Tech Industry Ranks High in Career Branding

Tech companies are the most successful among the Fortune 500 companies to find and recruit top employees, according to a report from WilsonHCG, a global recruitment firm. Out of the Fortune 500 companies ranked for WilsonHCG’s Top 100 Employment Brands, 13 were in the tech industry, including computers and office equipment, computer software, and information technology services. Google ranked in the top spot, followed by GE and Qualcomm in positions two and three.

“It came as no surprise to us why tech ranked the best,” says Kim Pope, vice president of Recruitment Solutions for WilsonHCG. “We knew going into this that it was likely to happen. … [Tech does its] best around being very transparent about what the development opportunities or future opportunities are for the candidate.”

In addition to opportunities for career growth, tech companies tend to provide an environment where employees can work on creative projects and grow their skills by working with talented colleagues and managers. These kinds of opportunities are important to brand and to be transparent about, Pope points about, because tech employees are not as motivated by compensation as other professionals in different industries. Instead, they focus on growth opportunities and where they might take their career.

Companies included on WilsonHCG’s list were ranked on six different categories that served to provide a picture of the company’s personality and its culture and values. These categories included candidate experience, job boards, corporate social responsibility, career pages, recruitment marketing and accolades, with each category given a set number of points, allowing companies to reach a total score of 100 for all six. Google scored the highest with 69 points, followed by GE at 64 and Qualcomm at 63.

Google received the maximum points in the career pages category, which is based on, among other factors, how updated a company’s career page is and whether job postings are recent. It also received the top spot in the accolades category, which ranked companies for their placement on five recognition lists, including Glassdoor’s Top 25 Companies for Career Opportunities and Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. Google scored 21 out of 25 points in that category, the top score.

While Google has been successful at developing its brand both internally and externally, Intel, ranked 23, has been particularly transparent in branding itself as a company that offers flex-work options: telecommuting, job-sharing, and both part-time and full-time work opportunities, says Pope.

Overall, the tech industry performed well in four of the six categories, including career pages, candidate experiences, corporate social responsibility and accolades. In fact, in addition to being successful in these categories, tech companies are also more likely to have the capital funding and resources to identify the best job candidates from among a limited pool, the report points out.

Tech companies did not perform as strongly, however, on recruitment marketing and job boards, the latter of which looks at posts made on popular job boards, such as CareerBuilder and Monster, as well as niche sites.

The paper reports that 83 percent of job seekers are wary about working for a company with a negative reputation, based on information from a Glassdoor survey. While all job seekers are generally turned off by poor company reviews, lengthy job application procedures and poor candidate experiences, this may even more true of job seekers in the tech industry, who are generally recruited through referrals, according to Pope.

“Tech talent gets double the contact from recruiters as any other industry,” she says, explaining that tech candidates who have a negative view of a company will not return a recruiter’s phone call.