The Impact of Online Brand Impersonation on the Hiring Process

Online brand impersonation undermines a company’s reputation in the market. Studies show that as customers are targeted by phishing and brand impersonation attacks, they are more likely to blame the brand for failing to protect their data than the fraudster for stealing it. Beyond stolen data, potential data breaches, or account takeover attacks, a damaged reputation makes many other aspects of running a business more difficult.

In part one of our blog series, we reviewed how brand impersonation damages a company financially. In part two, we explored how brand impersonation makes customer acquisition more difficult and expensive. For our final entry, let’s look at how brand impersonation damages the hiring process and employee experience.

What Makes for an Effective Hiring Process

Like other areas of the business, the hiring process is a competition. The hiring team must secure the best applicants in the talent pool before a competitor does it first. Companies are composed of individual people, and if you can recruit the best professionals in the field, the company stands a better chance of competing and growing.

Compensation, benefits packages, and opportunities for advancement are table stakes in the job market, so many companies focus on developing the best, most efficient hiring process. Responsiveness, follow-ups, and moving a candidate through interviews to the offer stage faster than your competitors provides a significant edge. In this way, the hiring process is like a first impression. If you can present an orderly, efficient hiring experience, it speaks to the quality of the rest of the operation.

However, a negative reputation as a result of online brand impersonation makes this whole process more difficult and more expensive.

Impact on the Hiring Experience

Prospective employees often research a company before applying or accepting any job offers. Negative news about your organization can dissuade the applicant from even applying in the first place. Here are the ways in which online brand impersonation creates greater challenges and higher costs in the hiring process:

• Reputation is a Deal Breaker: Reputation is often a deciding factor when considering new career opportunities. 82% of job seekers consider reputation to be a critical factor in their decision to apply. More importantly, 50% of candidates wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation, even for a pay increase.
• PR Campaign to Repair Reputation Becomes Necessary: In response to negative news, organizations turn to their press relations department. PR must then launch an expensive and time-consuming campaign to change hearts and minds. Due to negativity bias, people are more inclined to focus on and remember negative news over positive stories. The rule of thumb, as a result, is that it takes three to ten positive stories to counteract a negative one.
• Cost per Hire is Significantly Higher: When applicants are dissuaded from applying or accepting job offers due to a negative reputation, your average cost-per-hire as well as time-to-hire increases. This means more effort, time, and resources will be necessary to fill open positions.
• Increased HR Workloads: The HR team will have to work harder to respond to the concerns of potential candidates and current employees following brand impersonation attacks.
  
  

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NEXT

Like sales, hiring is a critical function of a business that keeps the operation moving forward. If you can’t fill open positions, you can’t service the clients you have or acquire new ones. For that reason, it is essential that organizations protect their brand online and thwart would-be fraudsters.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of the costs and consequences related to online brand impersonation attacks. Download our white paper, “The Damaging Effects of Online Impersonation on Your Brand’s Integrity.”