|
|
|
Overcome the Skills Shortage with Branding
The ‘skills shortage’ is in the news and likely to stay there. What it
means for employers is that the
present rate of expansion in most industries will increase the level of
competition for much-needed skills in the marketplace, and as skilled
employees leave a business they’ll be harder to replace.
This translates into increased
expenses for employers – first, to communicate their employment
opportunities, then to attract desirable candidates, and finally to
retain them and prevent their being poached by other businesses.
There are simply not enough people obtaining skills in most areas of
employment through education, training and experience to create a pool
of talent from which employers can pick and choose. Yet, nothing could
be worse for a company in the throes of expansion than to have to accept
second-best levels of ability when trying to drive growth.
Employers are rapidly learning
to adopt a positioning or ‘branding’ for their recruitment activities
that will parallel their activities in the broader marketplace.
By doing this they become more visible and attractive to a higher
standard of candidate when seeking to fill critical positions.
These branding efforts have been successful to a degree, but their
impact depends largely upon how accurately the businesses have
identified their prospects and what appeals most to those prospects when
it comes to discriminating between employment opportunities.
Just as with consumers shopping in the broader marketplace, employees
know they have a choice of sources from which to select their next
employer. Success will come to those businesses who treat candidates for
key positions like customers – people to be wooed and ‘sold’ on the
company’s offering, then retained through high levels of service and
adequate resourcing.
It’s no secret that some employers are more liked by their existing
employees than others. Almost every industry is covered by one or more
surveys that show what employees think of employers in that industry and
that rank employers in order of preference.
Vault, Inc.
of New York was recently called "The best place on the Web to prepare
for a job search” by Fortune Magazine. Vault's career content and
services include researched and continually updated ‘insider’
information on over 3,000 companies and 70 industries.
Subscribers gain access to exclusive employee surveys on thousands of
top employers. Their online library includes such titles as the Vault
Guide to the Top 100 Law Firms, Vault Guide to Finance Interviews, and
Vault Guide to the Top 50 Consulting Firms.
These surveys are accessible for a fee to candidates in a wide variety
of industries, and are used as a guide to find the real ‘employers of
choice’ when seeking a new position. Employers can also use them as a
means of identifying their own rankings and determine which businesses
represent their greatest competition for talent.
Where these surveys become useful to employers in a marketing sense is
when they can be aligned with consumer market research and a comparison
made between the consumers’ perceptions and the employees’ perceptions
of the business. Candidates are most likely to receive their impressions
of the company from consumer sources, and employers need to know if the
brand is viewed consistently inside and outside the company.
Every employer needs to ensure that their brand is presented
consistently to both its customers and to its employees, and that the
perception of their brand held by its employees is a positive one. This
will, in turn, help ensure that they are viewed favorably by candidates
seeking employment.
The same branding elements that succeed with customers should be applied
to all recruitment efforts, from the advertising that’s done to the
questions asked during the selection process. Increasingly important to
candidates in the modern era are corporate values and the ways in which
they are translated into the company’s operations.
The skills shortage is very real and its effects will steadily increase
over the next decade. Every growth-oriented business, regardless of
size, will need to have a consistent branding that is as positive in the
eyes of candidates for positions as it is in the eyes of consumers if it
hopes to replace departing employees.
|
|
