Employer Branding
Employer branding is not a well-designed careers page. It's why the best candidate in the industry chooses you over the competitor offering a slightly higher salary.
“The best candidates don't read your careers page. They read what whoever left wrote, on a platform you don't control.”
Otto GTM ObservatoryWhy the most credible source isn't yours
The most qualified candidates, especially for highly sought-after senior commercial and technical roles, evaluate the company through sources you don't directly control: former employee reviews on specialized platforms, informal conversations with acquaintances who worked there, reputation spread across the industry.
Investing in employer branding therefore means less writing an appealing careers page and more actively managing the real employee experience, especially at the moment of departure, which is when the most lasting and most publicly shared opinions form.
Anti-patterns
Common mistake: investing significant budget in careers page communication and social recruiting, ignoring the real offboarding experience of departing employees, the moment when the most influential reviews form.
Second mistake: assuming a strong employer brand can fully compensate for a non-competitive compensation package, when in reality it only partially mitigates it in the candidate's final decision.
Practical Application
A company with a 3.1/5 average rating on an employer review platform struggles to close 60% of offers for senior sales roles. After investing 12 months in improving the offboarding process and internal transparency on promotions, the rating rises to 4.2/5 and the offer acceptance rate for the same roles rises to 84%, with the same compensation package offered.