The following guest blog post was written by Bill Fowles, Talent Acquisition
Manager at Member company ABB.
Yes-Your Brand Matters
Most talent acquisition leaders agree in our need to drive our employer brands. As talent acquisition professionals, we know the importance of a strong employer brand and how that drives recruitment. Several recent surveys, including one by TMP, show most companies can see a 50% savings in cost per hire directly related to a strong employer brand. We need to answer to the job seeker, What do we, as an employer, mean to someone considering being a part of our organization. Well, our brand matters. In fact, a LinkedIn global talent survey showed that 83% of HR leaders consider a strong employer brand as having a significant impact on their ability to hire top talent. And the investment in spending on employer branding seems to back that up. The same global talent survey showed that 91% of the companies surveyed acknowledged they would add more spend to their employer branding efforts.
Our Branding Story-ABB
When I joined ABB just over a year ago, we looked at how we could increase our brand awareness and leverage the most cost effective channels. ABB is one of the world’s largest engineering firms, but we lacked strong brand awareness here in the US market. There are several factors for our lack of brand recognition in the US; probably the most obvious is we are a Swiss based company. But ABB is a large global company. We did over 42 Billion in total revenue last year, we have over 150,000 employees and we are in over 100 countries. Our business is in power and automation and we are consistently recognized as a global leader in these industries. But most do not see our products in your homes or offices. So, we realized we had some challenges, but my team looked at it as an opportunity. How could we drive our employer brand here in the US? With engaging content that we could manage, we believed our message would be well received. We looked to videos as a way to promoting that message and using My.jobs Microsites as the channel to deliver.
Budgets are real
I know, most are thinking there are no possible funds or budget to hire a production company to film a company video. That is true for most. With limited funds and resources for talent acquisition, we put forward a proposal to produce our own employee testimonial video. We wanted to share our employee’s 
enthusiasm and passion in a video. Our goal was to produce these ourselves, yet not sacrifice quality or integrity. In a written proposal, which included purchasing a camera, lights and sound equipment, we were prepared to enter into our own video production. Our goal was to create a 2-3 minute video to be used in our .Jobs landing pages and recruitment channels.
Now Playing…Our Employer Brand
We launched our first video in December of 2013, titled, “ABB is…” We placed this video into all of our microsites, social media channels, career pages and email campaigns. This video quickly became one of our most viewed videos on both our ABB and ABB North American YouTube channels. To date, we have close to 7000 views! What we know and now see, are that most enjoy the experience in learning about your company through the voice of your employees. The ABB message was now being delivered not only by our own employees, but in an engaging and rich format. Video is often the preferred method of receiving information, as long as it is done well and in short forms.
https://www.youtube.com/user/ABBNorthAmerica
We have found that job seekers engage more on our My.jobs Microsites with videos. Our click rates increased on our My.jobs Microsites, as candidates now had content that came alive and was easily enjoyed via any device. We have also seen an increase in our traffic on other sites and our employer brand now has another measurable, our views of video.
Our Videos – Our Employer Brand
With the success of our first video, we were given the green light to make another. This time we decided to target a specific business unit within ABB. We wanted to highlight one of our most unique and exciting businesses, our Robotics group. We recently premiered our 2nd video featuring our Robotics division. This video, titled, “ABB is…Robotics”, has already eclipsed 700 views in less than 30 days!
So, consider using a video to promote your employer brand in your social media channels. Have your career microsite come alive by including rich and engaging content. Make your employees voices be heard through the use of an employee testimonial video. And lastly, if budgets are limited try your hand at making your own…you just might have a video Oscar out there with your name on it!
