Industry Insights

Candidates Will IMPACT Your Brand

TOPIC: Brand Management

KEYWORDS: Candidate Experience, Human Resources, Social Media

While politicians can now easily tweet about a company's brand, that's not what I'm writing about here today! Let's get right to the point. Who remembers Mr. Telly Savalas, one of the manliest men on the planet drinking Diet Coke in the 1980's? All of the sudden it was cool for men to drink Diet Coke! The brand managers at Coke were able to simply say so on TV. Can we so singularly control our brand today?

Control of Brand has Shifted!

We are all aware now that the power in brand management has somewhat shifted, and shifted significantly! Social media platforms; be they social networks, ratings sites, communities or blogs all give power to the people. Since the power is now with the people, it follows that to a degree now we find even HR executives, playing a significant role in brand management. In fact, in a recent study conducted jointly by Future Workplace and CareerArc, clear evidence was found that candidates are placing the most trust during their job search on the online comments from other candidates and employees. HR executives are therefore required to address the candidate experience in similar fashion, as marketing executives have addressed the customer experience with their actual products or services.

Negative begets Negative

We also all know intuitively that those posting negative experiences are most likely to share their opinions across multiple social media outlets. By and large, candidates applying on-line to a company have made the decision that they would be honored to work there. They apply in hopeful admiration. By ignoring them altogether, or sending a form letter to candidates believing they will understand; firms miss an opportunity to turn a negative to a positive. People can understand they won't be a fit for every company, at every moment in time. They won't assume that case though if left to their own imagination! Fairly strong emotions can creep into the mind of the ignored. It is important to build a proper strategy for the applicant process that accounts for this phenomenon.

Care for those Silver Medalists

Indeed, one could reasonably argue it is just as important to have a strategy for taking care of those a company doesn't hire than those that are hired! There are ways to be respectful and professional when delivering the "no fit" message. That's the easy part. Slightly more difficult is putting a strategy in action to actually engage and get that job done. Close the loop with those candidates!

One Option for Consideration

There are a few services cropping up to take this responsibility and run with it as a proxy for a firm's HR unit. We have one at my company Rose International, Brand Leveraged Talent Solutions.

Sticking with my opening query, I guess we could say the goal is to have all your candidates saying: "Who loves ya, baby?"