How Does Career Catalyst Positioning Fit Into Your Employer Brand?

You have two choices when it comes to employer branding: You can influence and steer your reputation or allow the market to entirely control it for you.

When you control your employer brand, you drive the strongest candidates through your recruitment pipeline. How? A good, strategic employer brand lets both existing and prospective employees understand your employee value proposition (EVP).

What is employee value proposition?

The role of your EVP is to a) reinforce the reputation you have as an employer, and b) set the expectations of job seekers using a proposition that clearly lays out what they have to give in order to thrive — as well as what they stand to get in return.

Done well, it paints a picture of how someone will feel if they join your team by bringing the employee experience to life with insights, stories, and specific examples. Will their contributions make a difference? Will their efforts mean anything? And will they feel aligned with your corporate mission? Essentially, it’s your promise to them.

How to create a compelling employee value proposition

You have to bake your EVP into every aspect of your employer branding strategy. This starts with the 3 C’s of employer brand reputation: Career Catalyst, Culture, and Citizenship.

`From a reputation perspective, it is important to know your strengths and understand the true value you can offer your talent audience. It helps to know what they appreciate most, too. Most organizations tend to have a stand-out strength in one of the "C’s," and we highly recommend, from a strategic point of view, choosing just one to anchor your reputation around.

With high-growth organizations, high-performance cultures, and any organization that requires highly capable expertise throughout, a powerful and useful reputation to have in the talent marketplace is "Career Catalyst." Being known as a place to go in order to accelerate your career forward faster than your competitors tends to appeal to this type of talent audience. It can certainly make a significant difference in the caliber of talent you attract and retain.

Outlining Your Career Catalyst Position

When defining your EVP, start with your Career Catalyst positioning. This communicates how you help talent move through their career journeys. Your organization may focus on helping people advance their careers through internal promotions and regular recognition or might serve as a launchpad for employees’ careers elsewhere.

One strategy and consulting firm is well-known for funneling former employees to some of the world’s most exclusive companies. As a result, it’s a tough place to get into. It’s also a demanding place to work. But employees are OK with that. Many expect to move “up and out” in a few years knowing that if they put in their time, the output is rewarding.

Your Career Catalyst positioning may be much different from this, of course. It should be unique to your organization. To clearly define it, ensure you emphasize these five things:

1. How you pay

You don’t have to offer the most competitive earnings packages to attract talented people. Still, you need to pay well enough to encourage your target candidates to apply. You may have to tweak your compensation to find the perfect balance.

2. How you handle personal development

People like to know that they have resources at their disposal. Not all employees want all types of resources, though. It’s up to your team to outline and define the personal development paths available to your workforce. That way, you can make those paths well-known as part of your branding.

3. Whether your environment is stable

A stable environment tends to attract employees who want to feel safe. Nevertheless, stability can mean different things to different people. Some are willing to work for startups with less stability for the opportunity to make an impact or test their skills. Don’t sugarcoat the stability of your organization. Authenticity goes a long way.

4. What kind of management your people experience

Do you have a warm, supportive management style at your business? Is it a meritocracy? Applicants like knowing what they’re walking into. They’re less likely to leave a new position in the first few months if they understand upfront how the corporate ladder does — or doesn’t — work.

5. How you’re focusing on diversity

Increasingly, ambitious professionals see organizational diversity as a signal of strength. If you’re trying to increase the quality of your job candidates, make diversity a core focus.

Setting Up Your Talent Acquisition Pipeline for Success

Once you’ve locked in each of these aspects of your employer branding, you may begin to realize that you only appeal to a specific type of candidate — and not to everyone. That’s where you want to be. You’ll see far more success when you “repel the many” and “compel the few.”

If it seems strange to develop a strong employer branding reputation just to repel job applicants, know that it’s a sign you’re moving in the right direction. If your employer brand excites only a small number of people, you increase the odds that only the most interested, qualified, and committed candidates apply.

All talent acquisition specialists would rather have fewer great applications to sort through than a million who are subpar. With a compelling employer brand and strong Career Catalyst positioning, you can focus on only the most quality, qualified candidates.

To read more about the key components of your employer brand, download our whitepaper, "How to Wield the Power of Employer Branding" here.