2 HR Marketing - from Job Advertising to Employer Branding

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Executive Summary

In this assignment the most popular measures in the field of HR Marketing like Job and Image Advertising, HR Consultants, Corporate Culture, Applicant Relationship Management and Employer Branding in particular are evaluated with the four criteria costs, company size, target function and target group. The evaluation with four different parameters results from the fact, that each company has to find out which measures fit best to support the fulfilment of its individual HR targets. As there exists no common HR Marketing strategy which serves all kinds of companies. The deciding role of “Employer Branding” is pointed out in detail as a key factor for a successful management of the human side of organizations in national or international context, as it goes beyond the standard HR Marketing measures. This is supported by the presentation of the Employer Brand Positioning of L´Oréal and a theoretical process scheme, documenting a manual of how to start this HR Marketing trend theme from scratch: The four process steps of how to develop a successful Employer Brand are Planning, Description, Leadership and Control. The author then goes into a short critical discussion with the theory and its missing ability to be adopted in practice. A practical examination on Employer Branding within a company is done by analyzing the German car supplier WEBASTO and its targets in HR Marketing as reference case. In this case the author describes to the company´s HR Marketing concept and the planned improvement measures to increase and strengthen popularity of the Employer Brand and covers up a few missing points of the concept. Additionally several theoretical perspectives of Employer Branding measures are presented and some useful advice for transferring them in the ephemeral business world of today with rapidly changing contact persons and strategies is given. In the end the author makes a general recommendation who is necessary to develop and implement a sustainable HR Marketing Concept in a company, based on the evaluation and comparison results from the main part.

HR  Marketing - from Job Advertising to Employer Branding  3

Table of  Contents  

Executive  Summary.  2

Table of  Contents  3

List  of Abbreviations  4

List  of Figures  4

1  Introduction.  5

2  Problem Definition  6

3  Objectives.  6

4  Methodology  7

5  Main Part  8

5.1  Job Advertising and Image Advertising  8

5.2  HR Consultants and Agencies.  9

5.3  HR Online Marketing Measures.  10

5.4  Contact Management  10

5.5  Corporate Culture and Leadership Style  11

5.6  Applicant Relationship Management  12

5.7  Employer Branding  12

6  The key role of Employer Branding  14

6.1  The defining key issues of Employer Branding  14

6.2  The role of Employer Branding within the WEBASTO HR Marketing concept.  17

6.3  Comparison of Employer Branding from a practical and theoretical perspective.  18

7  Conclusion.  20

Appendices.   20

ITM  Checklist.  23

Bibliography   26

4 HR Marketing - from Job Advertising to Employer Branding

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List of Abbreviations

CEO Chief Executive Officer etc et cetera e.g. exempli gratia HR Human Resources IT Information Technology ITM Integral Total Management PR Public Relations USP Unique Selling Proposition

List of Figures

Figure 1 - Functional classification of HR Marketing target objectives………………………..7

Figure 2 - Employer brand positioning of L`Oréal………………………………………………..13

Figure 3 - WEBASTO HR Marketing Concept……..……………………………………………….17

5 HR Marketing - from Job Advertising to Employer Branding

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1 Introduction

What is the first thing, that comes into your mind when you think of the discounter supermarket chain Lidl? On the one hand, there are of course the cheap prices which make Lidl a good choice for daily food shopping but one the other hand, the continuing unfair practices which were used by the management to control the employees have given the discounter a very negative image of an employer nobody wants to work for anymore. The general challenge resulting from the example of Lidl is, that not only a good price-value relationship is responsible for the success of a company but more important is an effective and prosperous HR Marketing to attract ambitious and motivated employees. In combination with the globalization, the further development of new economical and technical surrounding conditions, the labour itself and the labour market have changed enormously:

“Organizations, if they are to survive need a continuing supply of persons, capable of and motivated to exercise leadership.” ¹ This explains why the competition for talents and top performers on an international and even already on a national level between the companies has increased. In addition to that Petkovic points out, that “ the market of qualified line and leadership managers has clearly developed to become a buyers market. The intensive occupation with innovative concepts for the professionalization of the HR Marketing is therefore inescapable.” 2

In the real business world of today companies realized the significant importance of an integrated HR Marketing system. As a consequence the HR department is engaged with the project of developing a sustainable HR Marketing strategy and derive the right operative measures from it. This project is still ongoing in many companies or has not even started yet, if you take Lidl for example.

¹ Sadler, P. (2003): p. 85

² Petkovic, M. (2008): p. 26

6 HR Marketing - from Job Advertising to Employer Branding

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2 Problem Definition

In the field of HR Marketing a general approach like doing a little bit of everything will not lead to satisfaction. The problem lies in the different content and objectives of all the various HR Marketing measures, which consequently have to be evaluated individually to give a justified recommendation for the implementation in a company or not. Moreover in many companies HR Marketing or Employer Branding is expressed in simply having a logo and a corporate design, and this forms another challenge as a successful Employer Branding implies a lot more aspects, duties and internal tasks to be managed and solved.

3 Objectives

The main objective of this assignment is to discover the individual benefits of different HR Marketing measures and provide theoretical know-how combined with practical advise for companies to create their own Employer Branding. Another objective is to identify the typical difficulities a company faces when trying to establish an optimized HR Marketing concept and to suggest solutions.