A No Cliché, No BS Guide to Employer Branding During a Pandemic

Employer branding does not become more or less important because of a crisis. It stays central to how a company attracts, recruits and retains people, and how it handles a pandemic will shape its reputation for years. The question is not whether employer brand matters right now, but what to actually do with it depending on whether a company is hiring or not.

For companies not currently hiring, the recommendations include:

• Revisiting the employee value proposition to check whether it still reflects a company that may have made staffing or budget cuts
• Pulling down pipeline requisitions and pausing job ads that mislead job seekers into applying for roles that don't exist
• Being openly transparent on career pages and reputation sites like Glassdoor or Indeed about not actively hiring
• Sharing new content about supporting current staff, such as wellness stipends, virtual fitness classes or PPE, and community giving such as food bank donations

For companies that are hiring, the guidance covers:

• Writing intentional job posts instead of evergreen reqs that set false expectations and read as ghosting
• Replacing old imagery of office kegs, ping pong tables and group hugs with content that reflects remote work and social distancing
• Mining an existing talent community for candidates rather than only using it for messaging
• Updating job descriptions to spell out concrete support offered to employees, from work-from-home flexibility to equipment stipends
• Using enhanced messaging features on sites like Glassdoor to signal active hiring

Other tactics apply regardless of hiring status: sharing practical tips such as resume or LinkedIn advice, producing new team and culture videos shot over Zoom or on a phone rather than reusing pre-pandemic footage, and even using a webinar Zoom background to advertise open roles.

Two qualities are named as what matters most in any employer brand effort right now: transparency and authenticity. Candidate experience is treated as inseparable from employer brand, since a job seeker's first interaction with a company, good or bad, shapes how the brand is remembered long after the process ends.

Stories plus culture equal employer brand, in a pandemic or in whatever comes after it.