Dive Brief:

• Of job seekers who respond directly to recruiter's messages, about half do so because the message itself interested them, according to a new report from Ceridian on a survey of more than 1,500 respondents. A third will respond because the company's reputation entices them to reply, and another 28% said they would follow up because of dissatisfaction with their previous role.
• Survey respondents said salary, work-life balance and job location were the top three motivating factors for finding a new job. Those factors have also caused participants to turn down roles, although the order was reversed when ranked by the factors' influence.
• When candidates research potential jobs, they most often looked for salary, job location and benefits. They also wanted to know how work-life balance played out in their prospective role, what growth opportunities they would be provided and how the company is perceived. Respondents said they most often relied on information from the employees of a potential employer when determining whether they would be a good fit at a company. They also said they turned to Glassdoor, the company's website and family, friends or colleagues to help them decide.

Dive Insight:

The key to recruiting isn't a multi-faceted marketing plan or an expensive candidate outreach program, according to Ceridian Chief People and Culture Officer Lisa Sterling. "It comes down to something that I would consider very, very simple: the overall employment brand of the organization," Sterling told HR Dive in an interview. "And not from a spin or how you position the company in terms of your prospective customers or market, but how you are positioning the organization to your prospective, future people."

Sterling said she instructs her talent acquisition team to talk more about the experience of working for Ceridian rather than compensation packages when speaking with prospective candidates. "It's not about selling the niceties or even the necessities," she said. "It's about helping people gain a better understanding of what their life is going to look like when they join that organization and how they're going to make contributions and be impactful and aspire to something bigger than themselves."

Employer branding has proved its importance, but companies do need to track how they are represented and regarded online, as the report points out. Research outside of this report shows that only one in five job seekers will apply to a company with a bad online reputation. An employer tarnished by bad reviews may need to conduct an internal review to understand what experiences motivated employees and former employees to comment on them publicly. Such assessments may help improve the way a company is talked about among its employees, too. If leaders make an effort to clean up company culture — and actually follow-through on feedback provided by workers — employees' comments to each other and to job seekers will likely be more positive.