Beyond Attraction: How Employer Branding Can Empower Informed Career Decisions

Employer branding. Easy enough, right? It’s the positioning of an organization to talent, both internal and external, in a way that authentically reflects the lived experiences of employees through the lens of culture, values, and growth in order to attract and retain employees.

That’s the objective. But what about the responsibility? 

Our instinct is to say that our responsibility lies with the employer. But if we dig deeper, we know it extends beyond that - to the candidates themselves, to the people navigating career changes, chasing growth, or taking leaps into something new.

As employer branders, we have the unique opportunity to do something empowering for our talent audience; we can humanize the experience and enable them throughout their journey.

From Attraction to Enablement

When we look at a market like the one we are in today, one that heavily favours the employer, enablement for the candidate can take on a whole new meaning. Career decision-making shouldn’t happen out of desperation or pressure. It should be an informed process with intentional outcomes.

That’s where we come in.

Our role isn’t just to attract the right people; it’s to empower them to make the right decision for themselves. We design our content to attract ‘the right people’. What if we step back for a moment and approach our content as a way to empower candidates' career decisions in a way that is best for them? 

We’ll still end up meeting our goal of attracting the right people, but the difference will be that candidates will arrive not only with deeper trust and understanding about the company, but with a stronger sense of self.

Shifting the Lens: Skills, Interests, and Values

When it comes to making positive and long-term career decisions, the central pillars typically revolve around the connection to three things: skills, interests, and values. Of course, compensation, location, and career growth opportunities are critical, but alignment to skills, interests, and values is key.

How do we get candidates to think about their skills, interests, and values when they are reading our content? Consider their thoughts:

• Do I have the skills and experience to do the job effectively and grow in it?

• Does this company/role connect to something I am interested in? Will I be able to find ongoing internal motivation through that interest?

• Do my values align closely enough with those of the company? Will I feel a sense of belonging and integrity with them?

These aren’t just candidate questions. They’re the foundation of authentic employer brand storytelling.

Building Content Around the Career Decision Arc

What does this mean for those of us in employer branding? That we should think holistically about the content and resources being provided and build around the career decision-making process arc while serving it up through an adjusted funnel:

Attract and educate:

• Skills: Help candidates understand what kind of skills and experiences are valued at the company by sharing stories of career changers and career growth, specifically focusing on skills transfer and development. 

• Interests: Help candidates understand the purpose and impact of the work by highlighting how and why employees feel connected to the company’s purpose and mission.

• Values: Help candidates understand your company values by showing them in action, such as how employees work together, feel respected, and have a sense of belonging.

Engage and empower:

• Skills: Help candidates connect their specific skills to the role by clearly stating the actual skills needed for the role in job postings and accurately portraying the scope of the role (no asking for a unicorn…we can all agree on that).

• Interests: Help candidates determine if they would feel engaged in the purpose and share customer stories about how employees' work makes the customer experience and success possible. 

• Values: Help candidates reflect on their own values by sharing employee stories that connect employee motivation to being driven by values.

Convert and equip:

• Skills: Help candidates identify concrete examples to show skill transfer by providing candidates with post-screen and pre-interview tools and resources to prep for their interviews that are custom to your interview methods.

• Interests: Help candidates feel connected to the purpose. During interviews, provide tangible examples of the role's impact on the overall company purpose.

• Values: Help candidates see how they could work within your company's framework. Include definitions of company values in the interview resources and ask prep questions to encourage candidates to consider how they currently approach their work, keeping those values in mind. 

The Outcome: Confident, Informed Decisions

When the successful candidate is given the offer, they should feel armed with the information they need to say yes confidently. Their understanding of the organization and role, and how they fit into it, has the context needed. 

As they transition from candidate to employee, our job continues. The employer brand doesn’t stop at attraction; it evolves into nurturing and reinforcing those same pillars: skills, interests, and values, throughout the employee journey.

Rebalancing the Power

Candidates shouldn’t have to struggle to learn what it’s like to work somewhere, and they certainly shouldn’t struggle to figure out if it’s a place they actually want to work.

When we design content intentionally, we don’t just attract—we empower candidates.

We shift some of the power back into the hands of the people who are making life-changing career decisions.

And that’s where the true evolution of employer branding begins.