Attract talent with employer branding: from brand to applications

Employer branding attracts talent by shaping what people think of you before they apply.

Many companies treat recruitment as an advertising problem. A position opens, a job posting goes live and budget shifts to job boards.

Yet the right candidates don’t show up. Or the people who apply are mostly the ones who don’t fit.

The verdict: the problem rarely lies in the job posting. It lies in what people already think of you before they open that ad.

That’s your employer brand. Below: how it drives more and better applications, and how to measure it without vanity numbers.

What is an employer brand, really?

Your employer brand is the reputation you have, as an organization, with the people who could work there.

It answers one question every candidate asks: is this a place where I want to be?

It forms long before anyone applies

That answer forms long before an application. It comes from:

• what a friend says about working with you
• reviews on job sites
• how you communicate outwardly
• how your brand feels on your website and in your content

An old idea with a clear definition

The idea isn’t new. Simon Barrow and Tim Ambler defined the employer brand in 1996 as “the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment” (Wikipedia on employer branding).

That package is what an employer value proposition puts into words.

The job posting is only the visible tip

An employer brand is neither a job posting nor a recruitment campaign. Those are the visible tip.

The brand itself is the undercurrent: your values, how you talk about your work, the people who work there and what they pass along.

A job posting can start a conversation. But your brand decides whether the right people are inclined to respond at all.

Here’s the difference in one picture:

Why identical jobs attract different people

That explains why two companies with identical roles and similar salaries attract completely different applicants.

One brand stands for something and is recognizable. The other is a grey blur.

Talent, like customers, prefers a name it already knows and trusts.

Recruiters see it too

In LinkedIn’s Employer Branding Essentials guide, 80% of talent and HR managers agree a great employer brand makes it easier to recruit top talent (LinkedIn survey data, 2016).

Our explainer on employer branding covers the basics in more depth.

Why do brand and recruitment come from the same source?

Because a candidate looks at exactly what a customer looks at.

It’s tempting to see recruitment and marketing as separate worlds, each with its own budget and tone. That’s a mistake.

Candidates check the same signals as customers

A candidate weighing you looks at your website, your content, your tone and how you talk about your field.

If those signals don’t add up or stand for nothing, both the candidate and the customer walk away.

Build both from one core

So you don’t build your employer brand apart from your commercial brand. You build it from the same core.

The values, positioning and story that steer your brand are also the basis of your appeal as an employer.

A clear brand that knows what it stands for attracts people who recognize themselves in it.

A brand purpose that really shapes your choices is the engine of that: people want to contribute to something that matters. Our piece on company culture and brand shows how the two feed each other.

Every euro works twice

That unity has a practical advantage: every euro you put into your brand works in two directions.

• Customers: stronger brand preference
• Candidates: stronger appeal as an employer

Whoever separates recruitment and branding pays twice for the same foundation.

Building and guarding that foundation suits a branding agency that looks beyond a logo and visual identity. It’s about the whole story customers and candidates both see.

How do you turn an employer brand into concrete applications?

Through consistent work in a few places.

A strong brand is nice, but you want results: better people who apply. The bridge between the two is no secret.

1. Make your promise concrete

Candidates don’t believe vague lines, such as “great culture” or “plenty of growth opportunities”. Everyone writes that.

Tell them what’s different about you instead, with examples you can deliver on:

• How do you make decisions?
• What do you expect from people?
• What makes someone better off here?

Specific and honest beats pretty and empty. The employer branding strategy guide shows how to write that promise down.

2. Let your people speak

The most credible voice about working for you isn’t your management. It’s your team.

What colleagues say on LinkedIn, in conversations and in content weighs more than any campaign. A brand carried from within radiates outward on its own.

Don’t force it, but make sharing easy and worthwhile. Our guides to employee advocacy and employer branding on LinkedIn cover the how.

This is where many candidates look first, your company’s LinkedIn page:

3. Make sure your story holds up everywhere

A candidate who loves your content and then lands on a neglected careers page feels the break at once.

Your brand promise has to hold up at every step:

• your website and careers page
• the application process
• the first interview
• the first day of work

Every link that doesn’t rhyme with your story costs you the people you want most. Our piece on brand consistency across channels has a checklist.

4. Build preference before you need anyone

The best candidates are rarely actively looking, but they’re open to the right move.

The same LinkedIn guide cites Talent Trends 2016 data: 90% of LinkedIn members were open to new job opportunities.

They only move when the right place comes along. Then they choose the brand they already know and like.

So recruitment doesn’t start with an open position. It starts months earlier, with how visible and recognizable your brand is in your field.

How do you measure talent as a growth result, not as vanity?

By steering on hires, fit and retention, not on followers.

This is where employer branding often goes wrong. Teams steer on easy numbers, such as followers, likes and campaign reach.

But more followers don’t produce better colleagues. It’s exactly the kind of vanity metric we avoid in growth work.

Four signals that matter

Steer on these instead:

Our guide to measuring employer branding shows how to track each one.

Why retention weighs so heavily

Someone who leaves because reality didn’t match the promise is an expensive lesson.

Gallup estimates that replacing an employee can cost “from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary” (Gallup, 2019).

In the same piece, 52% of employees who left voluntarily said their manager or organization could have done something to prevent it.

Here are the three figures from this article side by side:

Attention versus attraction

Those signals tell you whether your brand really attracts talent or only attracts attention.

The difference is the same as between traffic and revenue: visibility is only worth something when it moves the right people.

Watch out: a viral recruitment post with zero fitting applicants is a cost, not a win.

Why should you start with your brand, not with the job posting?

Because attracting talent isn’t a standalone recruitment exercise you solve with more ad budget.

It’s the result of a brand that stands for something, holds up at every touchpoint and is known before a position opens.

Two returns from one investment

Invest in that brand and you work on two things at once:

• stronger customer preference
• a pool of people who really want to work for you

Where to start

For example, start with three steps: write down what makes working with you different, check your careers page against that promise, and ask your team what they’d tell a friend.

Need help with the campaigns too? Our recruitment marketing team turns the brand into reach. The cost of employer branding guide helps you budget.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between employer branding and recruitment marketing?

Employer branding is the reputation you build as an employer. Recruitment marketing promotes specific roles to the right people, using that reputation.

How long does employer branding take to work?

It builds over months, not weeks. Track applicant fit, time to hire and retention over several hiring rounds.

Does a small B2B company need an employer brand?

Yes. Every company has a reputation as an employer, whether it shapes it or not. Small teams feel a bad hire even harder.

Ready to attract talent with employer branding?

Build your employer brand from a brand that also works commercially, and steer on applications that strengthen your team.

Get in touch with us and we’ll show where your biggest lever sits.