Evaluating Your Employer Brand Awareness and Reputation

In the previous chapter, you got a glimpse of some of the benefits
that make a strong employer brand an essential asset. But what
exactly does a strong employer brand look like, and how do you
measure its effectiveness?

For starters, there are a few key metrics that will give you a sense of
how healthy your employer brand is:

• Retention Rate: What percentage of new employees still work for your company after three months?
• Employee Productivity: Are employees more engaged and
  more determined to give you their best effort?
• Quality of Hire: Are you noticing an increase in quality applicants?
• Cost Per Hire: Have you managed to reduce the cost of your average hire?
• Talent Pipeline: Has your strategy resulted in a more robust talent pool?

As you strengthen your employer brand, you should see noticeable
improvements in some or all of these categories. Internally, you can
also create brand awareness studies, gather existing employee
testimonials, and conduct new-hire surveys. These will all help you
form a better understanding of how your brand is perceived in terms of reputation—and what you can do to improve it.

Branching out, you might also research your company's reviews on
popular job sites like Glassdoor, as these often weigh heavily in a
candidate's decision to apply for a position at your company or not.

Once you take the time to assess your current employer brand
awareness and reputation, you may discover that it requires some
strategic tweaking.

In the next chapter, we’ll start to lay out the techniques that
companies use to optimize their public image and communicate
their value to prospective employees. Let’s dive in!