In addition, for Russian specialists, the most significant factors in choosing a job were the amount of income and career opportunities . Now they have added such values ​​as the possibility of flexible hours, remote work and comfortable space. Rapidly changing conditions and revolving competition for the release of the company resort to a proven weapon in the ongoing battle for talent - work on your own brand in the labor market. This material reveals case studies that we discover about the six main mistakes that cause violations when discovering from scratch or discovering your HR brand.

Mistake #1. Non-inclusion of structural divisions in the work on the brand
Employer brand development begins with the creation of a working group. Its composition can increase depending on the size of the company: from 1-2 people in small organizations to larger teams in companies with more than five thousand employees and large business units in large corporations. in total, the working group involves from 3 to 8 employees. Ideally, the group should include both representatives of the HR department, as well as marketing and PR specialists. However, this is not always the case.

case
A large industrial company with developed HR processes that appeared Brand Center did not notice the loss of influence on the group of marketing and PR specialists at the initial stage: specialists can be connected later.
The initial stage of brand development usually consists of collecting data to identify companies, sources approaching leaders and identified, research, surveys, competitive analysis. When this was done, it became clear that connected employees still needed to be brought up to date - to explain why such positioning was chosen, how it fits with the corporate brand, in what details it differs from it, and so on.
The total project time increased by 2.5 months - a long time, given that the whole process usually takes from six months to a year, depending on the size of the company.
Mistake #2. Exclusion of top managers from the process
The customers of the project to work on the HR brand were both the first persons of the company and the HR departments. In the second case, employers do not always have an understanding that it is necessary to involve top managers in a project from the very beginning.

case
One of the major insurance companies approached our brand center with the task of reforming the employer brand. This organization has already been approached for about 6 months and 1.5 million rubles for the development of EVP with the help of an information agency, however, the formed value proposition did not fit in with the company's updated strategy.
Financial and time losses could have been avoided, at least a little communication with emotions at the initial stage. Top management reviews can be structured to calculate their time wastage, such as bringing them up to speed using compact presentations and solutions with presentations using online voting.

Mistake #3. Non-compliance with the methodology due to living experience
After the formation of the working group, it is the turn of the stages of researching the employer's brand - determining counters, collecting data to form EVP, planning a development strategy, and other problem solving. The main instruments are desk research, competitive and statistical analysis, as well as quantitative surveys and qualitative research: focus groups and various interviews.

case
It is not uncommon for a company to want to save on research and use it with internal resources. One of the clients of the Brand Center from the area of ​​responsibility of the military-industrial complex, guided by what includes confidentiality, uses employees of the HR department as moderators of the focus group. Despite prior training, mistakes were made by HR managers: closed-ended questions were asked, employees were unsure of the confidentiality of information, and as a result, they gave socially desirable answers. The results of the focus group are unexpected for further work.
It is possible to use the amount of company resources for conducting interviews, but with a number of conditions: for example, employees can interview management, which, as a rule, does not hesitate to ensure confidentiality, like subordinates. But even in this case, employees must comply with a common recipe for all, having previously familiarized themselves with it and trained at a reception in an office held by an expert in a non-departmental company.

Mistake #4. Brand Mismatch
The semantic highlighted brand of the employer is the value proposition (EVP) - a set of strengths on which positioning in the labor market is built. Its development begins after data collection. The EVP model, common among brand centers, includes six blocks, but the value proposition does not have to be present in all of them - more often it has two or three, and places accents pointwise. In progress 

choosing the competitive advantages of the company, it is important not to characterize its purpose and the real state of affairs.

case
One of the clients of the Brand Center, a large agricultural holding, at the time of work on the HR brand, is emerging in the process of transformation, replacing a dedicated production base at modern technological sites. The company chose technology and innovation as part of its own EVP and stated this as a given, which went against both the experience of ordinary employees, some of whom still worked at certain facilities, and the company's reputation in the labor markets. If the company had designated new manufacturability and innovation as a development vector, this would not have happened.
Mistake #5. Relying on shared insights, not raw data
After formulating the basics of the presentation, work on the employer brand is concentrated in the creative phase - the third-party companies that appear in images, texts and other materials are processed. However, if brand educators work without relevant experience, without relying on source data, instead of the work of a creative, you can easily get a product that is incomprehensible to applicants.

case
One of the major pharmaceutical companies approached the Brand Center with a ready-made EVP working with third-party advertising agencies. The proposal consisted of four elected representatives and had to be tested in competitions for applicants. The study showed an unfavorable result.
Mistake #6. Wrong choice of communication channel
The final stage of preparing an HR brand is the creation of a promotion strategy. Social networks, social networks and corporate platforms are traditionally considered and widespread. Channels in instant messengers and specialized professional online platforms are used by a smaller number of employers, but those who do this rate their effectiveness quite highly.

It is important that the choice of distribution coincides with public discussions with candidates.

case
One of the rare communication agencies in Russia that developed an employer brand promotion plan for its customer was not found distribution list, although the company closed up to 70% of its vacancies through our website. In addition, our Russian Employer Rating was a key metric for the company to assess the effectiveness of work with the brand. Excluding such an important distribution from the media plan can devalue some of the work done.
In this case, it was doubly important to think about communication with the audience, for example, to attract the attention of job seekers using an interactive quiz or game. Such gaming special projects affect people who learn more about the company and its mission, the ethics of communication within the company, memorize the corporate identity and receive useful information for themselves.
It is worth starting to evaluate the success of the project no earlier than six months after the start of the communication campaign, when the results are quite pronounced. A successful campaign can affect multiple metrics at once, so our reports report on:

— reduction of recruitment costs (savings up to 25%);
- growth in the speed of closing vacancies for 4 days;
— productivity growth of employees with a probationary period by 7%;
- Referral recruitment rate by 13%;
- 10% increase in eNPS (an indicator of engagement that causes a willingness to call the company for the same good place to work).
The time of always change is difficult for business. On their own, who adapt better than others to the new habits and requirements of job seekers, who belong to the leaders in the changing labor market. It is hardly possible to become one of them without consistent work on the employer brand. Alien mistakes are not repeated and the original product is created.