How Recruiter Branding Fuels Company Success

Nike needs no introduction. Nor does Google or Apple.

Your company might also be a top employer with an outstanding culture and a history of tracking, retaining and hiring great talent. That doesn’t equate to it being a household name.

“When we talk to high caliber candidates, something we hear over and over again is, ‘I’ve never heard of that company,’” said Wes Ashworth, Vice President, Executive Search at Lee Group Search.

Branding a company for recruitment can solve that problem. That’s an added-value service Lee Group Search offers when it enters into a partnership with an employer.

It’s a process that starts with questions and not necessarily the obvious ones.

“We generally ask questions that at times no one at the company has ever really thought through, so they don’t have a ready answer,” Ashworth said.

The questions are a means of discovery. Sometimes they’re directed at leadership and other times at employees. It’s important to have answers from both groups.

Some examples of what might be asked:

• Why would a top performer want to work for your company?
• Why did you want to work here?
• Why do you stay here?
• What’s most attractive about working here?
• Why would somebody want to be in this job?
• What’s exciting for the future of the company?
• Talk to me about your happiest, most successful employees. What are they like?

Answers to those sorts of questions enable Lee Group Search to form a complete picture of an employer. If the company has multiple locations, it’s imperative to talk with leaders and employees there, too.

“We’ve worked with some companies for years and have been able to get a perspective from perhaps 100 different people within their organization,” Ashworth said.

Once that comprehensive process is complete, Ashworth can illustrate to a candidate why that company is an ideal fit. Having those answers also helps in targeting future recruits. The company wins because it is getting high level talent that aligns with its mission, culture, and values.

“I can get anyone who is the right fit excited about that company,” Ashworth said. “I become their marketing and branding ambassador.”

It’s not enough for an employer to just have a snazzy website. Building your brand with the help of a recruiter is a more proactive approach in today’s competitive labor market.

“I share that company brand — its core values, its technology, why people succeed, why it’s a good place to work, essentially the story of that company — with high caliber candidates,” Ashworth said. “It’s like direct target marketing and it helps recruit the kind of employees a company wants in growing its organization.”