Employer branding

Employer branding is not one project but a pile of small things: the wording of the job ad, the careers page, photos from the real shop floor instead of stock, a video with actual colleagues, how the interview runs and what happens to a new hire on day one. HR and marketing run it together, continuously, not as a campaign before a hiring push.

Why it pays off: a factory near Nitra was hiring welders and machine operators, and its ads were read by people who had never heard of the company. We shot a one day video with three colleagues from the floor, no script, only questions. It was not a pretty video, it was a true one. Applications did not double overnight, but candidates arrived already knowing what the floor looks like.

How it is done: start with conversations with people who stayed and with people who left. Out of that come a few sentences about what the company genuinely offers, and those go into the ads, the careers page and the video. You have to release colleagues for filming, allow a camera into the plant and accept that someone will say an uncomfortable thing on camera.

Where it gets overrated: a drone shot over the building and a line about family. Candidates want to know who their manager will be, what a shift looks like and what they will be paid. If the careers page hides the salary and the ad promises a young dynamic team, employer branding will not make up for it. If people leave because of a manager, a campaign only makes that visible faster.

Before filming we ask one question: what would you tell a friend about this job over a beer? The answer is the script. Try it today: read your latest job ad and underline every sentence that could sit unchanged in a competitor's ad. Usually almost everything ends up underlined.