An Overview of Employer Branding in Iran, Viewpoint of Potential Employees

As the competition in all areas of business gets tighter, a new realm of success has appeared, that is the ability to attract and keep the valuable human resources. Employer branding is the differentiation strategy of human resource management by applying marketing principles. The main application of employer branding is to attract external potential work talents and to maintain the current work talents. The employer brand thought has been considered for some years, but it seems that this concept in Iran, in both academic and managerial fields is still in its infancy and is not a familiar notion. The present study utilizes exploratory approach and aims to identify the attractive dimensions of employer and attractive sets of marketing activities related to employment, from the perspective of potential employees. To this end, sample data was gathered from 216 students of two prestigious Iranian universities. Based on the research results, five dimensions of employer attractiveness namely: innovativeness; self-achievement; giving back to society; happiness and economic achievement are postulated. Likewise, four categories of recruitment related communication categories are recognized namely: publicity; sponsorship; word of mouth and advertising. The findings also disclosed the perceptual differences in the importance degree among male and female respondents for both attractive employer dimensions and attractive communication categories. However according to our findings, field of study, was not a significant source of difference in respondents’ perception of attractiveness, neither in regard the employers dimensions nor in regard the communication categories. On the other hand, through lenses of person-organization fit theory, we expected that the prospective applicants associate with employer attractiveness dimensions based on their types of personality. The results further supported the hypothesized relationship between respondents’ personality types and their preferred attributes of employer. Overall, the outcomes of this study would assist the organizations to gain a noteworthy understanding as to how tactically cultivate and communicate their employer brand message as well as strategically tailor their employer brand message to their target characters. Keywords: Employer brand, human resource, potential employees, Iran