2020 turned Polish employer branding upside down. According to the study “Employer branding in Poland 2020” carried out by the HRM Institute, the number of Polish employers who declare having an EB strategy increased by 10% (and amounts to 23%). Not only the percentage of companies implementing employer branding has changed, but also the strategies themselves. Online communication must be the basis if you want to be successful today – especially in external EB, focused on attracting new employees.
Unfortunately, many companies have still not done their homework. New technologies weigh them down like a ball and chain. How not to be one of them? You just need to avoid these mistakes.
Table of Contents:
- The sad reality of Polish external employer branding
- Error 1: Earnings overpromise
- Mistake 2: fruity Thursdays
- Error 3: ignoring the “career” tab
- Mistake 4: ignoring social media
- Mistake 5: Ignoring Analytics
The sad reality of external Polish employer branding
The first leaps of employer branding in Poland most often look like this: one day someone discovers with horror that potential candidates for employees do not know anything about your company. People seem to be ‘throwing the dice’ when choosing where to apply, and are submitting their CVs, here, there, and everywhere. You start by changing the content of your ad and (if there is one) adding something new to the “career” tab of your site. After all, these candidates have to be weeded out somehow. Solid money, a good deal, friendly atmosphere, development opportunities, fruity Thursdays, and the opportunity to leave on Friday 8 minutes earlier than usual … Bet that you write exactly the same as competing companies!
Eventually, you start figuring out what potential employees really want.
Bingo.
We’re finally home.
If you have reached this point and you really want to do something about it, you need to know that you are in a group of probably less than 10% of companies that want to build a spot-on employer branding strategy in Poland. But let us not congratulate you just yet.
First, check to see if you are making any of these mistakes:
Error 1: Earnings overpromise
Presenting the company as a land flowing with milk and honey is something that is frequently visible in the employer branding communication of Polish companies. Well, of course positives always attract potential employees, but how long are you able to lie in reality? Poles are a nation that loves to look for deceptions. So if you create your company as an ideal environment, do not be surprised by the suspicious views of candidates during interviews. Usually, such “ideal” working conditions are an inept way to hide the shortcomings of work. Projecting the company as honest and transparent (which means writing directly about earnings and real working conditions) is the foundation of an appropriate external employer branding strategy.
Mistake 2: fruity Thursdays
You need to know one thing: even the sweetest mangoes during a fruit Thursday will not entice Poles with too low earnings. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential candidate for a moment (perhaps your only ideal candidate!). You scroll through dozens of similar ads every day. The “obligatory” elements of most sound like a grim joke: a dynamic team, working on various projects, the possibility of remote work. We bet that the one who wrote them did not even for a moment analyse the real needs of the target group.
Yes! You should treat potential employees as your target group!
Remember that the person who is already viewing the advertisement is at the last stage of the recruitment funnel, i.e. the path of potential employee. Think of it like selling a product. Who will you convince to buy sooner: someone who is already realistically in your store, or someone who is satisfied with your local discount store?
Our advice: avoid clichés and treat the promised elements in the advertisement as the result of research on potential employees and a well-thought-out strategy. The less accidents in Polish employer branding, the better. Mostly for you.
Error 3: ignoring the “career” tab
Your company website does not have a “career” tab? Come back here once you’ve added it. If you want to actively recruit Polish employees, the “join us” tab is an absolute must. It is not only a platform for communicating new vacancies, but also (even more importantly) a space for building awareness of the realities of working in a given company’s environment, career paths, promotion opportunities, types of departments, etc. Think how easy it would be for candidates to fall under the spell of knowledge here – potential employees usually do not know much about companies, certainly not from the inside of their operations anyway.
What should a perfectly designed “career” tab contain?
The latest announcements, a list of departments, manager data and a contact form. Preferably not too extensive. The more fields to fill in, the greater the chance of technical errors. And the more mistakes there are, the greater the frustration.
At this point, you also have a chance to show the atmosphere that prevails in the company. Pictures from the daily work of a given department will work better than writing about a young, dynamic team. It is also good practice to include descriptions from the perspective of work in a given position. How does a specific position relate to the global operation of the company? Which departments will the candidate work with? Thanks to the answers to these questions, the user browsing the site can imagine what to expect in the event of employment.
Mistake 4: ignoring social media
In times of a pandemic, social media should be the most important platform for external employer branding communication in Poland. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube – this is where the first contact of potential employees with companies takes place more and more often. Think about the candidates in the context of the first stages of the recruitment funnel:
Awareness – i.e. messages used to communicate the existence of the company in the mind of potential candidates (e.g. posts sharing knowledge, information about employees, sneaks from company life, photos from company events)
Interest – activities informing potential candidates about the possibility of applying (eg job offers, link to the “career” tab).
Consideration – Messages that encourage potential employees to send applications (e.g., posts created by current employees, remarketing to people who were on the site, conveying the company’s philosophy).
Nobody lives in a vacuum. Before someone (meaningful!) submits an application to your company, they must go through each of these stages: know it, know something about it, and feel that both they fit the company, and the company fits them.
Planning social media communication should take into account the candidates at each of these initial stages of the path. You need to ask yourself the following questions: How will potential employees view your profile? Why would they even want to look at it? What values does your communication bring them? What are the next steps for a potential candidate on your social media?
Mistake 5: Ignoring Analytics
The HRM report’s introduction indicates quite gloomy data – it turns out that only 20% of companies with an EB strategy use any indicators to monitor the effects!
It’s a bit like the gym – when we don’t save the effects, we will never be able to notice the results and modify exercises, if necessary. Thinking about KPIs and generally analysing everything possible, can save you a lot of energy and money. Analytics can be schematically divided into three parts: SEO and company mentions, social media analytics, and the analytics of the “career” tab.
SEO and mentions – awareness of which positions your company occupies for specific key phrases (this can be easily measured, for example, using Google Search Console) and which subpage users come to after entering them, help to review what information about the company potential candidates come into contact with, right from the start. After all, you don’t get the first impression twice. It is worth using tools for the analysis of mentions, such as Brand24, which will also show you on which pages and what potential employees interested in your work write about you. What are they asking about? What are they interested in? What kind of feedback do they get? This is a good foundation for building candidate-focused content.
Social media analytics – communication between the HR department and the marketing department should be efficient for one basic reason – it is social media that most often hides the greatest power in building the company’s image in the eyes of Polish candidates. The analysis of reach and reaction to employer branding posts in a short time can indicate both strengths and weaknesses, and what is better to give up on. Specifying KPIs for your ads (e.g. the number of CV forms sent or going to the company website) is a clear measure of whether the advertising budget is being spent meaningfully. It is also good to analyse the activities of the competition from time to time. Know what squeaks in your neighbour’s grass.
“Career” tab analytics – with advertising in social media and SEO activities, the lack of traffic analysis on the “career” tab is like wandering around in the fog. Where do they get to the recipient’s site? How much debt remains on the site? What’s the bookmark bounce rate? Which tabs do they go to next? What is the increase in the number of applications, e.g. after a dedicated position in a social media campaign? Does the website record an increase or decrease in the number of users (on a monthly basis, or compared to the period without the campaign)? In order to flexibly adjust the content of the tab and better screen potential candidates, you need to know all these data.
The use of new technologies and digital marketing is today the basis for building an external employer branding strategy in Poland. However, you need to be aware of one thing: in this article, we only touched the tip of the iceberg. Polish employer branding is governed by slightly different rules, and Polish employees are different from British, German or American employees. As an experienced marketing agency from London, we have already helped dozens of foreign companies in successfully reaching ideal candidates from Poland. If you also need support, please contact us.