Original article published in South Africa's leading HR publication, HR Future where Brett Minchington is an International monthly columnist on employer branding.

Could this be your most undervalued talent attraction asset?

With the global population estimated at over 6.8 billion people, it’s staggering to learn there are nearly 2 billion people internet users around the world. What is even more staggering is that the fastest growing region in the world is Africa with over 2,300 % growth in users during the period 2000-2010. Compare this to around 145% growth in North America during the same period and it is clear to see that Africa is getting connected!

Developments in internet technologies to support talent attraction efforts have also been rapid during this period.  The use of the internet for activities central to the recruitment process has shifted the paradigm of traditional paper based methods.  The recruitment process is now being supported by rich media, videos, social media, RSS feeds, podcasting, blogs, and applicant tracking systems (ATS).

Google’s keyword tool says there is an average of 506,000,000 searches per month using the keyword search ‘jobs.’  Jobseekers are no longer just interested in finding a job; they are becoming more particular in gaining a better insight into a company’s culture, values and employment benefits before joining.  A company’s employer brand rates highly on a job seekers list and one of the most effective ways to communicate your employer value propositions (EVP’s) and provide an insight into, “what it is like to work here,” is through your careers website.

In most cases, the information on careers sites is simply a replica of the "about us" section of the main corporate website. It’s boring and does very little to engage visitors to your site and may actually be doing your employer brand damage.

The purpose of your careers website should be to:

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites

Don’t stop at putting your people at the centre of your employer brand, says Richard Long. Go a step further with immersive recruiting and put the job seeker at the centre of your brand experience. He explains how a mix of shared values and using social media can help create emotional employer brand engagement.

For many years marketers have been leveraging the power of emotional brand engagement with great success—in some cases astounding success. Generally consumers don’t buy products or services based on cold, calculated research and cost/benefit analysis, they buy them because marketers have succeeded in engaging at a deeper level with their desires, motivations and behaviours. In short they have created emotional brand engagement.

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites