Employer branding on a budget
Paul McArdle | Talent & Recruitment Columnist | The Currency
I had lunch recently with fellow Gateway to Europe member Emer O’Gorman from Fingal County Council. We both have participated on trade missions to the U.S. with our fellow Gateway members, Irish businesses putting on the green jersey and selling Ireland as a place to do business. You get to meet a disparate bunch of people on the trip and Emer opened my eyes to the benefits of working in the public sector, something I had never really thought about before.
Our lunch chat came back to one of the challenges all businesses face today, that of talent attraction. Emer spoke passionately about her latest project, helping secure the women’s softball world championship – WSBC, for Fingal next year and how she is helping project manage the building of a permanent sports facility, a softball diamond in St. Catherine’s Park in Lucan, for the occasion. This facility will serve the community for years to come.
Emer was educating me on capex budgets, the social return on investment and the excitement of getting a world class sporting event for Fingal. Softball may be a minority sport here, but is played globally and is very popular in the U.S. It is a visionary move, not something I would normally have attributed to a public sector body..
As Fingal is looking to attract new talent, what better story than this to promote public service? There is a lesson here for all businesses, not just Fingal. Emer went on to tell me about a few other projects she delivered with Fingal and how appreciative she was for their educational support (sponsoring her MBA).
Your best advocates for your business are your employees. Utilise them! In The Panel, we lost some talent to the big tech companies. We do not have the budget of a Google or a Meta, what we do have is great engaged colleagues, who are wonderful ambassadors for our business. We have recently hired a number of people with no prior recruitment experience, who we are providing with in-person, on the job and external online coaching. This is working out very well for us, we are unlocking talent from a talent pool we would not necessarily have looked at before.
The feedback we are getting from our new recruits has been very positive to date. So much so that one of our colleagues has already sourced a potential new recruit, who was sold on The Panel before I got to engage with them.
The point here is that we are now recruiting organically for our team in a cost effective manner. As a SME, we need to box clever with our budgets. Our colleagues are our best advertisement for the business, your employees can be the same. Where we cannot compete with the big tech companies on salaries and foosball tables etc., we can compete on quality of work, coaching, purpose of the role, camaraderie in a smaller business etc.
I have advised Emer to look at Fingal’s employer branding as we in The Panel have had to do. You can within a small budget, promote the value of joining your own organisation.
If you are a smaller business, take stock of the advantages you have over the big boys:
- In smaller companies, each role counts. You cannot carry passengers, so any role you have is substantive by definition.
- This means the role has purpose, sell the benefits of the material effect this person will have on your business.
- They will be a bigger cog in a small wheel.
- Sell the exposure they will get to you and the senior management team.
- Outline how you can “short-circuit” their learning by getting them involved in a wider variety of tasks, quicker.
- Outline how you will mentor them.
- WIIFM (What’s in it for me?). Look at things from their perspective and work backwards.
A close college friend of mine, way smarter than me (a low bar I know…), got a poor result for him in his final university exams. Automatically the Big 6 accountancy firms (now of course the Big 4) at the time ruled him out of consideration. After some time, he landed a role in a smaller accountancy practice where he literally prepared accounts from receipts in a shoe box to managing an audit of a multi-million punt business (the type of client who would normally be audited by a Big 6 firm). So he got exposure to all aspects of accounting, he worked closely with the partners and the managing partner, gaining experience in corporate recovery, M&A, tax planning etc.
His poor university result was the best thing that ever happened to him. His training in a smaller practice gave him much more exposure to all aspects of finance, he learned directly from experienced practitioners and also got the big audit experience his Big 6 peers had. You could also argue that our friends who went the Big 6 route got a narrower exposure and had to specialise earlier in their careers.
I am highlighting his experience to show fellow SME owners what you can do for talent, and how to differentiate your offering in a tight talent market. My friend is now a very successful SME business owner and his success has been built on the experience he gained in the smaller company environment. I have taken his counsel on a number of occasions, how to navigate COVID as a business owner being one and have benefitted from what he has learned over the years.
With a small budget, you can partner with your marketing colleague or with an outsourced provider on promoting your employer brand with the use of social media and video. You can choose to film a colleague’s endorsement on your iPhone or pay a professional videographer, the point being you can tailor your budget effectively. The value of a professionally shot video can outweigh the increased cost of hiring a videographer. If your budget allows it, look at things through a value lens as opposed to a cost only lens.
Again with social media, that is something you can do yourself, however you should get more bang for your buck if you use a skilled digital marketeer. In smaller businesses we need to make these budget calls every day, the good news is that you can build up your employer branding effectively AND also be smart with your budget.
We have discussed employer branding before in previous articles in The Currency. It is becoming even more important in a talent scarce market. However, as we in The Panel have shown, you can be clever about attracting talent if you harness what you already have (your colleagues) coupled with a little imagination.
Find the “Emer” in your organisation and work with them on promoting your business as a great place for talent. You have more to offer than you may realise…