Employer branding: stop selling dreams, let your employees tell the real story.
Employer branding: stop selling dreams, let your employees tell the real story. Is your employer brand lacking authenticity? Stop selling dreams and find out how to turn your employees into your best ambassadors. There's a scene I see all too often. A company spends a fortune on a beautiful recruitment campaign. Sleek visuals, inspiring slogans, promises of fulfillment... on paper, it's perfect. But internally, employees roll their eyes. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they're just cynical. This discrepancy, this wide gap between the storefront and the back office, is the silent cancer of the employer brand. During my recent conversation with Anne-Sophie Noël, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in episode 32 of the HR Stay Tuned podcast, she pointed out a painful truth with a candor that struck me: "If there's a discrepancy between what a company says about itself in external communication, its ambassadors, meaning its employees, will very quickly say: 'No, no, no, that's bullshit, it's not exactly like that.'" "Bullshit". There, I said it. And it's accurate. In an era where trust is such a rare currency, it's time to stop this corporate charade. Let's stop selling dreams. Let's start sharing reality. The credibility crisis: why no one believes in your stock photos anymore The problem is not new. In fact, it's the topic I covered in my final thesis: the alignment between internal and external communication. Even back then, it was blatantly obvious to me. And today, the phenomenon is amplified by a radical transparency imposed by the digital world. Your candidates are not naive. Even before applying, they have already conducted their research on social media, or by contacting former employees. They know. And the numbers confirm it. According to a study by LinkedIn Talent Solutions, candidates trust employees of a company three times more than the company itself to get credible information about the work environment. Three times. Revisit this statistic. It marks the death certificate of top-down and sanitized corporate communication. The career site with actors smiling around a coffee machine? No one believes it. The CEO's polished speech on "values"? It is immediately contrasted with the stories, good or bad, that the teams share on the ground. As Anne-Sophie aptly puts it, your true ambassadors are not your PR agencies. " The employees of a company are its first ambassadors. " They are your only source of truth. Ignoring them, or worse, contradicting them, is not just a mistake. It's brand suicide. The authenticity revolution: co-creating your story, not making it up So, what do we do? Do we give up? On the contrary. We are radically changing paradigms. The solution is disarmingly simple, but it requires courage: we must make authenticity a strategy. Anne-Sophie summed it up perfectly: " A good employer branding campaign, to me, is one that is done with the employees. " This goes well beyond a few scripted video testimonials. It's about co-creating your story. This is called "Employee Advocacy" , but let's get rid of the jargon. Simply put, it's about creating an environment where your teams are not only heard, but also feel proud and safe to share their actual experiences. How do we do it, practically speaking? Listen before you speak: What do your colleagues REALLY like about you? What excites them? What frustrates them? Conduct surveys, focus groups, informal conversations. Look for the raw material, not the polish. Identify your true storytellers: Give a voice to everyone. Not just to managers or the "star pupils". Highlight the technician who solves complex problems, the accountant who loves the atmosphere of her team, the young talent who has been well integrated. Their experiences are a thousand times more powerful than any slogan. Provide them with a stage, not a script: Your career site should be their platform. Your LinkedIn account should showcase their achievements. Companies like Patagonia or Decathlon don't burden themselves with corporate speak; they show their employees in action, living the passion for sports or the outdoors that is the brand's DNA. According to a report by MSLGroup, messages shared by employees have a reach 561% greater than the same messages shared through the brand's official channels. It's a monumental marketing and HR lever, based on trust. My struggle: to make authenticity accessible I have held this belief for years. It's what recently drove me to launch Jobloom, my new venture. I've seen too many companies wanting to be authentic, but facing a lack of time or budget to create quality content. My obsession is to make this authenticity 'sexy' and accessible. As I was explaining to Anne-Sophie, we integrate the creation of this lively and embodied content directly into the design of career websites. We help companies interview their talents, turn these gems into captivating stories, so that their employer brand can finally be a true and attractive reflection of their culture. Because in the end, the best employer brand isn't the one that promises the moon. It's the one that tells you: "This is who we are, with our strengths, our challenges, and the incredible people who keep things running. If that speaks to you, join us." It's an invitation, not an advertisement. And that's the whole difference.
