How to hire the best people in 2017: make sure your employer brand stands out from the crowd

By  Jon Addison, head of Talent Solutions, LinkedIn UK on building an outstanding employer brand.

The new year is a time for fresh starts and new ambitions. It’s no coincidence that it’s also the most popular time of year for LinkedIn’s 467 million members to update their professional profiles as they consider their next career move.

To support our members at this time each year, LinkedIn publishes the list of the most overused buzzwords in member profiles, helping professionals spot opportunities to stand out and get the attention of employers.

But this season of new starts doesn’t only apply to jobseekers. In today’s job market where candidates have access to so much company information online and through their networks, they’re are interviewing employers as much as they’re being interviewed themselves.

So, this year we’re also doing something a little different.

As well as publishing the most overused buzzwords on member profiles (which you can see here), we crunched the numbers to discover the most overused words among the millions of Company Pages on LinkedIn. These pages act as the shop window for these organisations on the site, and are one of the first places a candidate might encounter a brand. The result is a “who’s who” of the worst offenders when it comes to corporate-speak.

Solutions
Unique
Leading
Expert
Vision
Great
Innovative
Creative
Platform
Strategic

So why is this important?

If you’re in business, the number one determining factor to your success is your ability to attract the best people to work for your company. If you don’t stand out, or can’t engage potential candidates in a compelling way, you risk losing out to companies that can. We know from research that more than half of candidates wouldn’t consider working for a company whose values they didn’t know or agree with, so failing to articulate your culture or vision in a unique way could mean the difference between success and failure.

If you believe you have a unique vision and creative strategy for finding solutions and building new platforms, it’s not enough to simply state that. Instead, show what makes your company different by demonstrating how your culture informs the work your company does. Showcase employees who embody your vision, and explain what it is and the impact your company wants to have on the world.

As you think about your own professional brand at the beginning of the year, take a moment to consider whether your employer brand is working the way it should. Some simple changes can make sure that the next time a top candidate comes across your profile, they might stick around and check out some of your jobs.

What makes your employer brand unique? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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