With the right branding strategy, jobseekers will line up to apply for jobs
With unemployment hitting historic lows — the national rate dipped to 5.8 per cent in October, the lowest it has been since 1974 — it’s more important than ever for organizations to distinguish themselves in order to attract top talent.
“Employers need to build their employment brands to ensure they can get quality candidates coming to them on a regular basis rather than going out there and seeking employees all the time,” said Patrick Sullivan, chief executive officer of online job site Workopolis in Toronto.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google attracts 3,000 applicants daily. The Internet behemoth never has to advertise for a job, people want to come work for them and that’s the power of branding, said John Sullivan, head of the Human Resource Management College of Business at San Francisco State University.
There are three key steps to building a brand, said Patrick Sullivan. First, define the target audience. Second, develop a set of reasons why the organization is more attractive to that audience than other organizations. And third, incorporate those reasons into all recruitment efforts and the organization’s careers website.
McDonald’s uses humour to target young workers
One Canadian organization has done a good job on all three counts. When McDonald’s Canada was facing a major labour shortage in its restaurants in Alberta, it decided it needed to do more to reach out to young workers and show them why they should pick McDonald’s over other employers.
“An employer will have a brand whether they form it themselves or not,” said Gavin Stafford, senior marketing manager for Toronto-based McDonald’s Canada.
McDonald’s mostly employs teenagers, so the organization held focus groups to identify what young workers, aged 15 to 18, are interested in.
“Mostly they’re focused on making money and themselves,” said Stafford.
Marketing then worked with HR and communications to develop a campaign that would highlight what McDonald’s offers as an employer that would appeal to this desire.
The end result was a series of television and online ads, with the tag line: “We take care of our employees.” The campaign highlighted the flexible hours, scholarships and discount cards employees receive — all things the focus groups responded favourably to, said Stafford.
“We tailored the message to appeal to what appealed to them,” he said.
One of the television ads features a young woman who reads a billboard that warns her that her ex-boyfriend is around the corner so she can fix her make-up and hair.
“That’s sort of a humorous take on the great lengths McDonald’s will go to take care of its employees,” said Stafford.
The ads directed potential jobseekers to the campaign’s website, www.worksforme.ca, which has more information on the employment proposition.
With the success of the youth campaign, which launched last year in Alberta and nationally in March and April, McDonald’s also launched a campaign with a different value proposition to appeal to a slightly older demographic whose focus is on balancing family and work, said Stafford.
Purolator highlights career development, recognition
HR managers and recruiters across the country for Mississauga, Ont.-based Purolator Courier used to work with whatever material they had when recruiting employees. But the company wanted to ensure there was consistent and accurate messaging about what it was like to work for the company so it undertook an employer branding initiative, said Merry Garbutt, director of corporate communications.
“It’s really about providing people with a clear vision of our corporate culture,” she said.
Corporate communications, corporate and field HR, marketing and purchasing all worked together to develop the employer brand. They talked to employees and recruiters to ensure the brand represented the realities of working at Purolator.
After more than one year of working on it, Purolator’s new employer brand launched in September, highlighting the learning and career development opportunities available, the recognition employees receive for their contributions and the ability of employees to make a difference.
“It does a great job of telling the story of what it’s like to work here,” she said.
The company, which has 12,500 employees, doesn’t have a centralized approach to recruitment, so an employer brand centre was created on the intranet to give recruiters and HR managers across the company access to brand materials, including advertising templates for five of the company’s most-often recruited jobs, said Garbutt.
“We knew that we couldn’t possibly build everything the HR team was going to need in terms of recruitment tools,” she said. “We’ve provided the team with the framework and the guidelines so they know what the parameters are of that employer brand and they work within that building the material that they require.”
Commissionaires refreshes tired, misleading brand
When an organization doesn’t have an employer brand, an ineffective corporate brand can hurt recruitment efforts.
About two years ago, market research discovered the brand for the security and security-related services firm Commissionaires was tired and misleading. Most people thought the red maple leaf in the logo meant the Ottawa-based organization, which has 17 divisions across the country and 18,000 employees, was a department of the federal government.
“We are a private, not-for-profit organization with a mandate of providing meaningful employment for retired servicemen,” said Doug Briscoe, executive director of Commissionaires. “The brand didn’t convey that. It wasn’t contemporary in look. We weren’t getting any traction in raising awareness.”
Lack of awareness of the 37 different kinds of security services the organization offers beyond just basic-level security guarding hurt the organization when it came to attracting new clients. It also made it harder for the organization to attract jobseekers.
“Retired veterans had a view of Commissionaires that was a pejorative view. They just saw folks doing the most menial of security-guarding tasks. They weren’t aware that we’re in all these other lines of business,” said Briscoe.
Commissionaires brought in an external branding company, Brand Matters in Toronto, to help with the rebranding efforts.
The brand is more than a new image with new colours (orange and navy instead of red and blue) and a new tagline (“Trusted Everyday Every where”), it’s about communicating the nature of Commissionaires’ businesses, said Briscoe.
“We wanted to find a brand that the Commissionaires, that the employees, would really rally behind. I think we have done that,” he said.
“Employers need to build their employment brands to ensure they can get quality candidates coming to them on a regular basis rather than going out there and seeking employees all the time,” said Patrick Sullivan, chief executive officer of online job site Workopolis in Toronto.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google attracts 3,000 applicants daily. The Internet behemoth never has to advertise for a job, people want to come work for them and that’s the power of branding, said John Sullivan, head of the Human Resource Management College of Business at San Francisco State University.
There are three key steps to building a brand, said Patrick Sullivan. First, define the target audience. Second, develop a set of reasons why the organization is more attractive to that audience than other organizations. And third, incorporate those reasons into all recruitment efforts and the organization’s careers website.
McDonald’s uses humour to target young workers
One Canadian organization has done a good job on all three counts. When McDonald’s Canada was facing a major labour shortage in its restaurants in Alberta, it decided it needed to do more to reach out to young workers and show them why they should pick McDonald’s over other employers.
“An employer will have a brand whether they form it themselves or not,” said Gavin Stafford, senior marketing manager for Toronto-based McDonald’s Canada.
McDonald’s mostly employs teenagers, so the organization held focus groups to identify what young workers, aged 15 to 18, are interested in.
“Mostly they’re focused on making money and themselves,” said Stafford.
Marketing then worked with HR and communications to develop a campaign that would highlight what McDonald’s offers as an employer that would appeal to this desire.
The end result was a series of television and online ads, with the tag line: “We take care of our employees.” The campaign highlighted the flexible hours, scholarships and discount cards employees receive — all things the focus groups responded favourably to, said Stafford.
“We tailored the message to appeal to what appealed to them,” he said.
One of the television ads features a young woman who reads a billboard that warns her that her ex-boyfriend is around the corner so she can fix her make-up and hair.
“That’s sort of a humorous take on the great lengths McDonald’s will go to take care of its employees,” said Stafford.
The ads directed potential jobseekers to the campaign’s website, www.worksforme.ca, which has more information on the employment proposition.
With the success of the youth campaign, which launched last year in Alberta and nationally in March and April, McDonald’s also launched a campaign with a different value proposition to appeal to a slightly older demographic whose focus is on balancing family and work, said Stafford.
Purolator highlights career development, recognition
HR managers and recruiters across the country for Mississauga, Ont.-based Purolator Courier used to work with whatever material they had when recruiting employees. But the company wanted to ensure there was consistent and accurate messaging about what it was like to work for the company so it undertook an employer branding initiative, said Merry Garbutt, director of corporate communications.
“It’s really about providing people with a clear vision of our corporate culture,” she said.
Corporate communications, corporate and field HR, marketing and purchasing all worked together to develop the employer brand. They talked to employees and recruiters to ensure the brand represented the realities of working at Purolator.
After more than one year of working on it, Purolator’s new employer brand launched in September, highlighting the learning and career development opportunities available, the recognition employees receive for their contributions and the ability of employees to make a difference.
“It does a great job of telling the story of what it’s like to work here,” she said.
The company, which has 12,500 employees, doesn’t have a centralized approach to recruitment, so an employer brand centre was created on the intranet to give recruiters and HR managers across the company access to brand materials, including advertising templates for five of the company’s most-often recruited jobs, said Garbutt.
“We knew that we couldn’t possibly build everything the HR team was going to need in terms of recruitment tools,” she said. “We’ve provided the team with the framework and the guidelines so they know what the parameters are of that employer brand and they work within that building the material that they require.”
Commissionaires refreshes tired, misleading brand
When an organization doesn’t have an employer brand, an ineffective corporate brand can hurt recruitment efforts.
About two years ago, market research discovered the brand for the security and security-related services firm Commissionaires was tired and misleading. Most people thought the red maple leaf in the logo meant the Ottawa-based organization, which has 17 divisions across the country and 18,000 employees, was a department of the federal government.
“We are a private, not-for-profit organization with a mandate of providing meaningful employment for retired servicemen,” said Doug Briscoe, executive director of Commissionaires. “The brand didn’t convey that. It wasn’t contemporary in look. We weren’t getting any traction in raising awareness.”
Lack of awareness of the 37 different kinds of security services the organization offers beyond just basic-level security guarding hurt the organization when it came to attracting new clients. It also made it harder for the organization to attract jobseekers.
“Retired veterans had a view of Commissionaires that was a pejorative view. They just saw folks doing the most menial of security-guarding tasks. They weren’t aware that we’re in all these other lines of business,” said Briscoe.
Commissionaires brought in an external branding company, Brand Matters in Toronto, to help with the rebranding efforts.
The brand is more than a new image with new colours (orange and navy instead of red and blue) and a new tagline (“Trusted Everyday Every where”), it’s about communicating the nature of Commissionaires’ businesses, said Briscoe.
“We wanted to find a brand that the Commissionaires, that the employees, would really rally behind. I think we have done that,” he said.
