How Globant, Latin America's IT Giant with $1.2 Billion in Revenue, Built Its Employer Brand

Companies have a “second” brand related to how they are viewed as an employer. This is known as the employer brand (EB), which is summarized as the employer’s reputation of what kind of place it is to work for the former, current and future employees.

The main objectives of a strong employer brand are to increase job applicants in quality and quantity, boost their conversion rates and decrease the turnover rate of valuable employees. In other words, a good EB allows organizations to have the best talent working or wanting to work for them.

Globant, a Latin American software and IT  giant with a presence in 21 countries that aims to help organizations reinvent themselves and unleash their potential, has one of the most powerful corporate brands in the world. But they’ve also built an employer reputation that has allowed them to grow exponentially, from 3,000 employees in 2012 to more than 25,900 in 2022.

According to Great Place To Work, “88% of employees at Globant say it is a great place to work compared to 57% of employees at a typical U.S.-based company.”

The Org spoke with Alejandro Gamen, Employer Branding Manager at Globant, to understand how the company created a path towards becoming an excellent employer.

It’s all about the culture

“Since Globant’s beginnings in 2003, the company has been really intentional with its culture,” said Gamen, who has been at the company for 15 years.

Gamen defines culture as “all the consistent shared values and habits within a company that a new employee detects, absorbs, and incorporates in their work.” Culture has been one of the main factors of Globant’s success, especially when recruiting and retaining the best talent.

At Globant, the Employer Brand department is relatively new.

It was formally created in 2011 and was initially focused on community events and recruiting marketing. The pandemic renewed the department’s mandate to grow and be more intentional with the brand’s capacity to be a catalyst for new talent and productivity.

But Globant has always been indirectly building its employer reputation with a simple action: delivering value to its employees, or “Globers” as they are called.

“The employer brand is a consequence of the organization’s culture,” said Gamen. “Since I started working for Globant in the late 2000s, our mission as a company to our Globers has always been to provide the experience we promised them as candidates. If the person is comfortable and excited as a candidate, they should feel the same way as an employee.”

Patricia Pomies, Chief Operating Officer at Globant commented: “We are committed to ensuring that our Globers continue to find themselves in a company where they can grow personally and professionally, and where they feel supported, included, heard and challenged every day.”

An organic path

Globant’s first deliberate employer branding activity  was sponsoring events and communities in which the same Globers were creating or participating. Communities like Design Center, an initiative that seeks to provide training to design students with real projects, or events such as the Global Game Jam, a unique free event held worldwide among game creators.

“We like supporting events and communities that we find relevant to our core as a company. We’ve been doing it since the first days. All these actions have helped us build brand awareness, to connect better with our clients and Globers, and of course, to attract the best possible talent,” said Gamen.

Today, Globant is an important host and supporter for thousands of events around tech, innovation, sustainability and diversity worldwide.

Finding the employer value proposition

With the relaunch of the Employer Brand department in 2020, the first step towards building a more planned EB was the construction of Globant’s employee value proposition (EVP).

The EVP is the benefits employees value from their roles and organizations, such as career development opportunities, educational support, stock options plan, good work/life balance and work environment.

It took Gamen and his team several months to distill what Globers consider relevant from Globant as an employer. “The challenge with this type of exercise is to highlight the insights that make an organization different and relevant but are currently hidden in the sentiments and the minds of the people,” said Gamen.

They came up with seven EVP pillars. Gamen shared three core ones with The Org: “I Feel Free to Be and Do,” “I see opportunities all around,” and “I’m a Global Citizen.”

Creating the system

The EVP is the core of the employer brand, but it’s just the starting point.

“The team responsible for the EB has to create the strategy, the messages, the channels and the aesthetics. This brand should differentiate itself from the corporate brand because it has different objectives and audiences,” said Gamen.

Gamen and his team work closely with the communications department to produce and refine the message based on the EVP. They also collaborate with the People department to ensure everyone internally receives the message.

They have searched for and selected brand ambassadors to be another voice of Globant to the world. “Recruiters are not the only ones who recruit; indirectly, everyone at Globant is a recruiter,” said Gamen. Brand messages developed and delivered by employees have a conversion rate that is seven times higher than corporate channels.

“This is not a one-time effort. Like any brand, the EB evolves, and so does its audience,” said Gamen.

In terms of EB perception, Globant uses StarMeUp, an internal social network created as a “culture-creation” tool to engage with Globers and to run surveys to measure “mood” and other specific behaviors. For external audiences, they are constantly checking external ranking websites like Glassdoor, Google Reviews and Comparably.

“An employer brand is the feeling that a person has in their head on a Sunday afternoon towards having to wake up the next day to go to work. If they’re happy and excited, you’re doing things right,” concludes Gamen.