Key Differences Between Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing

Employer branding and recruitment marketing are two important HR strategies for attracting new hires. It can be easy to confuse the two, but they have important differences for making your company a great employer. Read on to find out the differences between employer branding and recruitment marketing, and how to use them!

What is employer branding?

Employer branding is exactly what it sounds like—the process a company uses to build its employer brand. This brand encapsulates a company’s reputation and identity as an employer, including its culture and values. It describes who the company is, and why employees would want to work there.

There are several elements that help build an employer brand. One is the employee value proposition, which describes benefits, both tangible and intangible, that employees can receive from working at the company. The employee value proposition can include everything from a paycheck to gym access to great company culture and helps build the reputation a company has as an employer. Another aspect of employer branding is publicizing a company’s values and goals, as well as a profile of their ideal candidate. This shows what the company stands for and the kind of talent it hopes to attract, which is important in employee recruitment. Lastly, employer branding can also include things like managing a company’s online reputation by monitoring media and responding to feedback. All of these elements of employer branding work to build an identity for the company that is then visible to potential employees when they are searching for information about the workplace.

What is recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing is the way that a company searches for new hires by using marketing tactics. This process is focused on attracting new employees to apply for open positions in the company. Recruitment marketing includes everything posted online about job openings in the company, including the way job descriptions are worded and which sites the listings are posted to. It uses content writing strategies to make job positions sound enticing to attract the best talent and to compete with other companies who may want to hire from the same pool.

Recruitment marketing also uses traditional marketing tactics including social media and blog strategies to help direct attention to your company and open positions. Options such as video content and personalized email marketing can be very effective in attracting highly qualified candidates. Recruitment marketing is about using all the available tools to help put the company in the most favorable light to encourage applications for new hires.

What’s the difference?

Employer branding and recruitment marketing can sound very similar, but there are important differences between them. Employer branding is the reputation your company has as an employer through the benefits you offer, your company culture, and your description of an ideal candidate. Recruitment marketing is advertising that reputation to attract new hires through marketing tactics. Although employees can be attracted to your company because of its reputation—that’s part of the point!—employer branding is only focused on building that reputation to make your workplace attractive, while recruitment marketing is focused on selling your company as a good place to work by marketing that reputation you’ve built. Here are three easy ways to break down the differences between the two:

1. End goal. The end goal of employer branding is to build a great reputation. The end goal of recruitment marketing is specifically to use that reputation to attract the best hires possible and compete against other companies that are trying to hire the same candidates.
2. Internal vs external. Much of the process of employer branding is internal. It focuses on the benefits offered to employees, company culture, and commitment to values. The process of recruitment marketing is mainly external in posting listings online, contacting potential new hires, and advertising open positions.
3. Tactics. Employer branding uses tactics for employee motivation and satisfaction to help build that great reputation and create an employer brand of offering a fulfilling workplace. Recruitment marketing uses traditional marketing tactics like content writing strategies, advertising, and social media campaigns to help attract applications for company openings.

Although these two strategies may sound similar, employer branding and recruitment marketing have important differences. Working in conjunction, both are important to attracting talented new hires and keeping your company strong.

Looking for a marketing boost to spread your company’s great reputation to all potential hires? Contact the team at Kraus Marketing today!