recruitment platform with the added benefits of an ATS and additional extras.
Benefits of a recruitment marketing platform?
The majority of companies are beginning to think of their candidates as consumers. They have a variety of choices when it comes to researching and choosing their next career. Recruitment marketing allows you to build a relationship with candidates before they even begin to think about applying for a job with your company. This allows you to get a competitive advantage over any competition. People don’t apply to companies anymore they apply to brands. 55% of talent leaders see employer branding as the top investment priority in 2017.
Recruitment marketing platforms also allow you to:
✔ Give up excel spreadsheets, yes many people still use these! Automating your recruitment process allows you to save time. Be gone spreadsheets!!
✔ Centralize your recruitment. Have everything in one place, no more searching through emails for those CVs you received.
✔ Save money. Yes, you heard correct. Many people are under the misconception a recruitment marketing / employer branding tool with an ATS costs more, it doesn’t! You actually save money.
✔ One click job postings to a number of job boards.
✔ Build an employer branding page. Put up employee pictures, videos, testimonials and attract top talent. So easy to use.
