Employer branding at Keells : Strategic implications for staff recruitment
Brands and Employees A brand is “essentially a seller’s promise to consistently deliver a specific set of features, benefits, and services to the buyers [and …] is intended to identify the goods and services of one seller […] and differentiate them from those of competitors (Kotler 1997, p. 443)”. However, in the context of employer marketing, the employer brand is to be understood as the set of distinctive images of a prospective employer which are manifest in the minds of the target groups- potential employees (Meffert, Burmann & Koers 2002; Petkovic 2004). The difficult task for any organization is to manage the multiple brands it presents to its various stakeholders (e.g. consumer brands, company brand, employer brand). Important in this context is the link between the human resource management function and marketing (Martin et al. 2005). Both marketers and HR specialists need to be aware of the impact of their actions on each other’s branding objectives, and as much as p...