5 Reasons Why Executive Branding Will Skyrocket Your Recruitment Efforts
With organizations struggling to acquire and retain top talent — resulting in massive recruitment costs, convoluted safety-net processes, and opportunities lost to competitors — it’s quite surprising to see both startups and large corporations alike undervaluing executive branding.
And yet, 75 percent of all resignations are due to causes that managers could influence, like poor career advancement opportunities and misalignment with management and the work environment, according to Gallup.
Here are five reasons why executive branding is a noteworthy investment for senior management and the C-suite:
1. Visibility
Building a brand is an ongoing journey of multiple touchpoints. Top executive influencers are those who engage in various PR campaigns, present at events, participate proactively in social media, and run popular newsletters and blogs.
Being everywhere at all times is the bulletproof approach recommended by John Hall in his book, Top of Mind. This strategy is also related to marketing’s infamous “Rule of Seven,” which says penetrating a consumer’s mind requires a minimum of seven touches.
Utilizing a broad number of communication channels is an effective way to meet your ideal audience. Teaching a university class or participating in career fairs and mentorship events will add another vector prospective employees can use to meet, interact with, and get to know you and your company.
2. Leadership
It is more and more common for executives to engage directly with their companies’ hiring processes. According to a survey conducted by DATIS, the top five priorities of CEOs include such things as recruiting and retention, employee engagement and satisfaction, and talent management.
Building an executive brand projects a confident image of company leadership, cultivates trust in one’s skills, and helps build a community around the executive. Those are critical qualities that top candidates appreciate in organizational leaders, and they’ll be more likely to apply to an organization where the executive team appears accomplished and capable.
3. Accessibility
The larger the business, the broader the gap between executives and regular employees. This disconnect prevents most hires from interacting with the leading members of the organization. Moreover, even the most enthusiastic and committed leaders can’t effectively allocate time to meet regularly with hundreds, let alone thousands, of workers.
Executive branding allows executives to publicly share knowledge and inspiration, thus scaling insight and experience past the existing leadership team and out to lower-level employees and potential new hires. Social networks like Twitter allow both current and future employees to touch base with high-level leaders with relative ease.
4. Cultural Alignment
Finding common ground with your team is about sharing a cause, disclosing your motto, and proudly promoting case studies and success stories within the organization.
When you nurture a strong community and culture, it will resonate with the people you would love to get on board. Hiring and then losing an experienced employee due to cultural mismatch may be disastrous, but a strong executive brand can help to prevent these cases by attracting candidates who are more aligned with the organization’s mission and values in the first place.
5. Plain Recruitment
Ultimately, your executive brand makes it easier to perform the actual field work of recruiting. Your branding channels are great ways to announce open jobs publicly and ask for recommendations. Consider adding a slide to the end of your presentation that shares information on applying to the company, or tagging your prominent followers to help spread the word when you post openings on social media.
The recruiting perks of having an established brand lie in the volume. Additional exposure results in a broader reach and a higher number of brand followers, making it easier to source and hire top talent in less time and for less money.
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Executive branding can be the sharpest tool in your recruiting toolbox. While building and maintaining such a brand does require an ongoing commitment, there’s a good reason top CEOs allocate a large portion of their time to doing just that.
Mario Peshev is founder, CEO, and WordPress architect of DevriX.