Engagement, attraction and selection Employer brand
Above Average
There are a number of ways to measure your employer brand externally, but relying too much on rankings alone can lead to crises of corporate confidence and a skewed understanding of your marketing success. After all, not everyone can be number one, nor should they want to be. But the data that large scale surveys collect is invaluable, so is there a better way to interpret ranking data than constantly worrying about where you place? Phill Lane, Head of Brand and Insight at ThirtyThree, thinks so…
…when
performing analysis only on those within the survey that displayed a preference for ‘fast-
growing, entrepreneurial environments’, as an
example, the company outperformed the overall top ranked employer by five times.
survey data. Working with Universum’s list of 40 key drivers of employer attractiveness, we have been able to isolate audiences that are culturally and motivationally aligned to an individual organisation’s brand footprint, regardless of these students’ awareness of the brand.
This allows current clients, like FMCG and healthcare business, RB to do three things: 1. Map populations that are suitable, by university and country, making recommendations as to the company’s likely success in any given location.
I
t is a position that employer branding experts, Universum agree with, which is why they are now
working in collaboration with clients around the globe, with impressive results.
It all started two years ago. A client in China was concerned about its low placing in Universum’s country rankings. The company wanted to change its marketing to boost its position – a familiar enough brief.
But instead, my team and I reviewed the data from a different angle to show that the overall sample, whilst impressive at nearly 8,000 respondents, was biased towards an artificial ‘average respondent’.
Seeing things differently Essentially, this meant that employers who promoted a very average offer (good work/life balance, stable jobs and professional training) tended to seem more popular to an average respondent.
But any organisation promoting themselves as different, or who targeted messages to a better defined group of potential employees was unlikely to appeal to a majority and, as such, plummeted in the league table.
So firms looking for traits that are less common in a population, such as risk taking, or leadership – often the most desirable – are simultaneously going to be less popular overall. This was exactly the case with the client who languished at 82nd in the list; in fact, when performing analysis only on those within the survey that displayed a preference for ‘fast-growing, entrepreneurial environments’, as an example, the company outperformed the overall top ranked employer by five times.
A tailored approach Taking this as a starting point, the team at ThirtyThree devised a new way of creating bespoke profiles within existing
2. Track the overall health of the client’s brand amongst this specific target audience.
3. Measure these students’ understanding of each of a client’s brand attributes – individually and in comparison to their key competitors.
This last point has made a fundamental difference to the marketing strategy for RB globally. Whereas before there was angst over the ranking position within a non-defined sample, now the company is able to review which messages are cutting through in which population, and make strategic decisions on how to adapt its positioning accordingly.
Instead of fighting fire with fire and throwing good money after bad, companies are able to use this new, intelligent analysis to make efficient and effective decisions.
It used to be said that half of advertising was wasted. Now we know which half. n
www.agr.org.uk | Graduate Recruiter 29
www.thirtythree.co.uk
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