Do Agencies Help or Hurt your Employer Brand?

Naturally, you want your top candidates to also consider your company as their top choice – and you know there’s more to their decision than the job, pay and employee benefits.

Whether intentional or not, your company has an employer brand – a reputation among candidates – that plays into a candidate’s decision to apply, interview, and accept an offer. In order to remain competitive, many companies take an active interest in managing a consistent employer brand – including the way headhunters play into it.

Agencies Share Your Employer Brand

Your agenciesshould be seen as an extension of your brand. Much like you want your website, social channels, and online reviews to reflect a certain image of your company, your headhunters should also reflect that image. Everything they do, from job postings, to outreach emails, phone screens and follow-ups, should be aligned with your employer brand and work to strengthen it.

But first, you must help them get a clear understanding of what makes your company and opportunity unique. Why do your current employees like working there? Why do your candidates want to work there? What can you offer candidates that other employers can’t? Why should your ideal candidate want to work at your company?

Good headhunters will take the time to get to know candidates and their motivations, and will need ammunition to convince candidates that your company has what they’re looking for.

The more information you can share with your headhunter, the more likely they’ll be to appeal to candidates with the things that matter most to them. These conversations can be the key to getting a great candidate’s permission to be submitted – or to help sway their opinion in the event they have multiple offers.

Agencies Contribute to Your Employer Brand

Throughout this process, your headhunters will also be helping to spread your employer brand in the market – each candidate they reach out to will learn more about working for your company, and may inform their personal networks about their perception of your brand.

For this reason, a great candidate experience is a critical component of managing your employer brand. If you’re a great company to work for, but a terrible company to interview with, top candidates will likely not waste their time because they know they have other options.

A good headhunter will act as a liaison between your company and the candidate, and should ensure that the recruitment process runs smoothly for both parties. This means they will be in frequent communication with you to gather feedback on each step of the recruitment process, so they can discuss next steps with their candidates.

During this time, they should inform you of any feedback they receive from the candidate – such as hesitations or other offers – so you can respond in-kind. With proper communication, the rest of the candidate experience is up to you – so make sure your internal teams are ready to pick up where your headhunter left off.