HR Marketing. From Job Advertising to Employer Branding

iii.Table of Contents

i. Executive Summary

iii.Table of Contents

iii. List of Abbreviations

iv. List of Figures

1.Introduction

2. Problem Definition

3.Objectives

4. Methodology

5. Main Part
5.1 Job Advertising and Image Advertising
5.2 Direct Advertising and Word-to-Mouth
5.3 Print Media Advertising
5.4 Digital Advertising
5.5 HR Consultants and Agencies
5.6 Job Fairs and Events

6. The importance and key role of employer branding
6.1 The role of employer branding within an international practical perspective

7. Conclusion

8. ITM

Bibliography

iii.List of Abbreviations

illustration not visible in this excerpt

iv.List of Figures

Figure 1: Comparison of Internal and External Recruitment Methods

Figure 2: A conceptualization of the employee branding process

i.Executive Summary

This paper discusses the development of HR Marketing and how Organisations have recruited, engaged and retained their employees. The analyses of various HR Marketing Tools will give the reader an understanding of the different marketing methods companies can use to recruit employees according to the size, strategy or external factors a company could possibly deal with. Furthermore, the Assignment will highlight the impact of the Global Financial Crisis on organisational structures and Human Resource Management in particular. Additionally, the reader will be able to examine the evolution of Employer Branding, a new method companies use to manage and retain talent. With the use of Southwest Airlines as a successful example of implementing Employer Branding in an internal and external concept, the reader will get a clear image of the impact that employer branding can have to successfully recruit, engage and to retain talent.

l.Introduction

The Global Financial Crisis, also known as the ‘financial downturn’, has negatively influenced the global Economy in 2006. This led many companies into insolvency and many organisations had to restructure their processes. According to Mutjaba (2009) the ‘increased job losses will have some important implications for the changing tasks of human resource professionals’¹.

Before the recession had emerged, the most practitioner-oriented work in the field was ‘focused on talent attraction because of longstanding labour market conditions in the developed and developing countries’². This process was simply known as Job Advertising and has been working effectively before the 21st Century. However, the Global Financial Crisis has led to many companies having to downsize and to carefully select and manage their workforce. Many Experts have noticed this trend, thus “the crisis demands a new HR strategy” .³

A new term has evolved known as ‘employer branding’. A term that is referred to the ‘process by which branding, marketing, communications, and HR concepts and techniques were applied externally and internally to attract, engage, and retain potential and existing employees’⁴.

2.Problem Definition

This paper will discuss how HR Marketing in addition with Talent Management has always played a very important part in the business world. However, External influences including the Global Financial Crisis but also other factors such as, Digitalisation involving Generation Y, have impacted the global market. The phrase “War for Talent”⁵ has merged to a global problem. This research paper will look at how the HR market has been influenced, and take a closer look at the new methods organisations scout, engage and manage their talent through employer branding.

3.Objectives

The key objective of this paper is to evaluate and display how the classical concept of HR Marketing like job advertising and personnel marketing have adapted to their surroundings’ and evolved into a more complex process to engage, extract and retain talent. With examples of international companies, the reader will get a clear picture of how Talent Management transformed to be more complex than before, due to external influences leading to a war for talent.

4.Methodology

Research for this work was collected through secondary data and therefore processed by people other than the researcher. Some of the research presented was derived from books, articles, journals and studies.

5.Main Part

5.1 Job Advertising and Image Advertising

Job Advertising is a crucial HR Marketing Tool, and necessary for every HR department to fill an open job vacancy. A Job Advertisement can be posted across various channels as shown in Figure 1. The most common channels will be analysed further in the next subchapters to see how job advertising works and how it has evolved over the last years.

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Figure 1: Own Illustration derived from: Recruitment and Selection in Canada (2009, p. 272-273)

Job Advertising fully focuses to acquire Job Applications, with Image Advertising on the other hand, a company tries to promote the company and to make potential employees aware of its work environment. One communication channel that has been widely used for image advertising was TV & Radio. The short duration of most commercials typically prevents the inclusion of essential job advertisements. Therefore, the focus of these ads is to stimulate interest in the organization⁶.

5.2 Direct Advertising and Word-to-Mouth

This kind of advertising technique depends on current employees to look for candidates to a certain job offering. In most cases, these types of candidates will be friends or relatives⁷. The crucial advantage of this HR Marketing method is the low costs, even zero costs, which occur during the process. Some companies however, pay employees a bonus for each successful referral and have an Employee Referral Program (ERP) in place. Additionally, a study has shown that employees recruited by referral remain longer at the company⁸ and eventually have more positive organizational outcomes⁹.

According to Diane Arthur¹⁰, WOM as a referral system can be the unintentional creation or perpetuation of systematic discrimination, whereby some applicants are not given equal opportunities. It is therefore recommended to use WOM advertising only in conjunction with other recruitment sources.

Furthermore, Networking can be seen as a job search technique or recruiting method such as referrals. Networking can be in the concept of joining social clubs or volunteer groups but also keeping in touch with relatives, friends, coaches or tutors. Networking can commonly be seen at Job Fairs and Events, another HR marketing tool, which will be highlighted in 5.6 Job Fairs.

5.3 Print Media Advertising

Print Media Advertising and Newspaper Ads in particular has been a popular marketing channel for many years. Even though these ads only run for a very short period of time, they attract the people who are actively looking for a job. Newspapers ads in general can be seen online and offline, however, it reaches a very broad pool of job seekers and is therefore less effective than other marketing channels.

A similar type of advertising is the use of journals and professional periodicals to attract a more targeted search for potential employees. One example could be an ad in a highly influential finance journal like ‘The Economist’ to advertise vacant management and accounting positions. Publications of this type are the best means of reaching people with specific skills or qualifications¹¹. Print editions however need more time to be implemented and is perceived as a poor substitute of Digital Advertising.

Most organisations are also aware that Journals, Newspapers and other print mediums do not only help to acquire job applications, as stated by Neil Rankin, print media advertising can also help organisations to raise their profile and build an employer brand¹².

5.4 Digital Advertising

Digitally Advertising via the Internet can occur in different forms. The most common channels are company websites, online journals or Newspapers but also Job portals like ‘Indeed’. Even social media platforms like LinkedIn have gained in popularity over the last years for organisation to recruit new employees. Digital Advertising, which is also known as E-Recruiting, has radically changed corporate recruiting¹³. The Internet allows recruiters to reach a broad pool of potential employees with only little effort and finances in comparison to other HR Marketing channels. Consequently, internet-based sources are becoming the main recruitment source for many, especially large organisations¹⁴.

Jobseekers can also find any background information about organisations or job descriptions that are of interest to them. In addition, the Internet provides a platform for organisations to show their work environment as well as their relationship to (potential) employees. According to Juana-Espinosa et al. there is a closer link between employer branding and e-recruitment, and candidates will always assess how they have been treated during the recruitment process¹⁵.

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¹ Mutjaba, B. (2009) p.8

² Graeme, M. and Siebert, S. (2016)

³ Horváth, B. (2010)

⁴ Sparrow, P., Scullion, H., and Tarique, I. (2014) p.151

⁵ Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H., & Axelrod, B. (2001)

⁶ Catano, V., Wiessner, W., Hackett, R., and Methot, L. (2009)

⁷ Catano, V., Wiessner, W., Hackett, R., and Methot, L. (2009)

⁸ Taylor, S.G. (1994)

⁹ Moser, K. (2005)

¹⁰ Arthur, D. (1995)

¹¹ Catano, V., Wiessner, W., Hackett, R., and Methot, L. (2009)

¹² Rankin, N. (2003)

¹³ Cappelli, P. (2001)

¹⁴ Parry, E. and Tyson, S. (2008)

¹⁵ Juana-Espinosa, S. et al. (2012)