“Stand out from the crowd”: building a strong employer brand when everyone is saying the same thing

I have participated in over a thousand recruitments in my career. And almost every time, I've heard the same phrases:
“We want to attract good profiles.”
“We want to stand out.”
“We want people to talk about us.”

But when I dig deeper and ask this simple question: What's your difference, what do you offer that others don't have? ... silence falls.

The job market has evolved. Talents have choices. They compare. They question. They google. And faced with an avalanche of 'great atmosphere, tight-knit team, stimulating job' offers, everything becomes blurred.

This is where the employer brand becomes central.
Not just as a nice varnish. But as a lever for clarity, attractiveness, and consistency.

Employer branding: what are we (really) talking about?

No, it's not a logo on a job posting or a corporate video.
The employer brand is the perception that people have of you as an employer.

It exists whether you have formalized it or not. It expresses itself:

• In the opinions (formal or informal) of your colleagues
• In your interactions with the candidates
• Regarding the quality of your onboarding
• In what you post (or do not post)
• In your silences, as much as in your words

That's what a talent feels, even before meeting you.

The real challenge: “stand out from the crowd”

Everyone wants to stand out. But everyone uses the same words, the same codes, the same formulas.

Result? Nothing stands out.
The vanilla HR approach prevails. And the candidate moves from one career page to another without ever feeling that famous “wow, this is where I want to work.”

Le “stand out from the crowd” ne se joue pas sur du marketing flashy. Il repose sur 3 fondamentaux :

1. The clarity of your employer value proposition (EVP)
   → Who are you? What are your actual promises? What do people experience in your company?
2. The alignment between speech and reality
   → The worst thing for a talent is to experience dissonance once recruited. It breaks trust, commitment... and retention.
3. The ability to share what makes you unique
   → No need to be Google. You just have to be authentic. And understand what resonates with your targets.

The real challenges of HR professionals and employer branding today

What I hear most on the ground:

• Not enough bandwidth → too many projects, too few hands
• No dedicated team → we make do with what we have
• Lack of internal buy-in → constant need to 'evangelize'
• No clarity on the right indicators → what is a successful employer brand?
• Silos between HR, marketing, and communications → each moving forward with their own priorities
• Tensions between global and local → hard to tell a coherent story internationally

These are real issues. And we won't solve them with a quick 'rebranding' or a video that ticks all the boxes.

So, what are we doing? Where do we start?

The answer is often simpler than we think:

• We start by listening. What the employees say. What they experience. What they like (or not).
• We clarify our DNA. The true lived values. The differences. The key moments of the employee experience.
• We align the touchpoints. From the career site to social networks, through the job offer and the interview. Everything must tell the same story.

And above all: we don't try to please everyone.
We aim to attract the right people. Those for whom our culture, our challenges, our style will truly resonate.

My own challenge at the moment?

It's about bandwidth. The more we progress, the more the subject fascinates... and the more I'm asked to intervene, to audit, to rewrite, to co-construct. And sometimes, I dream of an employer brand team! But even without a team, it 'simply' takes laying the right foundations. And to build, step by step, a true and powerful story.

And you? What's your biggest challenge today to “stand out from the crowd”? And if you feel like talking about it? Write to me, I love these exchanges.