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Title :
Talent Acquisition Through Employer Branding:
roles & responsibilities and competencies of the
talent sourcing and recruitment department on the
employer branding for the long-term recruitment
strategy
Program: MSc - MC 1 - Grenoble (2010 - 2012)

Academic Year: 2010-2011

Dissertation / Project / Internship Report: Dissertation Proposal 2010-2011

Student Name: Klanman Khom

School Tutor / Evaluator Name: Williams Lloyd

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Summary: The study of the roles, responsibilities, and competencies needed for the
talent sourcing and recruitment department in order to perform execute the employer
branding to yield the recruitment strategy in the long-term

Keywords: (cf. Thesaurus du Management):

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT - HIRING
MANAGEMENT - COMPETITIVENESS
MARKETING MANAGEMENT - JOB STUDY
COMMUNICATION - INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Talent Acquisition Through Employer Branding: roles & responsibilities and
competencies of the talent sourcing and recruitment department on the employer branding for
the long-term recruitment strategy

Khom KLANMAN, Master of Science in Management Consulting,

Grenoble Graduate School of Business, France

Introduction

Roles and competencies of the marketing and public relations department which is in charge
of handling the corporate and product branding have been clearly defined in a corporate;
meanwhile, the employer branding seem to be part of a corporate marketing activities but its
expected outcomes would directly yield the long-term run of sourcing and recruitment
department. However, the impact and scope of employer branding projects goes beyond the
key accountabilities of recruitment activities (Barrow and Mosley, 2005) such as retention
strategy, diversity of employees, organization development, leadership development, etc.
Some large companies involve expert from many disciplines, for example, market research,
leadership development, multicultural management, and organization development to take
part in create or strengthen the employer brand. As a result of the large scope and influence of
employer brand, the roles and responsibilities together with the competencies of a corporate’s
talent sourcing and recruitment team or department on the employer branding for the long-
term recruitment strategy need to be clearly defined.
Influential HR experts and interested HR professionals and communities have discussed who
should be assigned the task of creating and strengthening the employer brand, and talked
about marketing roles and competencies in need to execute the employer branding projects. In
order to yield the talent acquisition and recruitment strategy, the employer branding has been
considered one of the most powerful initiative today and, of course, international firms have
adopted the initiative and launched project (s) regarding their employer brand, expecting to
become one of the best places to work for (Arama, 2010). Nevertheless, they forget to define
the scope of roles and responsibilities of the sourcing and recruitment team who will take
charge in and face the results of the employer branding the most, and consequently the team
has not been trained to be aware of and able to cope with the fierce competition in the labour
market, social media trend, and traditional but the most powerful PR tool like “by word of
mouth” or perception of potential employees towards internal employees who automatically
become the “employer brand ambassadors” when stepping out of the office for their daily
personal life (Edward, 2010). Briefly, the roles & responsibilities have not been defined while
there are competency gaps regarding the employer branding for the sourcing and recruitment
team.

Research Problem

In order to define a talent sourcing and recruitment department’s roles and competencies
needed for a long-term recruitment strategy, the study aims at verifying that employer
branding activities belong to and can be handled within a job scope of the talent sourcing and
recruitment department whose competency gaps are filled.

In this context, the main goal of this dissertation is to define the roles & responsibilities and
competencies needed for a talent sourcing team or talent acquisition team in the promotion
and exploitation of employer brand in order to sustain a corporate brand and facilitate the
activities of talent sourcing and acquisition while yielding the recruitment strategy.
Methodology

The dissertation could bring about the global picture of employer branding process with
defined roles and responsibilities of talent sourcing department through the analysis of the
secondary data on the objective (s), stakeholders, and mean (s) of the promotion and
exploitation of employer brand by investigating the procedures, expected results, and
constraints in employer branding projects in order to prepare for our qualitative and
quantitative research to gain primary data. Questionnaires will be submitted to recruitment
directors in international firms which possess strong employer brand well-known to the global
labour market, and a couple of business cases on employer branding and recruitment strategy
will be developed for a better understanding of the context.

Practical Contribution

The analysis results will lead to a complete functional description and the job competency
profile of an effective talent sourcing and recruitment team regarding the employer branding
for the long-term recruitment strategy.

Literature Review

Researches show that branding was originally used to differentiate tangible products, but over
the years it has been applied to differentiating people, places, and firms (Peters, 1999). As
widely known, the corporate reputation management and the corporate branding are
performed by the marketing and public relations (PR) department (Lages, 2003) or by
outsourced marketing & PR firms. This proves that business cannot be run only on tangible
assets but also on intangibles e.g. technology, people, and brands etc. which are subsumed in
the overall asset value (Lindemann, 2010) despite their unclear financially specific value. The
product brand management is meant to attract more customers to buy the products sold in the
market and it is normally aimed at higher sales or a short-term goal. In addition, the customers
and brand managers have less chance to interact with the manufacturers.
On the contrary, the employer branding is defined as a targeted long-term strategy to manage
awareness and perception of employees, potential employees, and related stakeholders with
regards to a particular firm (Sullivian, 2004). As famous experts in human capital subject like
Dr. Peter Cappelli have voiced their observation on the shift from “being loyal to a company
to being committed to a career”, it seems that the human resource department has to change
its messages communicated through media in order to attract potential employees. And
certainly, the talent sourcing team, as part of a human resource department, has to perform its
work accordingly.
Employer branding has been setting the major trend for organizations in developed and
emerging economics (Martin; Hetrick 2006). Leading companies in Europe, America, and
Asia-Pacific have actively been launching their campaigns aimed at promoting their corporate
brand in order to fiercely acquire talents. The annual Chartered Institute of Personnel
and Development (CIPD) talent management, recruitment and retention survey which was
released in 2007 revealed that three-quarter of corporate who had adopted employer branding
as the main channel to recruit talents believed it was effective. Moreover, with the novelty and
potential of social networks and technology today, the means of promoting the employer
brand are able to reach even inaccessible overseas talents and global professionals. Recently,
the social media communities for professionals like Linkedin have enjoyed the popularity
among recruiters both from recruitment agencies and from the corporate sourcing department.
The online recruitment becomes an official sourcing strategy for many companies. However,
the social network users are not only the people that seek an employment or internship,
change their career, and source talents to fill the manpower need in their organisations, but
also those, just to name a few, who develop a professional community, seek a piece of advice
from experts, find a B2B opportunity, and execute their own personal branding. On internet
websites of social networks, employer brands can be flawed or distorted by unethical or
dissatisfied employees (CIPD, 2007) and general internet users who frequent communities
there. Therefore, the sourcing department has to be aware of, and equipped with the
competencies needed in the employer branding strategy and the online and social media trend.
Inside a company, employees have direct experience with HR department and the
management both of whom play a significant role in managing career of the employees from
recruitment, training, development, promotion, to exit or retirement. The employees have
their own professional and personal life where they are allowed to converse with potential
employees outside the company as well. The word of mouth, the personal network, the daily
conversation with family and friends on working life in the company or even the social status
shown through their consumption behaviour (Ind, 2001) and the access to convenience are the
mechanisms of employer branding as well. In view of this, employees are deemed as
ambassadors of employer brands. Moreover, the corporate identity which each of the
employees unconsciously learns and accepts gradually since the first day he/she is hired has
been communicated to and perceived by the employees since the day when they are potential
candidates who finally decide to apply for a position in the company. As aforementioned, the
sourcing and recruitment department’ s roles seem so large that it has to go beyond traditional
sourcing and recruitment by not only performing employer branding toward external parties
to acquire the best employees, but also glooming the new hires to become the employer brand
ambassadors. Therefore, the roles and competencies of the talent sourcing department have to
be defined in order to “live” employer brand and ease its sourcing and recruitment activities in
the long-term run.

References

Alba, J. (2007) I’m on Linkedin. Now What?, Happy About, California, USA.

Arama, R. (2010) What Is The Future of Employer Branding Through Social Media?, Delphi Study.

Barrow, S., Mosley, R. (2005) The Employer Brand, Bringing the Best of Brand Management to
People at Work, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., NJ, USA.

Burkholder, N.C., Edwads SR, P.S., Sartain, L. (2004) On Staffing: Advice and Perspectives from HR
Leaders, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NJ, USA.

Cappelli, P. (1999) The New Deal Deal at Work, Harvard Business School Press, 1999.

Chartered Instituted of Personal and Development (2007) Employer Branding: The Latest Fad or
Future for HR?

Dawn S.K., Biswas S. (2010) Asian Journal of Management Research: Employer Branding: A New
Strategic Dimension of Indian Corporations, Integrated Publishing Association, India.

Edwards, M.R. (2010) An integrative Review of Employer Branding and OB Theory, Personnel
review, 39 (1): 5-23.

Ind, N. (2001) Living the Brand: How to Transform Every Member of Your Organisation into a Brand
Champion, Kogan Page.

Lages, C. (2003) The dynamics of public relations: Key constructs and the drive for professionalism at
the practitioner, consultancy and industry levels, University of Warwick, Conventry, UK.

Lindemann, J. (2010) Brand Valuation: The Financial Value of Brands [online] Available at:
http://www.brandchannel.com/papers_review.asp?sp_id=357 [Accessed 13 September, 2011].
L’Oréal website, www.loreal.com

Martin, G (2009) Employer Branding and Corporate Reputation Management, The Peak Performing
Organisation, Chapter 13, pp 252, Routledge, London.

Micharls, E., Handfield-Jones, H. and Axelrod, B (2001), The War for Talent, Havard Business
School Press.

Minchington, B. (2010) Employer Brand Leadership – A Global Perspective, Collective Learning

Australia.

Peacock, L. (2007) CIPD survey reveals the importance of employer branding in recruitment and
retention strategies [online] Available at:
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employer-branding-in-recruitment-and-retention.html [Accessed 13 September, 2011].

P&G website, www.pg.com

Peters, T. (1999) The Brand You 50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an Employee into a
Brand that Shouts Distinction, Knopf Publishers, New York, NY.

Sullivan, J. (2004) Eight Elements of a Successful Employment Brand, ER Daily, 23 February, 2004.

Watson Wyatt’s Human Capital Index: Human Capital As a Lead Indicator of Shareholder Value
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Capital-Index.pdf [Accessed 14 September, 2011].