What Is Employer Branding?

Tim Ambler and Simon Barrow published the article "The employer brand" in the Journal of Brand Management in December 1996. According to the abstract, their exploratory research indicates that marketing can be applied to the employment relationship. They propose bringing HR and marketing, two functionally separate roles, closer together and measuring both with comparable yardsticks such as trust and commitment. The authors themselves note that larger-scale research would be needed to substantiate the mutual benefits.

Kristin Backhaus and Surinder Tikoo defined it in 2004 as a firm's efforts to promote, both within and outside the firm, a clear view of what makes it different and desirable as an employer. The key phrase is "within and outside". The employer brand is not only what a candidate sees in a job advert. It is also what the people who already work there experience, and what they tell others.

Two related ideas are worth keeping apart. The branding of the company or its products is aimed at customers: why buy? The employer brand is aimed at candidates and employees: why work here? Both share a name, a logo and values, and when they contradict each other, people notice. Personal branding is about one individual's brand, such as a managing director who posts on LinkedIn. It can help the employer brand, but it leaves with the person if they change jobs.

At the centre of employer branding is the employee value proposition (EVP): what the company offers in return for the work. It is the candidate-facing version of the value proposition made to customers. Like that one, it has to say who it is for, what they get and compared with which alternative, in this case other employers. "A great place to work" is not an EVP. "Fixed hours from 8 am to 3 pm and two days of remote work a week for the whole customer service team" is one, because a candidate can check it.

The work starts on the inside. Before a single sentence goes out, the company needs to know what current employees value, why they stay and why they leave. The sources are exit interviews, internal surveys and conversations with teams. The EVP comes out of that, built on what the company really offers rather than what it would like to offer.

Then come the channels. The careers page is the company's own channel: openings, teams, the hiring process, named testimonials. Job adverts on job boards carry the EVP to each role. Employer review sites show what current and former employees say, and there the company can only reply, not write. Social networks, LinkedIn above all, show the people on the team.

In search, Google has its own job search experience, available in the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany among other countries. A company that marks up its job postings with JobPosting structured data can appear in it, with its logo, reviews, ratings and job details, according to Google's documentation. Jobs that are no longer open for applications must be expired, for example with a validThrough date in the past; failing to act on expired jobs may result in a manual action.

Measurement combines hiring data and search data. On the hiring side: how many applications each opening receives, what share meet the requirements, how long a role takes to fill, how many offers are accepted and how many people leave in their first year. On the search side: how many people search for the company name together with "jobs", "careers" or "reviews". Those queries show up in the performance report in Google Search Console, and clicks on the careers page show whether searchers get there.

The underlying mistake is to treat employer branding as a campaign. A polished video, a slogan and a new careers page do not change what employees already say on review sites, nor what a candidate goes through in the hiring process. If the campaign promises something the job does not offer, the candidate finds out at the interview, in the first month or by reading reviews, and the promise turns against the company.

Google itself writes this into its job posting content policies: it does not allow jobs or content that represent the employer in a way that is not accurate, realistic or truthful. The rule applies to structured data, but it states the principle well. The employer brand follows working conditions, not the other way round.

That is why employer branding is the work of HR and marketing together, as Ambler and Barrow proposed. Marketing knows how to tell the story and measure it; HR knows what the company really offers and can change it. When the two work apart, the messaging promises something the company does not deliver.

For brand positioning there is a practical consequence. A company that wants a clear place as an employer has to decide what it promises first, and to whom, just as it does with customers. An EVP that promises everything to everyone cannot be told apart from any other employer's.

• Start with current employees: what they value, why they stay and why they leave.
• Write the EVP with promises a candidate can check.
• Show real people on the careers page, with names and roles.
• Reply on employer review sites, including to criticism.
• Mark up openings with JobPosting and remove them as soon as they are filled.

• Treating employer branding as a one-off communications campaign.
• Promising conditions in the advert that the job does not have.
• Copying other employers' slogans instead of saying what your own company offers.
• Ignoring what current and former employees say on review sites.
• Measuring only reach and followers, without looking at applications, hires and departures.