Good marketers are vital to any company. They can be the difference between success and failure for any product or service, so it’s small wonder they are in such demand. Those looking for top marketing jobs or design jobs can also be pretty creative and they will certainly understand brand, so they are far more likely to consider any potential employer in a wider context, not just look at the job title and salary on offer. This means that employers need to look at their overall employer brand to attract the best candidates.

Employer branding has been with us since the 1990s and can be thought of as the economic, functional and psychological benefits provided to the employee by the employer. Economic benefits are easiest to understand and would consist of the traditional remuneration ‘package’ with salary, pension and so on. Functional benefits are becoming more important to top candidates and include things like holiday entitlement, working hours and working environment. These can be used to create a more flexible workplace, which may be just as important as salary to some candidates.

Psychological benefits are harder to define. These can include a clear understanding of what a company, or brand, ‘stands for’ in terms of values and behaviour and how this aligns with a candidate’s own values. This part of the employer brand can be quite different from their overall company or product brand. For example a tech company may focus on building a fun and empowering workplace in order to attract candidates, rather than relying on the image of their products to do so.

This can be especially relevant when trying to attract top candidates for digital marketing jobs. Such candidates will be media savvy and will take time to research a prospective employer across all media channels. It is therefore absolutely vital that the company is seen to live and breathe its values consistently across all of these channels. Companies are becoming far more adept at using the likes of social media to attract new customers and communicate with existing ones, but they should also use such media to craft the correct message to potential employees.