Employer Branding Is Not Helping Recruiters
Your employer brand exists regardless of how you choose to market it (or not to). But the practice of employer branding is failing to produce results for the recruiters who are competing for high-demand talent.
60-second read
[Head’s of Talent and recruiters at high-growth companies, this one’s for you.]
Employer branding is not helping recruiters start more conversations with the right people. It's missing the mark.
It's why recruiters are still spending all of their time in LinkedIn Recruiter and sourcing referrals from high-value team members. It’s their best shot at a conversation with a qualified candidate.
Your employer brand exists regardless of how you choose to market it (or not to). But the practice of employer branding is failing to produce results for the recruiters who are competing for high-demand talent.
And the lack of results stems from one overarching theme: Not creating anything that candidates care about due to the fear of executing quickly. Aka the fear of failing.
The status quo feels safe—even if it’s ineffective.
But in order for employer branding to have an impact on recruiting, those leading it have to be obsessed with two things:
1. Making their recruiter's lives easier by influencing qualified pipeline.
This means holding themselves accountable to new hires as their top-line metric and mapping all of their work to this goal.
2. Deeply understanding their market's behavior.
How does high-demand talent buy a new opportunity from first touch attribution to close? It’s their job to always be on top of this and create the assets and experience that enable the most frictionless buying process possible.
Employer branding today is micro-content at scale—effectively distributed where your candidate audience can easily consume it.
This means:
Designing a content-driven outbound model.
Designing assets for recruiters and hiring managers that guide the CX—including job ads, FAQs, and one-pagers.
Acting as an internal production team that turns SMEs at your company into thought leaders at scale.
Knowing how to create content in audio, video, and written format.
Knowing paid and organic social so you can get content in front of the right people.
Employer branding is not culture posts and whacky team pictures. It’s not EVPs. It’s not your careers site (unless you’re turning it into a content hub for all the stuff you’re pumping out). It’s not employee spotlights. It’s not evergreen culture content.
It’s not, because candidates don’t care about that stuff.
Maybe it was at some point. But it’s not anymore.
Recruiters are your employer brand champions when positioned correctly. They can be your most effective distribution channel. And they can make you look like a hero.
Recruiter enablement is the new model.