Employer Branding towards black student : The case of Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract: The purpose of this field study is to gain an increased knowledge and understanding regarding how Western Cape-based companies work with Employer Branding towards black students by describing, analyzing and concluding the included processes. To reach this purpose a qualitative method was used by interviewing three different representatives from Western Cape companies and one consultant agency working with the concept of employer branding as well as focus group discussions with students from universities in Western Cape. The theoretical framework involves an own-designed model including the different concepts relevant for our study: Talent Management, Diversity Management and Employer Branding in which the latter has been given the most focus. The empirical data includes how the participants perceive the Employer Branding work towards students in a Western Cape context: the black talent challenge. The analysis chapter follows the structure of the theory chapter and the empirical data is compared and analyzed from to the different concepts in the theoretical framework. The analysis demonstrates that companies in Western Cape tend to overestimate their Employer Branding efforts in terms of resources and variety. Our findings show that the black students in our study felt dissatisfaction with the Employer Branding efforts from Western Cape companies. The analysis show clear patterns that Employer Branding in the Western Cape area have a strong ethnicity diversity focus and especially around fulfilling legal requirements. The collaboration between companies and universities in Western Cape could improve drastically according to our empirical findings. Finally this thesis provides a few recommendations for further research as well as for the Western Cape companies.