Employer Branding: Why It Matters and How To Do It Right (With Examples)

Talent acquisition (TA) is like a game of matchmaking. You promote your organization to build a pipeline of qualified candidates, looking for people who will be the right fit for your organization.

Meanwhile, each candidate you encounter is doing the same. They’re looking for companies that will help them reach their goals. Your goal? Get the best ones to pick you.

That’s where employer branding comes in. You can never fully control what someone thinks about your company, but you can control the attitude, values, and personality you present.

Understanding employer branding

Your employer brand is different from your organizational brand. Your organizational brand is the persona your company shows customers so they can feel a personal connection before buying. Think of Nike’s direct and unflinching “Just do it” or Hallmark’s warm, family-friendly attitude. 

Your employer brand is the company personality your employees and candidates experience. Since it’s the same organization, it usually shares some intangible aspects with the consumer brand, but the building blocks differ.

The components of your employer brand are:

• Company culture: In Gallup’s words, “how we do things around here.” People who feel connected to their company’s culture are 5.8 times as likely to recommend their organization to job candidates. 
• Employer reputation:  What others say publicly about your company as a workplace. According to Glassdoor data, 86% of job seekers research employer reviews and ratings when deciding where to apply.
• Candidate communications: Your careers page, job postings, and interactions with job seekers. Keeping up with talent acquisition trends is essential to keeping this part of your employer brand up-to-date. No one wants to be the last employer who is still scheduling interviews with clunky email threads!
• Employee value proposition (EVP): The perceived benefits of working for your organization. A strong EVP develops from your organizational values and highlights what distinguishes you as an employer.
• Employee and candidate experiences: The quality of your interactions with current and potential employees. Just like with people, positive interactions with a company make people want to develop that relationship.

The importance of employer branding

With so much happening in talent operations, it’s easy to let the chips fall where they may. But more people will want to work for you if you’re a great employer. And to understand how to build that reputation — and, more importantly, deliver on it — you need an active branding strategy.

Attracting top talent

There’s a lot of buzz among candidates about how challenging the job-seeking process is, but the truth is that it’s still a candidate’s market. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there are still more job openings than candidates, and the most talented candidates will always have plenty of options.

An employer branding strategy is the first step to attracting top candidates for both open positions and ongoing talent acquisition. It ensures you send the right message about your offerings and why people want to work for you.

Reducing turnover

Retaining top talent was the biggest TA challenge of 2023, with 34% of surveyed hiring managers naming it as their biggest concern. Every departure means the TA team must go through all eight hiring process steps, with all the time commitment and expenses they entail. 

Employer branding helps keep those top people by reminding them why they love working for you. It reinforces the culture your employees signed on to join and shows you “walk the talk.”

Employees notice when you haven’t delivered on your value proposition. They’ll leave if they think they’ll be a better fit elsewhere. But with a strong employer brand that informs all things HR, you remind them daily that you’re the best fit for their needs.

Strengthening company culture

Employ Inc.’s 2022 Job Seeker Nation Report ranked company values and culture among the top five reasons people accept a job. If it doesn’t work out, it’s a big problem. Over a third of employees who’d left a job in 90 days blamed the culture as “not as expected.”

Purposeful branding can prevent this disconnect and preserve the culture that brings people together. Stephen Houraghan of Brand Master Academy explains the connection in a 2023 YouTube video:

If there is a sense of camaraderie and a positive company culture that permeates through every single touch point of the brand because the people who are working there want to work there, and that shows up in their work. It shows up in their productivity and it shows up in their overall attitude that leaks out into the market and influences the perception of the overall brand.

A strong employer brand sets an example of the culture you want to achieve. It lets that culture shine through at every employee touchpoint. Those experiences reinforce a sense of belonging and turn employees into eager ambassadors for your organization and its TA goals.

Steps to build an effective employer brand

Until now, we’ve mostly talked about employer branding in the abstract: why it’s important and what it does for a company. Let’s move on to how you can understand and strengthen your unique employer brand.

Conduct an employer brand audit

Your first step to building a strong employer brand is to audit the one you already have. Whether or not you’ve taken steps to build it consciously, you have an employer brand and need to understand it before moving forward.

Auditing your employer brand means thoroughly reviewing your talent communication channels, from your social media presence to your recruitment funnel. Your goal is to understand how you communicate with potential talent and their experience engaging with you.

According to Geva Whyte, a recruiting coordinator with experience at Lyft and OpenAI:

A common blind spot when it comes to building a talent acquisition strategy is investing in the candidate experience and making that a part of your brand. One of the simplest things an organization can do to build up their recruiting brand is emphasizing communication — style, tone, consistency, and frequency. 

Examine all communication assets, including job postings, online recruitment messaging, and candidate email templates. Wherever possible, compare your messaging to those of your competitors. Consider differences in content, style, and approach,  looking for opportunities to set yourself apart.

Read what others say about you. Visit employer review sites like Glassdoor and look for trends in employee feedback. How most people describe you is a clear indicator of your current brand.

Remember to look at your internal communications, too. Ask yourself if your employee messaging matches the brand you show to candidates. It should have a similar energy and reflect your target values.

Define your employee value proposition

Your employee value proposition (EVP) is the core of your employer brand. When you relate to employees in a certain way or use a specific type of messaging, you tell them how you operate and what you stand for. The more intentional you are about your EVP, the clearer those messages will be.

As with brand development, defining your EVP starts with looking at your team’s current perception of the company. This process might involve formal surveys, informal discussions, and another look at what people say online. Look for expressions of why employees choose to work for your organization.

Think about whether those expressions match the value you want to offer. Do you want to emphasize and capitalize on your existing value to employees? You might want to add, take away, or change something.

As you work through this process, develop ways to communicate your newly defined EVP.  It should be evident in your recruitment materials, job market outreach, and anywhere else you present yourself as a potential employer.

Leverage employee testimonials and social proof

Communicating the value you offer is essential, but we live in a skeptical world. People tend not to take a company at its word alone, whether they’re making a purchase or looking for a job.

Social proof shows that you truly offer the value you promise. Candidates feel that they’re hearing “the real story” of what it’s like to work there, and those genuine stories strengthen your employer brand.

Employee testimonials also show that you value your team.

“It makes them feel that they’re part of something bigger than themselves,” Houraghan explains in his recent video. “It shows the rest of the market that there’s achievement going on within this business and within this brand, and there are good people working there.”

Start collecting testimonials by harvesting your best reviews from Glassdoor and other sites. You can also encourage engaged employees to submit written or video testimonials.

Implement onboarding and development programs

As you’ve learned, consistency is key to a strong employer brand. Your candidates should see the same values and brand personality as your employees, and onboarding is where you pass that test.

During onboarding, your new hires discover what working for your company is like. It’s essential to provide a positive experience that aligns with the employer branding new hires saw during recruitment. If you do this well, your onboarding process can help your employees feel more committed to the organization.

But don’t stop there. It’s important to keep providing that EVP you promised, which means offering employee engagement and development opportunities. Professional development is a popular value point for today’s employees, yet only 44% believe enough opportunities exist. Providing those options strengthens your EVP and employer brand.

High-quality employer branding examples

If employer branding still seems vague to you, stick with us. We’ve got concrete examples from three star-quality brands to inspire you.

Brother USA

One look at the Brother printer company’s career site, and it’s clear they’ve thought about employer branding. Brother’s corporate motto is “Brother at your side,” and the company incorporates that philosophy into its recruitment, starting with the above-the-fold content on its careers page:

Brother has several informative sub-pages on the career side of its site, one of which is a dedicated culture page. Notice the consistency of the aesthetic branding and the intentional EVP:

Across the board, Brother emphasizes its “at your side” philosophy and clearly communicates how that manifests for employees.

Eventbrite

It’s no wonder that a company dedicated to bringing people together is a rockstar at employer branding. Eventbrite nails the aesthetic consistency piece and clearly communicates its EVP:

You’ll find the same aesthetic in even more detail on the company’s benefits page, which details all the ways Eventbrite recognizes each team member’s unique contributions:

The rest of the page covers health and wellness benefits, financial incentives, and career development. As the banner image suggests, the page is fun and people-centric. 

Go to Eventbrite’s HQ blog or LinkedIn page, and you’ll see the same celebratory atmosphere and appreciation of staff members — or “Britelings,” as the company calls them:

Even the company’s job postings have the same color scheme and vibrant language, which matches its consumer and employer brand.

Microsoft

Microsoft is another company with an engaging EVP and a strong employer brand. It welcomes job seekers with a fleshed-out career site, including detailed information on available jobs, career tracks, and company culture. But where Microsoft really stands out is its “Hiring Tips” page, where applicants learn how to shine:

This valuable page even leads candidates through what to expect during the hiring process:

Candidates get the message that Microsoft is on their side and invested in their success. Those who dive deeper will find evidence of a diverse and welcoming culture that helps people do their best work:

If we didn’t already have jobs we love, we’d apply immediately.

Create your employer brand and make a great impression

Candidates for currently open positions and your longer-term TA pipeline start forming an impression of you when they see your job ads or company’s posts on LinkedIn. A strong employer brand is the best way to make a good impression.

Developing an employer brand can seem daunting, but it’s all about clarity. Show what you offer and stand behind it with the following: 

• Clear communications
• Employee value
• A sense of who you are as a company

Human-centered artificial intelligence can help. GoodTime’s AI-driven candidate engagement and experience platform smooths the talent acquisition’s rough patches so you can build genuine connections and deliver a best-in-class candidate journey.

Integrate thoughtful AI today and see how human your hiring process can be.