Where Branding Begins.

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Where Branding Begins.
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The concept of employer branding is something we cover regularly on this blog and that is because your employer brand is everything to young professionals. With young professionals having viewed more advertising than any other generation, advertising simply becomes white noise, so they find information through peers. At the corporate level and amongst HR professionals, the importance of your brand and how professionals perceive you as an employer is reasonably well understood. 

Our research shows that over 70% of professionals within the resources industry find their employment through contacts and with our increasingly interconnected world, this figure is only set to grow. Whilst most people reading this blog understand this, this facet of the industry is often poorly understood at the site level. Tied up with the day to day needs of production, macro level issues such as branding are not high on the list of priorities, yet it is at the site level where an employer’s brand is developed.

The most critical people in your organisation’s branding efforts are your line managers. They are the ones who assign tasks, conduct performance reviews and ensure that promises are kept. This is important. The number 1 reason as to why young professionals leave a resources project, is not money, isolation or working conditions – It is a failure by the employer to keep promises. With advertising largely representing white noise to young professionals, employers who fail to “walk the walk” are viewed to of broken a trust and no relationship can exist without trust. So if a young professional has a poor experience, they will tell their colleagues and a brand will be affected. I this occurs on a large scale your ability to attract the best young talent to your site will be affected.

So what can be done? Without boring you with all the details, we believe that all stratum of management need to be aware of an employer’s brand and what their brand will represent. We also believe that the employer’s brand needs to be promoted at every opportunity. For the strength of your brand determines the quality of the graduates you receive and if your retention initiatives are effective, many of these graduates will go on to become managers. Conversely to this, if you fail to consciously develop your brand, professionals within the industry will do it for you, so who knows what perception Professionals will have of you as an employer.

So where does it all begin? Well the first real exposure a professional has to your brand is as a student. Students return back from their vacation work experiences, discuss their experiences and a pecking order of who the best and worst employers are is quickly established. If your organisation is to be at the top of that pecking order, it not only requires solid graduate programs, it needs good vacation student programs. To help employers, we have created vacation job search engine www.fuzionscapecareers.com.au so some structure can be bought to the current guess work of matching students with employers.

Brand is what makes the recruitment wheels of the resources industry go round and it is a concept site based professionals need to understand if they are to attract the best talent. Currently they do not and this important concept needs to filter down from the HR department to your organisation’s line managers, otherwise outsiders will continue determine what your brand represents instead of you.