Does Employer Branding Influence a Candidate’s Job Application Decisions?
Employer branding is mainly concerned with creating and improving the image of an organization as an employer or as a great place to work. The employer brand influences how current and potential employees interact with a company’s brand, and more specifically, the company’s brand image as an employer.
Both firm-level and job-related variables significantly influence a candidate’s job application decisions, such as intention to apply and consideration of the best companies to work for. Firms hoping to attract top candidates should carefully examine the factors that motivate top candidates to apply for positions with a company, and make an effort to improve on those variables.
Interlinked with the concept of employer branding for prospective employees is employment branding, employer knowledge, employment image and employer attractiveness. All of these factors can impact a candidate’s job choices, but improving upon these factors alone may not be adequate to attract top candidates.
Top candidates are also attracted to positions by 
competitive salary and a firm’s media presence. Within the means of the company, HR professionals can decide how these two features can be leveraged to increase an organization’s image as an employer. HR professionals should also consider whether adjustments need to be made to recruitment strategies in response to shifts in demographic patterns, shortages of skilled workers in knowledge-based organizations, and rising costs of recruitment, selection, and training due to attrition.
Overall, employer branding is likely to generate several benefits, such as, low employee attrition, high job satisfaction, employee engagement and customer loyalty. Moreover, firms with better employer brand can afford to pay lower wage rates than the industry average. As a result, employer branding proves to be as a useful strategy for companies to maintain a positive reputation and appeal to top talent.
One example of how positive employer branding benefits companies would be a Best Employer Surveys (BES) list like the Great Place to Work Survey, which positively influences candidates’ job-related decisions. Hence, firms should attempt to increase and retain their positions in the BES ranks which will ultimately improve the organization’s image as a brand.
The abstract:
Communication of employer brand to external stakeholders has, in the recent past, seen new developments in the form of best employer surveys (BESs) and a potent form of employer branding lies in the BESs. In this article, we examine the impact of firm-related and job-related attributes on a candidate’s job application decisions by selecting firms from the BES lists. The study is based on the secondary and primary data of 139 companies which have appeared in four major BES lists from 2001 to 2012 (the longest time period for which data is available in an emerging economy—India) and primary data collected from 2,854 respondents.
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*Featured Career Fair image is credited to University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment (CC).
