Why Your Employer Brand Matters

Sam Gager and Dina Medeiros |

New LinkedIn research shows employer branding investment worth every penny

When you recognize a company logo or hear a familiar ad jingle, it instantly brings to mind a brand that usually holds some meaning for you. For decades, traditional marketing departments have been creating campaigns to connect you with their brands.

Meanwhile, the lines between recruiting and marketing have continued to blur. The adoption of some recruiting strategies more commonly seen in marketing departments has become standard practice in many organizations. At the center of these efforts is employer branding – a term that has been in usage for about 20 years, and that has recently become one of the hottest concerns for talent acquisition leaders.

LinkedIn’s Hiring Solutions Insights team took a deep dive to understand the impact of company brand and employer brand on job consideration. In March of this year we surveyed over 7,000 LinkedIn members worldwide. Some results were what you would expect; others took us by surprise.

Key Findings:

1.    A strong overall company brand certainly helps with attracting talent. It stands to reason that if people admire your brand, they’re more likely to be aware of your company as an employer and potentially think it would be a good place to work.

2.    Overall brand impacts job consideration, though not as much as you might think. Thinking favorably of a company isn’t the same as genuinely wanting to work there.

3.    A strong employer brand – as indicated by an individual having a positive impression of your company as a place to work – is twice as likely to be linked to job consideration as a strong company brand.

4.     A strong employer brand is especially critical for attracting more junior employees, candidates from younger demographics, and those outside the US. Among certain key audiences, employer brand isalmost three times as likely to be tied to genuinely wanting to work for a company as is company brand.

The bottom line: regardless of how well known and regarded your company’s brand is, employer brand is a key driver of job consideration. How are you investing in developing, distributing and measuring yours?

For more details – and if you’re building the case to increase your employer branding budget – download ourfree whitepaper.

Complete Linkedin Article and White Paper