The other day, an colleague of mine at an employment services firm visited the Head2Head office here in Toronto, and said how much he liked the 'vibe' and how he wished he could do the same thing for his own office.

"You guys have done such a great job of employment branding," he remarked.  "What would you say are the current top trends in the field?"

I'm not sure whether these are strictly 'trends' - because the whole idea of employer and employment branding is in a constant state of evolution - or whether we'd say these are 'best practices', but we think that building a great employment brand in 2011 requires the following components:
 
 

Transparency
 
Employment brands are all about trust and credibility, so it's important to be authentic, honest, and transparent.  It's okay if you aren't perfect - but pretending you're perfect, or something that you're not, is a good way to turn off potential employees. 
 

Consistency

Great brands - employment or otherwise - aren't built overnight, and changing the strategy every 5 minutes isn't going to help, because people will just get confused.  A good employment brand strategy should start to see some buzz in 6 months, but will take 2 years to really generate demonstrable results.  Remember, it has a lot to do with word of mouth.
 
 
Brand Alignment

Building a great employment brand really starts with the consumer brand, since many of your potential employees will know your consumer brand long before they ever consider you as an employer.  So making sure the employment brand is aligned with the consumer brand is crucial.  In other words, if your consumer brand is 'fun and irreverant', your employment brand should be, too.  Best first step?  Schedule a meeting with the marketing department.
 
 
Personality
 
Brands are all about emotional connections, and it's hard to connect to an organization whose communications sound like they were written by boring, navy-blue-suit-wearing guys from legal who speak non-stop corporate jargon.  Instead of corporate literature that says stuff like "We're committed to fostering teamwork and achieving excellence in all facets of our endeavours, for the benefit of our clients and stakeholders," why not try "We like to work together to do great stuff and make our clients love us!" 

Imagine seeing the above statements in two different job postings for two different companies.  Which company would you rather work for?
 
 
Integrate Your Culture
 
Your employees are your most important asset when it comes to building a strong, positive employment brand.  So even before you start focusing on external employment branding efforts, you should get your current employees on board.  After all, the best new hires come from referrals from current A-listers - so word-of-mouth is crucial.  Making sure your current employees love working for you, are engaged, and are encouraged to be evangelists is the best way to attract great candidates.
 
 
Philanthropy
 
Gen Y is more engaged with causes at a grassroots level than any generation before them, and they are driving a social conscience within the workplace.   Making corporate philanthropy a part of your consumer and employment brand is becoming an increasingly important part of attracting the best and brightest.
 
 
 Visual Dynamism

Thanks to companies like Apple and Google, combined with increased access to visual media via the internet, the average person is not only more aware of good design than ever before, they're better able to parse its meaning.  In other words, if your website is still in shades of blue and gray, with boring stock photos of 1990s office workers, no one's going to believe you when you tell them that you've got a fun, innovative working environment.  
 
 
Social Media Savvy
 
In other words:  Use all the channels available to you to spread the word about your employment brand, especially online.  You may not have the resources to promote your employment brand through mainstream media, but that's okay - you can probably find most of your best potential employees online anyway.  Sure, LinkedIn may be the 'professional' social media website, but an awful lot of A-listers are spending an awful lot of time on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs.  So make sure you're building a presence on those sites, too. 

And don't forget that your job postings themselves are a huge opportunity to build the brand.  Get rid of the corporate jargon and think about how best to reflect the positive corporate culture; ads like these are guaranteed to generate 250% more A-listers than the standard, boring job ads.