1

5 Steps to

Branding &

Sourcing in

Tandem

_________

We talk a lot about attracting active or passive

candidates, however, it’s important to note that

you actually need to nurture prospective talent

regardless of where they fall on the job seeker

spectrum. It’s necessary to think about what

tactics to use at each stage of the talent

acquisition funnel and how branding and

sourcing play into it.

For example, highly-skilled, in-demand

professionals may start the year happy in their

role and content to stay with their employer.

Perhaps six months down the line they starts to

feel they’ve outgrown his role or needs a new

challenge. Toward the end of the year, they

begins to look for a new job. This individual is

a viable target for employers at any point on

this journey. The key is to engage with them

throughout his job-seeking progression so

when it comes time for they’re to make a career

change, you’re they’re top choice.

You must consider the entire population of

potential talent and where they may be in their

career cycle. That will guide you as to how to

build relationships.

In today’s socially connected, digital world, Branding and Sourcing should be a very happy marriage indeed. However,

they are so busy branding and sourcing that they often forget to talk to each other, leaving at different times in the

morning, eating dinner separately, and only catching up on the weekend to see how their respective weeks went.

We want to help this marriage be successful by outlining the steps and workload required, from pipelining to hiring,

from the perspective of both branding and sourcing practitioners.

A strong brand helps consumers make a decision about whether or not they want to have interaction with a company,

product or service. People complete around 60% of the decision making process prior to any direct interaction with a

brand. This is due to the level of AWARENESS* they have with your brand. A good branding strategy will widen the top

of the funnel, allowing a greater flow of talent through the funnel to ultimately increase the number of qualified

candidates at the bottom of the funnel.

A strong sourcing strategy ensures that you know exactly what talent your business needs to be successful. Where

they come from, what they do, what they need to do for you: branding will tell them what you will do for them

You may have a branding/marketing team and a sourcing/recruiting team, or you may be it. The lone superhero! This

playbook is not necessarily about who’s role and responsibility it is to do a particular task, but which hat you should

wear, while executing the task. Remember, the modern day recruiter thinks like a marketer. Whether you are a global

enterprise or a small business, the principles and thought processes remain the same.

This playbook is intended to give you a high level guide and tips for navigating the branding and sourcing relationship.

This playbook also references more in-depth content on a number of topics we discuss so that you can quickly dive

deeper into topics of interest. We aim to make your life easier!

How branding and sourcing work in tandem

Source: CEB The Digital Evolution

in B2B Marketing

Identify total addressable market and segment

Attract ideal audience and build brand awareness

Engage and nurture talent communities

Personal outreach

Convert or pipeline

Attract

Convert

How to hire the right talent – not the most available

Engage

Identify

Continuous cycle of

engagement and

conversion - This is

where branding and

sourcing have the

closest synergy.

Candidates in your

pipeline move

seamlessly back and

forth through these

stages.

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Branding & Sourcing steps across the life-cycle

• Establish

workforce plan

• Identify total

addressable

market

• Analyse talent

gaps

• Develop talent

strategy

• Identify talent

segments

• Research

• Develop EVP

• Create Talent

Brand

• Create

channel plan

• Engage your

leadership

• Maximise your

presence,

involve your

entire

organisation

• Socialise

Talent Brand

internally

• Promote and

engage your

Talent Brand

• Target

messaging

• Create brand

guidelines*

• Develop talent

engagement

plan

• Develop

content

strategy

• Create talent

communities

• Amplify your

messaging

• Nurture talent

by sharing

content

• Revisit

sourcing

strategy

• Contact

relevant

candidates

• Assess

suitability for

hire or

pipeline

Identify

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Identify talent implications that will arise from your organisation's strategic objectives

Start with your organisation's strategy as this sets parameters for decision making and investments in

talent. Develop a workforce plan to identify current and future needs and gaps or risks. Then, prioritise

choices about people investments to enable the organisation to achieve its business goals.

Identify total addressable market

• Collect relevant workforce data to forecast supply and demand for your key talent areas (e.g.

internal and external talent data)

• Use LinkedIn Talent Pool reports to help you understand the current landscape

Analyse talent gaps

• Use workforce data to create workforce insights - Where are you gaining talent from and to which

companies are you losing talent?

• What are the workforce gaps and risks?

Develop talent strategy

• Transform workforce insights into business actions

• Identify and assess talent options available to best achieve business goals

• Build strategy (talent development)

• Buy strategy (talent acquisition and recruitment)

• Borrow strategy (outsourcing and contingent labor)

• Bind/boost strategy (talent retention and promotions)

• Bounce strategy (talent redeployment and restructures)

Key resources:

LinkedIn Talent Pool reports

Talent Trend Reports

Data Driven recruiting playbook

Sourcing

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Sample Talent Pool Report – Sales Consultants in Australia

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Identify talent segments

Which talent segments do you have to develop an employer value proposition for?

Think about business units and job families. Then identify which would most likely have similar value propositions and group them into

talent segments.

Research You will need to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research to collate robust data. For both types of research you will

need to think about three key focal areas of discovery:

1. Who is your target audience (internal and external)?

2. What do you want to know (information required)?

3. Where & how will you engage your talent (surveys, focus groups, in-house, external etc.)?

Develop your employer value proposition (EVP)

What do you want to tell your audience? Make sure that it’s realistic based on the findings of your research. Be real, be brave, be

personal and be consistent. Create an overarching EVP as well as talent segment specific EVPs.

Create Talent Brand

Your Talent Brand is the social version of your employer brand - the messaging and conversation around your EVP that you can deliver

across all brand touch points. What does it look like? What’s the personality, tone and feel?

Create channel plan

Where does your audience go? Where do they spend time? What social media sites and job boards will you utilise as your messaging

will take on different forms to optimise these channels.

Branding

Key resources:

LinkedIn Employer Brand Playbook

Modern Recruiter’s Guide

Examples of effective qualitative research

• Focus groups: split into talent segments with various

lengths of tenure and same level of seniority within your

company

• One to one interviews: talk to senior leadership to identify

any gaps between reality and aspiration

Examples of effective quantitative research

• Data survey: reach out to your potential audience and ask

what they value and how they perceive your company

• Free tools: SurveyMonkey and Google Forms are easy

and cost effective

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Sourcing + Branding

Total Addressable Market

analysis identifies the size

and nature of your market

and approach for targeting

Over time, one-to-many

branding approach will help

move people into the priority,

“red carpet” quadrant where

they will receive direct

outreach.

Attract

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Engage your leadership

For successful change management, leadership engagement and buy in is critical. Develop a business

case outlining why you need to change as an organisation and embark on a cultural transformation to

find the best talent not just the most available talent

Maximise your presence, involve your entire organisation

Create a world of brand ambassadors. Your employees have invaluable networks and connections that

you want to tap into. The more you can show about who you are and what your company does, the

easier it is for candidates to engage with you and determine whether or not your company might be a

great fit for them. Start with polishing profiles for recruiters, hiring managers, your Senior Leadership

Team and your CEO in an ideal world!

Sourcing + Branding

Key resources:

LinkedIn Executive Playbook

The Age of Socially engaged leadership

Build Recruiter brand on LinkedIn

• Utilise insights gleaned from the workforce plan to drive

your case for change with leaders e.g. Future shortage

of employees with required skills

• Share research from talent trends data and reports

outlining current state talent landscape

• Outline competitors successes

• Show what you’re really spending

• Take advantage of your size

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Promote and engage your Talent Brand

It’s no use having a great Talent Brand if you don’t get it out there! Reaching your target audience will give you

the reward for all your hard effort. You can decide who you want to speak to and when, and start to really

influence the conversation outside of your four (or fifty!) company walls.

Target your messaging

This is definitely a case where one size does not fit all. When looking at your

identified talent segments, think about how you can reach them with their

relevant EVP messaging so that their engagement with you is highly targeted

and specific. What do they want to hear about being an engineer, a sales

professional, a java developer? Be personal.

Create brand guidelines

Brand guidelines really don’t have to resemble War & Peace, think easy to understand, not long and wordy.

The guidelines will help you and all your brand ambassadors be consistent in the messaging and delivery of

your talent

brand. Clarify your EVP statement/s, images of your organisation that reflect the culture, employee

testimonials, a copy library for job ads etc...

Branding

What internal and external channels will you use?

• Your corporate website

• Job boards

• Social media sites

• Recruitment partners

Key resources:

LinkedIn Employer Brand Playbook

5 Steps to Boosting your Talent Brand through Content

Engage & Nurture

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

This is the marriage sweet spot. Where Sourcing and Brand work together in tandem

to develop a formal strategy which defines and outlines the various engagement and relationship

touch points with talent prospects. The focus here is to cultivate and nurture prospects interested

in working for your organisation.

The talent engagement plan is about building a long-term relationship with a candidate and not filling

the immediate vacancy today.

Talent Engagement Plan

Develop a communication strategy which addresses each talent segment. You might work with a

branding team to develop personas for each talent segment which will help you better craft your

communications so that they resonate with each respective segment. As part of the strategy include

timing of outreach by whom and how often.

• Social media

• CMS/ATS

• Hiring manager

• Recruiters

Manage expectations of your talent communities – once candidates are in the pipeline, outline the

process, share the expected timeframes and nature of communications and also share how they can opt

out, if their requirements change.

Sourcing

Key resources:

LinkedIn Talent Pool reports

Talent Trend Reports

Types of content

Don’t forget that not ALL of your content

needs to be created, or original. In fact,

about 50% of your content can be curated

from other sources! Use other thought

leaders like:

Google Alerts

Buzzsumo

Alltop

LinkedIn Pulse

These can all help you find great content

to share!

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Develop content strategy

A content strategy will allow you greater focus and

discipline in consistent messaging. It also means you

can identify partners for the cause. TA, marketing,

corporate comms, leadership, and employee brand

ambassadors all play a part in helping you curate,

and create a robust content strategy.

It’s important to go back to those people with whom

you’re trying to engage. After all, the content of

interest to someone in engineering is quite different

from someone in sales or finance, for the same

reason your value proposition may have been

different for each of those talent segments.

Content allows you to engage on an on-going basis

with your talent community, so that that they feel

connected with your brand, even if they’re not in a

current candidate cycle. You may want to hire them in

six, 12, 18 months (or they may be a silver medalist)

and in the meantime you can continue to remain top

of mind and keep in them in your warm candidate

pipeline.

Branding

Key resources:

5 Steps to Boosting your Talent Brand through Content

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Status

Update

We couldn’t be

more excited to

announce …

HOT JOB: Do

you love to be

challenged by

your amazing

peers and clients

every day? Look

no further for the

perfect career

move!

Developing apps

without being

able to test

changes to your

code in real time

is painful. Check

out these tips on

how to alleviate

the pain: link

Our CEO talks

about his vision

for our industry

as we move into

a new age of…

Friday fun: insert

image of team

lunch OR any

catchy image

found online OR

interesting fun

fact.

Content

Type

Press release Job post link Blog post Thought

Leadership

Image

Target

Audience

Marketers UX designers Engineers Everybody Everybody

Publish

Where

LinkedIn,

Facebook

LinkedIn, Twitter LinkedIn, Twitter LinkedIn,

Facebook,

Twitter

LinkedIn,

Facebook,

Instagram,

Pinterest

Key resources:

5 Steps to Boosting your Talent Brand through Content

A simple content calendar can help you visualize what you plan to share and assign

team members to own certain days or channels.

Branding

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Create talent communities

To get the most out of professional networking and

social media, many companies create talent

communities on a diverse range of social networks.

Through these virtual communities, social media can be

leveraged for more than branding purposes –

essentially to create segmented pools of hard-to-fill and

other targeted hiring populations.

Amplify your messaging

Empower and engage your employees to share your

content. At LinkedIn, even though we are an extremely

social bunch we need some help sometimes. When

there is a piece of content they want us to share, we will

receive an email asking us to share with our networks,

with a introduction blurb to the post that we can edit to

suit our style if we wish, together with a link to the post.

Best in class content mix

Key resources:

4 Steps to Empowering Employees to Share Professional Content

5 Steps to Boosting your Talent Brand through Content

Branding

Nurture talent by sharing content

Keep building brand awareness now that you’ve cultivated a talent pool. Make sure you have fresh content (created

or curated) on a regular basis, whether that’s once a week or once a day as long as it’s consistent. Choose content

that will spark conversation. This will allow you to have an ongoing dialogue with your talent communities.

Outreach

19

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

At this stage, you will be contacting a potential

candidate with the intent to take them through the

recruitment process. So be clear why you are

reaching out in your initial message.

This step in the process is one which has a

continuous loop back to engage and nurture.

Candidate experience is critical during these stages

– thinking about how you approach and follow up

with candidates will have a significant impact on

how they feel about your company’s brand and what

it might be like to work for the organisation.

Although they are likely already engaged with your

organisation, this conversation is your first personal,

one-to-one touch point, so be thoughtful in your

approach.

Sourcing

Key resources:

The Recruiter’s Guide to Writing Effective inMails

Convert or pipeline

Identify Attract Engage and

Nurture Outreach

Convert or Pipeline

Assess suitability for hire or pipeline

If a candidate is unsuccessful for this specific role, determine if he or she may be a better match for a

future opening. This person may also be highly connected to your talent pool and a great asset to your

future hiring requirements. Managing unsuccessful candidates is equally important in today’s highly

networked and socially transparent age. Best in class organisations acknowledge that candidates are not

only future talent but could also be existing customers and community stakeholders who are pivotal your

business’ success.

Sourcing

Engage and nurture talent communities

Personal outreach

Convert or

pipeline

1. Identify roles & responsibilities. Invite key stakeholders and business partners to the table –

you are not a lone soldier.

2. Plan your strategy from beginning to end, even if you don’t need to implement all the steps

outlined in this eBook.

3. Identify exactly what talent your business needs to be successful. Align your plan to existing

business objectives.

4. Get to know your talent landscape - where they are, what they want and what they do.

5. Leverage branding to attract talent – your messaging should enlighten talent on what YOU

will do for THEM.

Key takeaways for a happy marriage

Remember step three to five is a continuous cycle.

Constantly build and engage your talent community as that’s where branding and sourcing

have the greatest synergy.

• CEB The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing

• LinkedIn Talent Pool Reports

• LinkedIn Talent Trend Reports

• LinkedIn Data Driven Recruiting Playbook

• LinkedIn Employer Brand Playbook

• LinkedIn Executive Playbook

• LinkedIn The Age of Socially Engaged Leadership

• LinkedIn Modern Recruiters Guide

• LinkedIn Build Recruiter Brand on LinkedIn

• LinkedIn 5 Steps to Boosting Your Talent Brand Though Content

• LinkedIn The Recruiter’s Guide to Effective InMails

• 4 Steps to Empowering Employees to Share Professional Content

• The Quest to Quantify: Measuring the Impact of your Talent Brand

References and guides

About the authors

Elle Green Talent Brand Consultant

Nayomi Alexander Senior Customer Success Consultant

Edited by:

Rebecca Feldman

Global Marketing & Education Program Manager

Elle and Nayomi have a happy marriage working on LinkedIn’s global clients. They speak regularly, have lunch a lot and generally work well in tandem.

Elle has over 15 years experience working across most industries building brand strategies to provide robust talent outcomes for business objectives.

Her aim in life is to increase the synergies between HR and Marketing.

Nayomi has over 10 years experience in a variety of Human Resource roles and is passionate about driving improved talent outcomes for

organisations. She’s a self-confessed proactive sourcing geek.

They are planning to renew their vows shortly.

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