A while ago we touched on the importance of brand for the hiring process. Your brand helps you to stand out and can communicate what makes you different. Clearly conveying your why supports you in finding candidates that are a strong cultural fit. Strong brands allow you to hire the right candidates faster, to retain your top-performing employees and to decrease the costs of hiring.
One important part of communicating your brand to the outside world is consistent and reliable PR work. This blog post details how PR can help you increase visibility in terms of your employer branding.
Your marketing is not your PR
Before we dive into how PR can lift your employer brand, it’s fundamental to understand the differences between PR and marketing. Marketing supports your organisation promote your product of services with the fundamental goal of increasing sales. PR on the other hand, is about creating and maintaining trustful long-term relationships with the public – journalists, investors and also your potential and current employees.
In order to start forming these relationships, think about your underlying goals: What do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase visibility for your company? Do you want to position yourself as a thought leadership? Do you want to talk about a specific product or project? These questions will help you to identify the right stories and allow you to reflect on whether those stories attract the candidates you want to hire.
Finding the right story
When we wrote about how important content marketing is to achieve your marketing goals, we also highlighted the value of knowing your buyer personas. For recruiting purposes it’s quite similar: you need to understand the ideal candidate you’re trying to attract and relate to them as people. This becomes increasingly significant as the “war for talent” puts pressure on companies hiring scarce talent such as AI specialists or highly specialised developers.
By understanding what your target audience is interested in, you’re able to craft stories and messages around that topic. Many people in the cleantech industry, for example, are driven by the opportunity to make a difference and have a strong impact. As a potential employer it is therefore fundamental to highlight your contribution to a better tomorrow: How does your technology help to reduce emissions? Can you quantify the savings?
As cleantech companies often develop highly advanced technical solutions, another potential hook for your future employees are the technical challenges. Do you apply certain technologies in a novel application? Is your software extremely sophisticated, yet elegant?
Making your voice heard
Once you have identified your stories, it is imperative to communicate them consistently. A set of key messages – possibly centred around your employer value proposition – creates this consistency. These messages will also build the foundation of your PR.
PR for cleantech companies can take many different forms – we’ve collected a number of them in the past. Keep in mind that you’ll have to target different media than usual and rephrase your normal messages. Journalists that normally cover your tech and your commercial success will most likely not be interested in writing about how great you are as an employer.
So how do you address this challenge? On the one hand, you can share details in interviews and on podcasts regarding the technical difficulties you experience and provide insights regarding your unique approach – this can even be done in a conversation with trade media. On the other hand, we advise to look for some publications that allow you to share your talent-related angles as well. Those publications typically focus on issues such as leadership but can also be your local newspaper. As your team continues to grow, local media outlets are likely to give you more space to tell your story as you become an increasingly important factor in the region.
Your greatest asset for telling your story are your current employees, though. They have their own networks and connections. Magazines, newsletters and podcasts hosted and published by universities and similar institutions provide a great opportunity for your employees to share their personal story, their place within your company and why your organisation is a wonderful place to work at. Those stories are true and credible – it doesn’t get better than this first-hand experience.
Do you want to want to learn more how PR can support your recruiting and your business? Book a free consultation with PR expert, Jan by emailing him directly jan@lifesizemedia.com
