A critical factor in the success of your talent acquisition is your brand reputation. Becoming known as an employer of choice—one that is a pleasure to work with throughout the hiring process and beyond—takes time. But it doesn’t require as much work as you may think. If you start by building a strong foundation, you’ll reap much greater rewards from your employer branding strategy.

This might all sound like the same thing, but separating the internal, bedrock aspects from those which are more candidate facing—such as messaging, videos, and social media promotion—can help you build a foundation for ultimate success in hiring.

Before we dive in, let’s clarify what we mean by brand reputation. This is how your organization is perceived by those on the outside, be they customers or candidates. It’s the collective impression people have about your brand, and the opinions they form. Here we are concerned with the opinions of candidates which result from what others say as well as their own interactions with you.

Here are five best practices that can boost all aspects of your talent acquisition function.

1. Streamline your process
2. Increase transparency
3. Reduce friction
4. Keep visibility across your pipeline
5. Nurture your network

Let’s take a closer look at each.

1. Streamline your process

The starting point is to take stock of your current collection of tools and processes to see what is and isn’t working. If you are like many hiring managers, you may be using a mix of tools and services that don’t complement one another and—in some cases—aren’t intended to be part of a hiring workflow. Moving to a system that was built from the ground up for talent acquisition, and which offers an intuitive, centralized home for all aspects of hiring, will allow you to greatly simplify the process and to implement the other steps.

2. Increase transparency

How well does your team communicate? Does everyone involved in the hiring process know the status of an applicant? Can they easily find and view the materials needed to provide a great experience for the candidate and to make a decision on whether or not they are the right fit? An applicant tracking system is a great way to bring everything together. Even better is a more holistic approach such as ZooKeep, which is what’s called a talent acquisition platform (TAP). As you gather information through interviews, a TAP allows you to funnel it into a pipeline that is accessible to the whole team. That transparency not only benefits the internal process, it also allows you to have clearer, more accurate interaction with the candidate—and that goes a long way toward building a great brand reputation.

3. Reduce friction

This ties well into the communication boost that comes with increased transparency. Of course, replacing a collection of tools and services with a cohesive, tailor-made solution will reduce friction in the workflow, but an added benefit is that the candidate will experience less friction themselves. There’s a lot of talk these days about the candidate journey—and for good reason. How you interact with talent during the interview process can make a huge difference in your ability to find the best people. But more than that, if there is friction in that interaction, you can be sure that they will tell others. Word of mouth is powerful, and negative experiences can quickly damage your brand reputation. So make sure that the foundation of your talent acquisition function supports smooth communication.

4. Keep visibility across your pipeline

Another benefit of storing all materials and information related to a candidate in a central location is that it is easier to get a clear view of your talent acquisition landscape. Certainly, you want to be able to see current candidates and where they are in the process. But your pipeline is not limited to the here and now; it stretches into the past and the future. You may have interviewed someone two years ago who wasn’t the right fit for the position that was open then, but is the ideal candidate for the one you need to fill now. Do you remember them? Have you kept that relationship alive? Can you easily share the details with your team and reach out to the candidate again? Having visibility across your entire pipeline is essential to maintaining and taking advantage of a great brand reputation.

5. Nurture your network

We asked if you’ve kept the relationship with past candidates alive. Why? You get to know talent during the hiring process, but not everyone becomes part of your team. They do become a branch in your network, however, and it’s far more time and cost effective to dip into those connections when you need to fill a key role. These talents remain part of your pipeline and, because you’ve provided a great experience during their candidate journey, they can serve as ambassadors for your brand. They may connect you with the perfect candidate whom you might not otherwise find. Or, they themselves may be ready to make a move this time.

Take the Next Step

Certainly, these are not the only things you must do to build and maintain a strong brand reputation, but they are firm pillars that will support all your talent acquisition efforts and ensure success in building talented teams.

If you’re interested in seeing firsthand how a TAP can make a difference in your hiring process and brand reputation, the ZooKeep team is there to help you anytime—not just with software, but with services and solutions that can be tailored to your specific needs. And if you’d like to go a step farther with crafting your brand reputation, consider what a partner such as engine10—a team of marketers, designers, strategists, and recruiters—can do for you. Their belief in the transformative power of strategic talent advisory and employer branding can make a huge difference in today’s highly competitive market.

See for yourself what an advantage an ATS can give your organization, and how little it costs. Book a free demo today at: https://www.zookeep.com