For many companies, employer branding is often ignored – particularly in the early stages. Often they don’t see the direct profit from it, thinking that their recruitment will do just fine on its own. We beg to disagree. Employer branding is not just a great way to boost your recruitment power — but also to boost your reputation and revenue in the long term. “Employer branding is our way to communicate our culture and the way we work to the outside world,” said our recruiter Silke Hofmann. “So that potential new colleagues understand right away if we could be the right home for their next career step and growth. It’s not just about the free drinks and snacks or the fancy office space, but about how we live our values, how we communicate and how connected we feel to the company and our big international team.”

For all of those reasons, employer branding should be an integral part of your communications. And one of the best places to do this is LinkedIn, which turns a mighty 18 years old on May 5. Can you believe it? That makes the Microsoft-owned platform older than Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It was born in 2003, three months before MySpace (remember that?) first started. And that’s before we even think about the newer kids on the block: LinkedIn could just about be TikTok’s parent!

Here are five reasons digital brands should be using this resilient social media platform for employer branding going forward. Happy birthday, LinkedIn. To another 18 years!

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It attracts potential new talent

If you’re wondering where job hunters hang out, you’ve found the place. It’s the place where professionals connect and according to Glassdoor, 79% of job applicants use social media in their job search – particularly LinkedIn. In fact, LinkedIn has 738 million users, with 176 million US users. And they are invested in it: in comparison to the issues facing other platforms around the topic of fake news, 52% of respondents said LinkedIn is the most trusted social media platform. With such scope and trustability, LinkedIn is clearly a great place to be – meaning that it’s a prime place for your employer branding.

Reduces recruitment costs

This segues perfectly into our second point. Recruiting can get expensive, particularly when you want to get the best candidates around. Think about those agency costs! But if you’re visible and have worked on your LinkedIn page – posting your open positions and ensuring you share relevant, interesting content on your page often – you won’t have to spend as much to reach your potential new staffers. It’s much easier to gain the interest and curiosity of the top candidates and get them to the offer stage even quicker. In fact, according to this Linkedin survey, your recruiting costs will decrease by roughly 43% when you invest in employer branding. Who said it wasn’t good for the bottom line?

It’s a place to show off your culture

Now onto the topic of content. LinkedIn is not just for job postings and business outreach. Nowadays, it’s a thriving content channel — and the prime place for that is on your brand’s page. This content can be used to showcase some news from your brand — any new C-level appointments perchance? — but also to show what you are like to work for. This can be, for example, publishing fun photos of your office or even an article about it, as Ubisoft have done here with their article on their new eco-friendly office in Paris. And while many of us can’t go to the office right now, you could post about what you’ve been doing virtually with your colleagues.

What really intrigues people is authenticity. Every brand is aware of what’s buzzy these days. For example, one topic everybody is talking about is health and wellness at work. But audiences want to see authentic posts that really prove employers care about this. Take this post from Gymshark, who announced they had cancelled all meetings for one day to do a wellness day. Displaying the entire schedule from start to finish, including lots of expert discussions, showed that this brand had made some action on the topic — rather than wellnesswashing. This is a prime example of a brand using LinkedIn for effective employer branding.

As a place to share employee generated content

For this, your employees are your biggest and best speakerbox. First up, if they are on LinkedIn and have their job information fully updated, they can share on their page their positive experiences – or even a job posting. And there’s nothing like a personal review from an employee to convince an applicant your company is the right place for them.

Then there’s employee generated content for your own channels. With this content, you can make your company feel more authentic to your audience. It’s one of the easiest ways to give a sneak peek into the mission, purpose and culture of your company. It’s also regarded as one of the easier ways to get organic engagement, compared to more serious ‘corporate’ content around. Here’s an example from fintech unicorn SumUp, who shared a story from their content editor Callum Conway. Together with a photo, he discussed how he managed to switch positions in his first year at SumUp, while also discussing his membership of the Pride Club network. There’s no doubt that any applicant looking at this post will leave impressed by the culture at SumUp — as an inclusive and purpose-driven workplace where there’s the space to grow professionally into new fields. 

To boost performance

And finally: If a company is known to be fair and just to their employees, that indirectly means that customers would be more likely to purchase from you. As with sustainable brands, employee-driven brands are more likely to have a more positive brand perception than those without – leading to higher purchase potential in the end.

Want help with your branding? Get in touch with us here.