By Shane Minor, Marketing & Design Manager of The Ōnin Group
Recruiting is tough, but it was tough long before the baby boomer generation left the workforce in a mass exodus and millennials entered the workforce in droves with no work experience and high expectations for wages and benefits. And yet, some companies have short-circuited the system to acquire the best talent while most companies struggle. How? The answer is simple: brand development.
Without taking a deep dive into what brand development is, let’s discuss the basics. Your “brand” is how your customers feel about your company, how your employees feel about your company, and how the public, in general, feels about your company. Those are a lot of feelings, but this definition is so true. It’s also extremely important to settle this in the recruitment area by focusing on brand development.
We believe investing in our Ōninites is just another way of ultimately investing in our customers. This commitment to doing the right thing directly developed the brand based on the four pillars of branding — difference, relevance, esteem and knowledge.
Potential employees and customers must see a company as unique in a positive way; this is “difference.” They must be able to trust a company’s ability to deliver consistently; this is “relevance.” They must be able to trust a company’s word; this is “esteem.” Finally, they must know your business; this is “knowledge.”
Far too often, businesses use gimmicks and special offers hoping these will pay off and bring them the talent they need, but there is no gimmick or special offer in the world that will fix a broken brand. Instead, you’ll simply recruit the lacking caliber of people who often attribute to your poor brand experience in the first place.
Regardless of how a company chooses to communicate to potential employees, we must remember that a brand is a reflection of a company. Whether the mirror is a reflection of reality or it’s a warped, negative perception, we must honestly evaluate our brand and adjust our work cultures and the perception of our culture accordingly to succeed.
Related: Recruit Great Employees Without Breaking Your Budget