Further, I will highlight several aspects and examples of personal branding or purposeful creation of own public image, which are especially important for attraction and retention of personnel.
1. Visibility and easiness of finding
Many times in my practice I have encountered that the difficulties in attraction of personnel are caused exactly by the company’s management “hiding” from the society and, therefore, from potential employees. No one really knows who the company’s manager is, what their vision of the development of the company is, what their values are, what they think about their team, what are their criteria for choosing which people to include in the team, what their attitude is towards business or current processes in the society, in the country, in the world, which organizations they are engaged in, etc.
Can a potential employee, having opened the company’s website or googled the company’s name and the name and surname of the manager or personnel manager, “see the faces” of these persons and read their professional story, their qualifications and background, read interviews, opinion papers or opinion videos, blogs? Is this manager and personnel specialist visible in real and online environment, would you like to communicate with them during a break at a conference or workshop, invite them to join your social media profile contacts or write them a letter, for example, on LinkedIn.
Just as an employer checks information about a potential employee on the internet, so does a job seeker – looks for information about a company or a person who has addressed them on behalf of that company. I invite you to audit the visibility and easiness of finding the key people of your company by typing their names and surnames in search engines and checking what and how professional and high-quality information is reflected in the search results. The employer’s image of the company and the public image of the key people are closely related.
I would like to remind you that the company should think of the matter of personnel attraction both when there are current vacancies in the company and when there are none.
2. Availability
The next aspect that should definitely be evaluated for the process of finding new employees to be as successful as possible is the availability of responsible specialists to candidates. An impersonal info e-mail in a job advertisement does not indicate anything good about the company’s culture, or at least does not indicate that the next person in the team is really welcome. The candidate must clearly understand which person in the company they can address with questions about job opportunities – is it the company manager themselves, or a specific personnel specialist, or a specific recruiter of the recruitment company representing this employer.
In the modern era of fast information exchange, it is worth to consider whether e-mail is the only possibility to receive applications and answer the questions of candidates. Maybe the selection process and communication with candidates can be fully transferred to social media messaging tools (Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn Messenger) or instant messaging tools (WhatsApp, Slack, etc.).
3. Positioning and own story
Do you wonder does your circle of contacts clearly know what you are doing and what is your current actuality? Sometimes the right team member or partner is right next to you, but we don’t even notice it.
Tell about your occupation, about your unique field, about what is different from other market players and from other industry professionals. What is your as a personnel specialist’s mission in this company? What do you want to achieve with your activities? Why are you doing what you are currently doing? Tell personally – use "I". This will create credibility for you and the company you work in.
4. Reputation
The matter of reputation is critical in personnel attraction. In my experience, I have encountered situations where the announced vacancy has been very attractive for many people due to both the job description and the financial offer, however, as soon as it is revealed which employer has advertised this vacancy, I have received a series of rejections from candidates.
This also fully applies to the reputation of the manager and the personnel specialist, which is one of the components creating a personal brand.
The reputation of human resource specialists in the eyes of candidates is damaged by:
- Ignoring e-mails or messages in the Internet messaging tools
- failure to send refusals after the selection project is completed;
- providing false information during job interviews;
- asking discriminatory questions;
- showing superiority and disregard to candidates not meeting the criteria;
- checking recommendations without the candidate’s consent.
Reputation in the eyes of candidates is raised by:
- professional and consistent communication;
- publishing high-quality and true information on social media;
- expressing opinions and sharing advice, recommendations, important information;
- public recommendations, for example, on the LinkedIn profile, from line managers, customers, candidates, company employees;
- positivism and openness;
- clear professional goals, values and mission.
5. Long-term thinking
Creating a strong personal brand that helps achieve both your and the company’s professional goals is not a matter of a day, a week, a month or even a year. It is a daily work, I would even say, it is a deliberately adopted lifestyle subordinated to the desire to achieve more, to live more fully, to control your success and income, to improve by accepting various professional challenges, to grow and self-realize.
Long-term processes can only be built if based in quality. I also invite you to build your as the company manager’s or personnel specialist’s visibility, professional uniqueness, reputation and story thoughtfully and in high quality. Every detail is sometimes important here, starting with high-quality personal photos on the Internet and to communication, conversation with any person we meet on our way.
Both the company manager and the personnel specialist must constantly strive to improve the skills necessary to those working in a “person-to-person” model on a daily basis. These are leadership, flexibility, openness, positivism, skill of life-long learning, public speaking, dress style, body language, provision of feedback, positioning, networking and storytelling skills, empathy and critical thinking.
I would like to wish the companies to not be afraid to grow and help to develop strong personal brands within organizations, within a team, because they gather purposeful professionals around them and thus help the company grow and develop.
Article prepared by: Inga Daliba I Owner of DarbaGuru