Zara – How an amazing brand perception creates employer challenges – Mike Ellingham – Part 2/3

Within the retail sector, candidates are thinking with their consumer hat on. They put their consumer brand into their employer brand.”

This follows part one of my three-part talk to Mike Ellingham about recruitment marketing, agency and employer branding and consultant productivity. Mike is Director of MESO Marketing Limited.

Steve: Is the recruitment agency brand becoming as important as the brands they represent?

Mike: Increasingly so – in specialised recruitment candidates are looking for recruiters that understand their sector, understand them, build relationships, and trust them to source the right job. The successful niche recruiters I work with certainly have that. They have a brand reputation for providing good service.

When we look at the employer brand of large companies – I’ve researched who are the most attractive employers in the retail sector, and Zara comes up as the most attractive employer for candidates in the UK.

Improve your brand reputation.
Fully automated with idibu.

However, this can give Zara a retention issue because candidates join Zara expecting it to be fantastic place to work. But underneath it all it’s a still a retail job, it’s merchandising, it’s customer service, it’s tough work. So actually that positive customer brand perception gives them a problem. From an employer point of view, they have to make sure that they’re looking at what their employees want. A good working environment, to be promoted, to be developed, and not just a reflection of their branding that might actually be more about their customer brand.

Steve: Could you define why Zara had been so successful there?

Mike: Well, ironically when candidates look for customer service roles in retail they have an emotional attachment to a brand as customer. So many candidates transpose that into what they think it will be like to work for them – innovative, fashionable, leading-edge etc. – but this doesn’t necessarily translate into what they are like as an employer. Candidates would do better researching the company’s employer reputation – discovering businesses such as John Lewis or one of the other retailers who have good reputations for how they care about their employees.

So I think within the retail sector, candidates are thinking with their consumer hat on. They put their consumer brand into their employer brand.

Mike Ellingham (@mikeellingham) is Director of MESO Marketing Limited.