I think we sometimes fall into the trap of confusing employer branding with sourcing strategy. While both are clearly an integrated part of the recruiting process, they are not the same thing. Why do some people talk about them as if they were?

We also fall into the trap of confusing online volume [as in traffic] with intrinsic value [as in candidate flow]. We shouldn’t discount the problems associated with increasing volume at the expense of value any more than we should discount that the path of least resistance – the Internet – can also be the longest row to hoe.

I know, John, you said, “In most recruiting operations, more names in the database means less quality ,” but I would like to suggest that is not the issue at all. Our inability to identify the best qualified candidates from within our databases is the issue. Somewhere between inadequate or outdated system design [information management, bandwidth, search capability, UI, storage, and so on], and inept operatives, we fail to treat the cause because we are too busy managing the effect. If those issues were taken care of it would matter no more that I had orphans and bastards in my database than it does to have billions of “irrelevant” pages indexed on Google’s servers when I might be trying to locate a single online resume. A search for reliability engineers rarely, if ever, produces a recipe for Auntie Mary’s upside-down pineapple cheese cake.

Last, you say:

“Some people are lucky. If you have a brand like IBM, Coke, Nike or a hundred or so others, traffic is easy. Based on name recognition alone, many well known companies fill their databases with a hundred thousand new candidates a month. If you are not fortunate enough to be a celebrity, the work is a bit harder.

I guess there are more unlucky people than there are lucky ones. Hank Stringer and Rusty Rueff observed in their book “Talent Force” the negative affects of what they described as the “arrogance of supply.” As I recall the tradeoff for more candidates than you can process is a compromised candidate experience, mediocre standards of recruiting and everything that goes with running around in circles.

While I am sure IBM, Coke, and Nike are exemplars of recruiting best-practice, it has to be said celebrity is not always the easiest thing to a assign to a candidate who has applied-and-died. Unless, of course you are one of the lucky ones who have celebrity conferred upon them by virtue of being the one-in-a-million who makes it through the mill. For sure, “If you are not fortunate enough to be a celebrity, the work is a bit harder.”

John,

Big time disagree with the core of the argueement – Employer Branding and “Traffic” have little to with one another.

The Employer Brand is about the “DNA” of a company – what makes it “tick”, how it is perceived both internally and externally and is one going.
The out put of a “good employer brand” should be to both attract and repel in equal measure.
If the culture of an organisation, as defined by the brand is truely reflected in the Employee Value Proposaition and then inturn is reflected in all the marketing communcations, in theory the following should happen 1) The wrong candidates are put off applying and 2) more of the “right candidates” self select and apply.
Now as a big fan of Thomas Moore’s Utopia, I recgnise there is some BS in this argument and off course you will “never” stop the “wrong candidates applying or have enough of the “right candidates”, that is when you turn the candidate tap on and let the “water flow”, but then in to the holding tank and screen em in and out…. and in doing so “try” to deliver a candidate experience that eqauls the pre “socila media led relationship you might have built…hm serious big challenge as Felxix points out given the way many Careers Sites are built and also equals both the product and employer brand expectations you might have created amongst your “target audience”
Any way my bit.