What is employer branding? Questions and answers
Every company has a reputation as an employer. Always. The only question is who writes it: you, your employees, a review site, or an AI that picked something up somewhere.
Here are the questions we’ve been asked most often in more than 500 projects. And our answers.
What is employer branding?
Employer branding is the strategic development of a credible employer brand. A company clarifies what it stands for as an employer and makes that tangible, inside and out. The goal: to attract, keep and inspire the right people.
Employer branding is not a logo. Not a careers video. Not a fruit basket.
It’s identity work. Who are we? What do we put up with, what do we stand up for? And why would someone who could earn more elsewhere still stay with us?
Our definition at identifire: employer branding means finding the truth about a company as an employer and telling it so the right people come. And the wrong ones never apply.
What is an employer brand?
The employer brand is the picture people have in their heads of a company as a place to work. Employer branding is the work of shaping that picture deliberately.
So the brand exists before anyone “makes” it. It forms over dinner, when employees talk about their day. In job interviews. On the way out. Employer branding makes sure the story and the experience match.
What is the difference between employer branding and recruitment marketing?
Employer branding is the strategy: who are we as an employer? Recruitment marketing is the execution: how do we reach the people we’re looking for?
Recruitment marketing is the shop window. Employer branding is what happens inside the shop.
A beautiful window in front of an empty shop draws passers-by. Once. Without employer branding, recruitment marketing turns into an endless infomercial nobody believes.
What is an employer value proposition (EVP)?
The employer value proposition, or EVP, is the employer promise: the few clear reasons why someone wants to work for exactly this company. It is the heart of every employer brand.
A good EVP is true, distinctive and a little uncomfortable. True, because it has to hold up in everyday work. Distinctive, because “great team, flat hierarchies” is on every other careers page. And uncomfortable, because it also says who the company is not right for.
Who benefits from employer branding?
Every company that wants to find or keep people. So: everyone. Small and mid-sized companies benefit most, because they rarely beat big corporations on salary or fame, but they can win on clarity and character.
A mid-sized manufacturer in rural Austria isn’t competing with Google for attention. It’s competing for the twenty people who fit it perfectly. It has to find them. And they have to find it.
How does an employer branding process work?
An employer branding process has four phases: analysis, developing the EVP, bringing it to life in communication and everyday work, and measuring and fine-tuning. It usually takes a few months, depending on the size and pace of the company.
- Analysis: interviews, workshops, surveys. What do people really experience here?
- EVP: the material becomes a clear employer promise
- Implementation: careers page, job ads, recruiting, onboarding, leadership. Everywhere people experience the promise, or don’t
- Measuring: what works? What needs sharpening?
The most common mistake: starting with phase 3. Then the campaign is finished before anyone knows what it’s advertising.
How do you measure whether employer branding works?
With recruiting and retention figures: quality of applications, time to hire, turnover in the first year, employee referral rate and employer reviews.
The most honest metric is still a question: would your employees tell a good friend to come and work for you?
What does employer branding have to do with corporate culture?
Everything. The employer brand makes the promise, the corporate culture delivers. An employer brand that talks past the lived culture remains a facade.
That’s why at identifire we always work on both. More on this: Employer branding and corporate culture
How is AI changing employer branding?
Candidates no longer just ask Google, they also ask ChatGPT & Co.: “What’s it like to work at company X?” The AI’s answer is assembled from everything online about a company. So the employer brand now also takes shape in answers the company never gets to see.
Which means: clarity beats volume. Whoever says clearly what they stand for gets quoted clearly. Whoever stays vague gets made up by the AI.
How AI is changing culture inside companies is the subject of our white paper Angstfreude: AI and corporate culture.
Who is identifire?
identifire® is Austria’s first agency for employer branding and corporate culture. Founded in 2004, before the term employer branding even existed in Austria. Since then: more than 500 projects.
Plus the Corporate Culture Club, an open exchange for everyone working on culture and identification. And learning journeys for executives to Kenya and Rwanda.
Want to know how your employer brand sounds today? Let’s talk.