The importance of the tech employer brand.‍

Having a good employer brand is a must, but for the tech world, where talent has made their passion their job, you need a dedicated approach! And the stakes are high.

The objective of a good tech employer brand is to be able to recruit quickly, more qualified and motivated candidates, and to reduce the costs and duration of the recruitment of these profiles.

At a time when the bubble of over-financed tech startups is bursting, the tech recruitment market will regulate itself. Promising huge salaries will no longer be an acceptable strategy and a good tech employer brand will allow you to stand out from the crowd.

Tech talent is highly sought after and will have turnover rates up to 2x higher than average. The tech employer brand helps retain talent but also engages them in the company's mission.

To get these benefits, you need a tech employer brand with some awareness, and that takes time! So it's never too early to worry about your tech employer brand.

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Enhance your tech employer brand‍

Develop your tech employer brand with simple actions in three areas:

• Communication
• Employee engagement
• Company values

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Boost your external communication.

Just like B2C marketing, you will use all the communication tools at your disposal to spread your tech employer brand.

1. Communicate on specific social networks. For example, Twitter is very popular with tech profiles, as well as Reddit and Discord.
2. For tech identity, creating an account dedicated to tech content is a good idea, for example the Netflix engineering account is very popular, followed by a community very different from the general Netflix community. 
3. Create varied and consistent content. To give some examples, communicate your company's news, reactions to current topics, articles on topics at the heart of your tech issues, and better yet, put parts of your code in open source. It's common and it's a popular mindset in the tech industry.
4. Use the most sensible communication channels, (Twitter, LinkedIn, Mail, Twitch, and others). But most importantly, post content regularly and adapt it to each medium.

Here’s an example of content proposed on Qovery's Twitter

5. Content can also be created by your tech talents, either on your company's account or directly by doing personal branding. The benefit is twofold: you reach a larger, highly qualified tech target and your talents will be proud to show their fulfillment in their work.

Tweet from Netflix Engineering to promote an article written by 2 of its talents.

6. Don't forget to give time to create quality content by your talent 

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Your talent is your best ambassador.

Your talent is your company's showcase and having talent that is engaged and proud of their role can increase the influence of your tech employer brand. 

To do this, it is essential to guarantee their skills development - if your talents feel they are not learning anything, they will leave.

Note that in addition to their ambassadorial potential, a more engaged talent is also more productive. Let's see how.

7. Make specific career plans to support your talent as they move up the ladder.
8. Offer technical training to all your teams but also conferences on topics of interest.

Tweet from Netflix Engineering about a conference of one of its talents.

9. Set up a knowledge and skills exchange between your talents, even between different jobs.
10. Show in job interviews that there are opportunities to multiply one's skills in your company.
11. Don't forget to consider the attractiveness of certain technologies before working on them. For example, developers may refuse a job because they don't want to work on a particular technology.
12. For your talents, having a tech referent who is accessible internally and present on tech communication is an asset to unite the teams around an inspiring personality.
13. Capture the desires of your talents, do they like business or technical challenges? Do they need freedom or a framework? And adjust their work environment accordingly. 
14. Have a policy of parity, in a very male domain, that consists in doubling efforts to allow female talents to avoid the disadvantages of their minority number.

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Have clear values.

Strengthen your talent into a true community around shared values. Learn more about building a talent community. To illustrate this notion, the best example is SNCF Connect & Tech. 

15. SNCF has a tech subsidiary, SNCF connect & tech, with specific values: Audacity, Performance, Openness, Trust and Citizen.
16. All the tech employees form a community, they are Digital Mobility Changers, this aspect is essential in the SNCF's communication. For example, when asked "What are the benefits of joining SNCF Connect & Tech?", Alix de Lassence, employer brand manager, answers, "By joining us, you will become a member of the largest community of Digital Mobility Changers."

Give meaning to your talent's job!

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Reduce your time to hire, reach qualified candidates and enrich your pipeline with qualified talent. If these are your goals,  contact us and we'll help you build and engage talent communities thanks to our TRM.

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