A good specialist in Dushanbe chooses a job much as a shopper chooses an expensive purchase: they compare, ask friends and read what people write in professional chats. The decision on whether to apply for a vacancy is often made before the recruiter’s first call. The sum of these impressions is what we call the employer brand: how a company is perceived as the place where people spend most of their day.
The phrase “young, friendly team” in a job ad has almost nothing to do with this brand. It is shaped by people’s real stories, the company’s public behaviour and the rumours that circulate in the job market. In a small country where professionals in the same field know each other personally, these stories spread especially fast.
Why the issue has become pressing
Demand for strong IT specialists, marketers, finance professionals and engineers in the country is outstripping supply. A capable candidate usually receives several offers at once and can take their pick. In this situation, salary is only one argument. People weigh up whether the prospects are clear, whether employees are respected, and whether they’ll have to explain to friends why they went to work there.
When an employer’s reputation is strong, some candidates come without headhunters or cold emails, and people who leave are less likely to speak badly of the company. A weak reputation works the other way: vacancies stay open for months, and new hires leave before their probation period is over.
The three pillars of an employer brand
It helps to think of the employer brand as a structure of three elements, each supporting the others.
- Word of mouth. What current and former employees, partners and candidates say about you after an interview. You can’t control it directly, but its influence is the strongest.
- The promise. A clear answer to why someone should choose you specifically: development, training, flexibility, interesting work, transparent promotion rules. This is often called the EVP, or employee value proposition.
- Everyday experience. What a person actually lives through inside the company: onboarding, the relationship with their manager, workload, recognition, how people leave. This experience is what later gives rise to the stories.
Problems start when the pillars drift apart. If a job ad promises flexible hours but in reality people are expected to stay until late at night, the gap quickly becomes known, and trust in the company falls further than if it had promised nothing at all.
Employee reviews as a public shop window
Before accepting an offer, a candidate almost always does some research. They scroll through the company’s social media, message acquaintances and look for discussions in professional communities. Former colleagues’ opinions carry as much weight for them as customer reviews do for someone choosing a product. If irritation and resentment dominate, good terms in the offer may not be enough to tip the balance.
The approach is the same as with customer reputation: you can’t stop people speaking out, but you can monitor mentions regularly, respond to the point and fix what people complain about. We cover this work in detail in our piece on managing online reputation, reviews and ratings. Almost everything there carries over to employer reputation.
An action plan for the first months
Step one: diagnosis
Start with an as-is picture. Survey the team anonymously, talk to those who are leaving and find out what keeps the people who have been with you longest. This data is far more valuable than management’s assumptions about what the team cares about.
Step two: articulating the promise
Describe what an employee actually gets, without fine-sounding abstractions. What is the logic behind pay rises? Is there a budget for courses? Do newcomers take part in high-profile projects? Can people work from home? The answers to these questions will form the basis of your vacancies, the careers page on your website and your social media posts.
Step three: an alliance of HR and marketing
HR alone rarely manages a task like this. Marketing knows how to craft messages, create visuals and get content to the right audience, all of which helps when telling people about the company as an employer. We set out the basic principles for building this work in our article on branding and its benefits for business in Tajikistan.
Step four: real stories instead of slogans
A slogan on the office wall is less convincing than a specific person’s story. Show a day in the life of an engineer or manager in a short video, describe how someone grew from intern to manager, and give employees the chance to talk about their work on social media themselves. This builds trust faster than an “About us” page.
How it’s done abroad
In mature markets, employer branding has long ceased to be a concern only for multinationals. In a Harvard Business Review article on how to make your employer brand stand out in the competition for talent, the authors stress that the winners are those who work on reputation, the promise and real conditions inside the company at the same time, rather than settling for attractive job ad copy. The logic is the same for the Tajik market; only the scale differs.
In conclusion
An employer brand takes years to build and can’t be reduced to a one-off campaign on the eve of a big hiring drive. Its foundation is an honest promise and the everyday experience of people who later tell their friends about you. If you want to hire faster and lose staff less often, start simple: find out what people say about you now and remove the gaps between your job ads and reality. That will cost less than searching for people for the same positions again and again.
If you need help positioning your company as an employer, with communication strategy and social media content, take a look at SKY Central Asia’s section on content and PR.
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