At its core building an employment brand is about ‘respect’.

Respect for your career website visitors; respect for job seekers’ attention, time and intelligence; respect for potential staff who bothered to check your jobs, read about your company and give you the utmost honour by contemplating you as an employer. Respect for the fact that job seekers have other employment and career options.

Instead, companies regularly abused the ‘trust’ of the very people they need to win over.

For instance, take the example of career sections on corporate websites. Littered with outdated information, old job advertisements, long forms to fill, little or no feedback …… the crimes are many. It damage the brand. It is far better not to have a career website than have one whose sole achievement is frustrating job seekers. Really, how hard can it be to develop a career portal which does not frustrate users?  And yet, hundreds upon hundreds of websites remains neglected, often harming the employer brand in the process. The sad part is the vast majority of companies are actually good employers with good workplaces.

Check out PortCareers, a recruitment portal run by Port of Brisbane. They got it right.  How they tell their story reflects a deep understanding and respect for their target audience.  When a company respect job seekers, they ended up being the main benefactor. It a perennial puzzle that so little attention and resources is invested into the tools and channels used to connect with job seekers. More respect is due.

Safe to say that how you view, reach out and interact with job seekers will be vastly different if built on the foundation of ‘respect’.  Start the journey by improving your career website, today.

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1. Employment branding 2 – Newspapers more effective than job boards?
2. Employment branding and the economic downturn
3. Recruitment lessons from universities
4. Popularity of Personal Branding And its Implications
5. Why candidates are not applying for your jobs