Most employer branding tries to appeal to everyone, which is why it reads identically across companies and attracts a poorly matched applicant pool.
- ›Why generic branding fails on both sides
- ›Being specific enough to repel
- ›What candidates actually check
- ›Measuring it
Why generic fails
"We're a fast-paced team that values collaboration and innovation" describes every company and commits to nothing. It attracts volume rather than fit, which costs you screening time and costs candidates their time.
The deeper problem: it sets no expectation, so the mismatch surfaces after hiring, in the first six months, as attrition.
Specific enough to repel
Good employer branding makes some people decide not to apply, on purpose.
Say the things that are true and consequential: whether you are remote, hybrid, or in-office, and how strictly. Whether the work is ambiguous or well-defined. Whether you ship fast and fix later or move carefully. What career progression actually looks like here. What the compensation philosophy is.
Each of those will put some people off, and each one prevents a mismatch that would have cost both sides far more later.
What candidates actually check
In roughly this order:
The job description is the branding
Companies spend on careers-page design and write job descriptions from a template. This is backwards: the description is where a candidate spends their attention and decides.
A good one states the actual problems the person will work on, the outcomes expected in the first year, the constraints they will operate under, and what the team is like specifically. It reads like someone wrote it about this role, because someone did.
Tip: Have the hiring manager write the first draft of what the person will actually do, then edit for clarity. Descriptions written entirely by recruiters from a template produce applicants who do not know what the job is.
Measuring it
- ›Application-to-interview rate. Low means you are attracting the wrong people, which is a branding problem, not a screening problem.
- ›Offer acceptance rate. Low means expectations set during the process did not match what candidates found.
- ›Six-month retention of new hires. The truest measure: mismatched expectations show up here.
- ›Source quality, not just source volume. See career site and recruitment marketing.
FAQ
Should we publish salary ranges?
Yes, and in several jurisdictions you must. Beyond compliance, it filters out mismatches early and saves everyone time.
What if our reviews are bad?
Fix the causes; responses to reviews change nothing if the underlying experience is unchanged. Candidates read the pattern, not the reply.
Do careers pages matter?
They matter less than job descriptions and more than nothing. Get the descriptions right first.
Brainis Hiring OS includes a career site, job description drafting, and source analytics that show which channels produce hires. See Hiring OS.
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