Building Your Employer Brand Project Team

As you build out your employer brand and its elements, your success will largely depend on engaging the right individuals. 

At Adverto, we believe there are two main project roles you need to recruit to be effective: stakeholders and ambassadors. You need a group of internal stakeholders from across the organization to help define your brand, and a group of ambassadors to help bring your story to life.

SELECTING STAKEHOLDERS 

You will need to select a team of internal stakeholders to support the discovery stage of the project. This team should include anywhere from two to six individuals with diverse roles within the organization. For the team to be effective, your stakeholders should be:

Familiar With The Culture And Employee Experience 

The first priority is to identify stakeholders who are familiar with your culture and the employee experience at your organization. These stakeholders will need to help you brainstorm and articulate your identity as an employer. To be effective, they need to be connected to the employee voice and familiar with the organization.

Seasoned, Tenured And Diverse 

Ideally, your stakeholders all experience your organization from different perspectives. If you can find individuals who have been with the organization for a while and have moved around internally between departments, even better.

Representative Of The Target Demographic. 

If you are focused on attracting individuals from a specific demographic, you need to include stakeholders who share similarities. Your stakeholders will be key to uncovering your defining qualities as an employer, to make them relevant to your intended talent pool you need to hear from those who have similar needs and wants.

Passionate And Dedicated To The Cause. 

This is the most important piece of criteria. The employer brand exercise takes time and dedication from the selected stakeholders, you need passionate and dedicated individuals who will take the time to think about the questions being asked and actively contribute to the discussion with thoughtful insights.

SELECTING YOUR BRAND AMBASSADORS 

Employee brand ambassadors will help provide real examples of how employees experience, the employee value proposition (EVP) and bring your shared commitments to life. 

When selecting brand ambassadors, it’s best to work with your stakeholders to nominate employees for the initiative. To ensure diversity, it’s crucial to identify potential brand ambassadors from different departments, job levels, and types of roles within the organization. 

When selecting employee brand ambassadors, you and your stakeholder team must consider three main pieces of criteria:

Embody The Culture. 

Your main priority when selecting brand ambassadors is finding employees who truly embody the employer brand. This means selecting ambassadors who have experienced the EVP pillars first-hand and whose stories reflect, align to and support the brand messaging.

Diverse And Representative Of The Employee Base. 

Diversity categories should include both professional and demographic characteristics. Aim to select employees from different departments, with different roles, seniority, and tenure, across a wide spectrum of demographics. Consider representing roles that are in high-demand for recruitment. 

It’s crucial to show a variety of employee ambassadors to help a diverse candidate mix relate to their stories.

Comfortable With The Process. 

The hardest part is selecting employees who are comfortable and confident in sharing their personal experiences. You need to ensure that whoever you choose will be comfortable during the interview process, and authentically relay their experiences.

QUICK TIPS ON NOMINATING AND SHORTLISTING AMBASSADORS 

1. When requesting employee nominations from stakeholders, it’s helpful to inform them of the types of stories and feedback you are looking for. They can then identify employees who represent the qualities you’re looking represent. 
2. When stakeholders submit their nominees, encourage them to provide a blurb on why each employee was selected, along with an order of recommendation. 
3. When shortlisting employees, leverage internal people directories and/or social media platforms to learn more about your nominees. This is also a great way to ensure visual diversity among the final selection of brand ambassadors. 
4. Keep nominations confidential until the final round of shortlisting, just because someone is nominated, does not mean they will be chosen. Creating false hope or excitement among potential ambassadors could lead to a negative experience if they’re not selected.

Carefully selecting a team of individuals to build your employer brand will make all the difference in your final product. Start with a team of diverse, passionate and experienced stakeholders and leverage their knowledge to identify a team of ambassadors who can tell your story.