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Your reputation as an employer isn't built in boardrooms. It's shaped in every recruiter email, every application form, every post-interview silence. Get that experience wrong, and the market will notice.
This piece examines the importance of employer branding in today’s marketplace. It highlights the critical role that recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) can play in creating a positive candidate experience that reinforces your employer brand.
Employer branding is fundamentally about perception. It’s how potential candidates view your business as a place to work. But as Richard Clough, Senior Digital Strategy Manager at Page Outsourcing, notes, it isn’t about creating marketing spin.
It's not an illusion that you’re trying to create. It has to be evidenced,” he explains. “And it's how you broadcast that which makes people self-select into your business. If you get it right, it becomes a seamless process that manifests in long-term engagement.
Simply put, when candidates can see themselves working for you, your employer brand is doing its job. That’s because today’s job seekers have unprecedented access to information about potential employers. Before applying, they’ve likely read Glassdoor reviews, checked your social media presence, searched for news articles and canvassed their professional networks.
This shift has profound implications. Employers no longer control their employer brand narrative — employees, former employees and candidates all contribute to the story. The question is: will you actively shape and manage this narrative, or allow it to develop unchecked?
A poor candidate experience doesn't just lose your individual hires — it can damage your reputation in the talent market. Richard identifies a common trap:
The tendency is just to go straight to the activation phase: ‘Let's get busy. Let's get ads on LinkedIn. Let's do some stuff on Glassdoor.
Yet in this rush to recruit, organisations often overlook fundamental details about the candidate's journey. A clunky application process or inconsistent communication may seem like minor issues internally, but to candidates, they speak volumes about your business culture. The knock-on impact? A negative online review or a frustrated social media post that can reach thousands of potential candidates, each forming their own impression of what it might be like to work for you.
This is where recruitment process outsourcing earns its place. Not as a cost-saving exercise, but as a strategic capability. By partnering with RPO specialists like Page Outsourcing, you align recruitment with your employer brand and deliver a consistently strong candidate experience.
The value begins with focus and expertise. A recent survey of HR professionals found that over one-third of companies (34%) say they don’t have enough resources to develop an intentional employer brand, while nearly half (49%) update their employer branding strategies on an as-needed basis rather than proactively.
RPO providers bring dedicated focus, specialised tools and methodological rigour that internal teams often can’t match.
Authenticity starts with understanding what employees actually experience. As Richard explains, this often involves surfacing hidden strengths.
A lot of these things are happening already. It’s just that they’re buried deep within. Amplifying those positive aspects, and tailoring them to different audiences, is where the real value lies.
A significant part of this involves extracting cultural attributes and employee experiences, then presenting them in ways that resonate with target audiences. This might mean capturing unscripted employee testimonials, showcasing real workplace scenarios or highlighting lesser-known benefits that matter deeply to specific candidate segments.
Page Outsourcing has successfully helped clients by enabling employees to share candid testimonials, whether through video clips or written stories.
People like to see people like themselves,” notes Richard. “They can identify: that’s me, or that’s the person I want to be.
For employers wondering how to be proactive about their employer branding strategy, Richard offers straightforward advice. “You start by always thinking like the people that you’re trying to activate. What do they expect? What are they doing? Then simulate some of their activities.”
This means auditing the candidate's journey honestly. Google your open roles and see what appears. Click through job advertisements and time the application process. Test on mobile. Look for broken links, confusing language, unnecessary barriers.
Several key metrics can provide valuable insights. Social listening tools reveal what candidates and employees say about organisations in public forums. Sentiment analysis tracks whether these conversations trend positive or negative. Volume of mentions indicates brand visibility. With these, your RPO provider can create a picture of your employer brand health.
The best employers don't treat recruitment as purely transactional. Not every qualified candidate is available immediately. Not every talented person fits an open role right now. But write them off, and you're starting from scratch when the next hiring need hits.
RPO providers have the time, knowledge and expertise to build diverse talent pools of interested, engaged potential candidates who’ve opted into an ongoing relationship with your company, so it stays visible and top of mind. They might receive valuable content, industry insights, career development resources or early access to opportunities.
Rather than wait until you need lots of people to work in a new function, why not have an always-on strategy that allows you to pull ahead of need? Then you can dip into that as a resource when you need to,” Richard explains.
So, when positions do open, these warm leads convert far more readily than cold outreach. Candidates are already familiar with your organisation, aligned with your values and predisposed to view opportunities positively. Time-to-hire drops. Quality of hire often improves. And you're no longer recruiting in a vacuum.
In a market where information flows freely and candidate expectations run high; employer branding can't be an afterthought. It requires commitment, focus, consistency, and a recruitment process that is logical, seamless, and authentic.
Page Outsourcing brings the expertise to align your hiring strategy with your culture, audit the candidate's experience, and build long-term talent relationships. If you're ready to treat employer branding as an operational capability rather than a marketing exercise, let's talk.
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