Candidate personas in employer branding: identity- and data-based employer branding

Employer branding: Identity-based concept approach

Strategic employer branding helps employers to communicate more successfully: internally, to increase employee loyalty, and externally, to attract more talent to their own company. Authenticity is at the heart of this: for an employer brand to be credible, it must reflect the actual corporate identity.

Strategy consultant Patric Cloos from Raven51 therefore pursues an identity-based concept approach in his employer branding projects. "Before we formulate an employer promise and develop creative concepts, we take a close look at the culture, corporate values and employer attractiveness factors of our clients," says Cloos. In addition to the company's present, the future also plays a role. "A good employer brand illuminates at least one third of an employer's goals and visions in order to convey shared perspectives to talented individuals and employees."

This applies to SMEs and hidden champions as well as public employers and corporations. In workshops, surveys and interviews, Cloos and his colleagues analyze what his clients' employees value about their employers, derive unique selling points and attractiveness factors and define key messages for employer communication. "An internal perspective and employer identity are the starting point for any authentic employer brand," explains Patric Cloos. But the external perspective is just as important to him: "If we want to attract new people to our customers, we also need to know what topics interest specialists outside the company - and how we can best reach these talents."

Reality check with data-based candidate personas

Data-based candidate personas provide employer branding experts with a powerful tool for precisely this external perspective. The Persona Institute Cloos can provide employers with comprehensive personas for practically any target group based on a broad data basis of over one million structured interviews, a large number of studies and numerous statistics. In addition to information on media usage behavior and socio-demographic characteristics, these also contain detailed insights into career aspirations, pain points and expectations of additional benefits and the application process, as well as recommendations on how to approach candidates. All of this is valuable knowledge for strategic employer branding.

"In our projects, the Persona Institute creates data-based candidate personas for the most important target groups of each client," says Cloos. He compares the information from the candidate personas with the attractiveness factors and employer identity of his clients. "We check which of the internally determined attractiveness factors are particularly relevant for the external target groups - and focus on them specifically in employer branding. In this way, we ensure that we don't miss out on the market, but address the needs of the relevant talent with our messages." Candidate personas also speed up decision-making in critical project phases, for example when it comes to choosing the right creative concept. Valid data takes the place of gut feeling and personal taste - a real step forward that makes many a tedious discussion within the project group superfluous.

With target group knowledge for permanently successful employer communication

Another advantage of data-based candidate personas is that the candidate profiles can be used further after an employer branding project. In this way, they provide well-founded indications for the selection of suitable advertising material as part of recruiting campaigns, the further development of the benefits catalog or the design of the application process.

Because the data is representative and has been scientifically collected, it also helps to plan the necessary budgets in good time and, if necessary, to justify them to the management. Patric Cloos from Raven51: "With the expanded target group knowledge, we avoid wastage in practically every campaign and increase budget efficiency. The one-off investment in data-based candidate personas has therefore paid for itself within a very short time."