Credible employer branding

Employer branding budgets are frequently spent on material candidates do not believe, describing an experience employees do not recognise.

The credibility problem

Every careers page claims the same things: a great team, exciting challenges, flat hierarchies, development opportunities.

Candidates discount all of it and check elsewhere: review platforms, current employees' professional profiles, and personal contacts. What they find there is the actual employer brand.

What actually differentiates

Published pay is the single strongest signal. Candidates increasingly filter out advertisements without it, and in some jurisdictions it is becoming a legal requirement.

The last row is what most budgets are spent on.

Say the difficult parts

An honest description of what is hard about the job attracts better-matched candidates and repels the ones who would leave in three months.

Examples that work: shift patterns stated plainly, travel requirements quantified, the fact that the first six months are demanding, the constraints of the sector.

Candidates who apply after reading that are informed, and informed candidates stay.

The promise must survive contact

The most damaging form of employer branding is accurate-sounding and false. A candidate recruited on a description of flexibility, development or culture that does not exist leaves within a year and writes about it.

That produces a worse position than no employer branding at all: the recruitment cost, the departure, and a public account of the discrepancy.

What to publish

1. Pay ranges, actual ones.
2. The working pattern, in detail: hours, flexibility, location, travel.
3. The team, real photographs, real names, what they do.
4. A day in the role, written by someone doing it.
5. The recruitment process, with stages and timescales.
6. What development actually means here, with examples rather than promises.

Point five is small and highly effective. Candidates dislike opaque processes, and stating them plainly reduces drop-out.

Handling review platforms

Respond to reviews, including critical ones, factually and without defensiveness. Prospective candidates read the responses more carefully than the reviews.

Never incentivise positive reviews or pressure employees to write them. It is transparent and it undermines everything else.

The internal prerequisite

Employer branding communicates what the employment experience is. If that experience is poor, communication cannot fix it and will make the gap visible.

The honest sequence is to improve the experience, then describe it.