Employer brand
Definition
What people think and say about you as a place to work. You have one whether you manage it or not, built from reviews, ads, word of mouth and how you treat candidates.
Aron VeraartUpdated Your employer brand is your reputation as an employer. Not the slogan on your careers page, but what someone actually thinks when they see your name on a job ad. Is this a good place? Do people stay? Do they get treated well? That picture gets built from a lot of places you don't control: review sites, what employees say at a birthday party, how your last candidate got rejected, and more and more, what AI tools say when someone asks about you.
It matters because it changes the math before anyone even reads your vacancy. A strong employer brand makes people more willing to click, more willing to believe the ad, and more willing to put in the effort to apply. A weak or unknown one means every single job ad has to do all the convincing on its own.
Employer branding is the work of shaping that picture on purpose, mostly by being specific and honest about what it's really like to work there.
Example
Two companies post the same accountant role with the same salary. One is known locally for having a team that's been together for years and a boss who leaves at five. The other has a string of reviews about chaotic onboarding. Same ad, very different response, and neither company wrote a word of that difference into the vacancy.