You can have the best recruiters, the most competitive salaries, and the most interesting technical problems — but if candidates have never heard of your company or, worse, have heard negative things about it, you are fighting an uphill battle. Employer branding is not a “nice to have” for marketing teams. It is the foundation of effective recruitment. In India’s competitive IT talent market, where top engineers receive multiple offers simultaneously, your brand reputation often determines whether candidates even respond to your outreach.
What Is Employer Branding (And What It Is Not)
Employer branding is the market’s perception of what it is like to work at your company. It is shaped by every interaction a potential candidate has with your organisation — from your careers page and Glassdoor reviews to how your employees talk about work at dinner parties.
What employer branding is NOT:
- A set of stock photos on your careers page
- A list of perks (free meals, bean bags, foosball tables)
- A marketing campaign created by an agency that has never spoken to your employees
- Something only large companies need to worry about
What employer branding IS:
- The authentic experience of working at your company, communicated consistently
- The reason a candidate chooses you over a competitor offering 15% more salary
- A long-term investment that compounds over time
- Measurable and directly linked to recruitment metrics
The ROI of Employer Branding
Employer branding is not a soft, unmeasurable concept. The data is clear:
- Companies with strong employer brands see a 50% reduction in cost-per-hire (LinkedIn Talent Solutions)
- 75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job (Glassdoor)
- Strong employer brands experience 28% lower turnover than weak ones
- Candidates accept offers at companies with good reputations even at lower salaries — the brand premium is estimated at 10-15%
For a company hiring 50 IT professionals per year, a strong employer brand can save 20-30 lakhs annually in reduced recruitment costs, faster time-to-fill, and lower attrition.
Pillar 1: Glassdoor and Review Platforms
In India, Glassdoor, AmbitionBox, and LinkedIn company pages are the first places candidates check when evaluating potential employers. Your presence on these platforms is the front door of your employer brand.
Glassdoor strategy:
- Encourage authentic reviews. Ask current employees (not just happy ones) to share their genuine experience. A company with 4 reviews looks suspicious. A company with 40 honest reviews — including some critical ones — looks authentic.
- Respond to every review — especially negative ones. A thoughtful, non-defensive response to a negative review demonstrates maturity and accountability. Candidates read employer responses as carefully as they read reviews.
- Update your company profile regularly. Add recent photos, update the company description, and ensure your benefits and culture information is current.
- Monitor your rating. Track your Glassdoor rating monthly and investigate trends. A declining rating is an early warning sign of cultural issues that will affect hiring.
What candidates are really looking for on Glassdoor:
- Management quality and leadership transparency
- Work-life balance (especially post-pandemic)
- Career growth and learning opportunities
- Compensation fairness
- How the company handles layoffs, conflicts, and challenges
Pillar 2: Social Media and Content Strategy
Your company’s social media presence — LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and occasionally Instagram — shapes how the market perceives your workplace.
Effective employer branding content:
- Employee stories: Profiles of team members sharing their journey, projects, and growth. These are the most engaging and credible form of employer branding content.
- Technical content: Blog posts, architecture talks, and open-source contributions from your engineering team. This attracts engineers who want to work with smart people.
- Behind-the-scenes: Team events, hackathons, celebrations, and work-in-progress glimpses. Keep it authentic — overly polished content feels corporate and fake.
- Hiring manager perspectives: Posts from hiring managers about what they look for, what the team is building, and what the day-to-day looks like.
- Company milestones: Product launches, funding rounds, customer wins, and awards — but framed through the lens of team achievement, not just company achievement.
What to avoid:
- Generic motivational quotes
- Stock photography that looks nothing like your actual workplace
- Posting only when you have open positions (this screams “we only care about candidates when we need them”)
- Over-the-top positivity that feels inauthentic (every company has challenges — pretending otherwise erodes trust)
Pillar 3: Employee Advocacy
Your employees are your most credible brand ambassadors. A candidate is far more likely to trust what your engineer says on LinkedIn than what your marketing team posts on the company page.
Building an employee advocacy programme:
- Make it easy. Provide shareable content, templates, and guidelines. Do not expect employees to create content from scratch — most will not.
- Make it voluntary. Forced advocacy is immediately obvious to candidates and counterproductive. The best advocacy is genuine enthusiasm, not obligation.
- Recognise and reward. Publicly acknowledge employees who share their experience. Some companies offer small incentives, but recognition alone is often sufficient.
- Lead by example. When founders and senior leaders share authentically on social media, it signals that the company values transparency and encourages others to do the same.
The referral connection: Strong employee advocacy directly feeds your referral pipeline. When employees are proud of their workplace, they naturally recommend it to their networks. This is especially powerful for Indian startups competing against MNCs for talent. This is why companies with strong employer brands see 2-3x higher referral rates.
Pillar 4: Candidate Experience
Every candidate who interacts with your company — whether or not they are hired — becomes a data point for your employer brand. In the IT community, bad candidate experiences spread fast.
Candidate experience best practices:
- Acknowledge every application. An automated email is the minimum. A personalised response is the standard.
- Communicate proactively. If there is a delay in the process, tell the candidate. Silence is the worst response.
- Provide timely feedback. Candidates who invest time in interviews deserve constructive feedback, even if they are not selected. “We decided to move forward with another candidate” is lazy. “Your system design skills were strong, but we needed deeper experience with distributed databases” is respectful and useful.
- Respect their time. Multi-round interviews that drag across weeks, rescheduled calls, and interviewers who are clearly unprepared all damage your brand.
- Survey candidates. After the process is complete (regardless of outcome), ask candidates to rate their experience. Use NPS or a simple satisfaction survey.
The multiplier effect: A positive candidate experience creates brand advocates even among rejected candidates. A rejected candidate who says “I did not get the offer, but the process was excellent and the team was impressive” is worth more to your employer brand than any marketing campaign.
Pillar 5: Brand Audits and Measurement
Employer branding without measurement is guessing. Conduct regular audits to understand where you stand and where to improve.
Quarterly metrics to track:
- Glassdoor/AmbitionBox rating and review volume
- Social media engagement on employer brand content
- Application volume per job posting (trend over time)
- Offer acceptance rate (are candidates choosing you over competitors?)
- Employee NPS (Net Promoter Score): Would employees recommend working here?
- Source of hire: What percentage comes from referrals, direct applications, and agencies? Higher referral and direct application rates indicate a strong brand.
Annual brand audit:
- Survey both employees and recent candidates about their perception of the company
- Benchmark your Glassdoor ratings against competitors
- Analyse which content types and channels generate the most engagement
- Review your careers page, job descriptions, and online presence for consistency
Getting Started: The 90-Day Action Plan
If your employer branding is currently non-existent or inconsistent, here is a practical starting plan:
Month 1: Foundation
- Audit your current Glassdoor presence, social media, and careers page
- Interview 10-15 employees to understand what they genuinely value about working at the company
- Identify 3-5 employee advocates willing to share their stories
- Fix immediate issues: outdated careers page, unanswered Glassdoor reviews, inconsistent messaging
Month 2: Content and Process
- Launch a monthly content calendar with employee stories, technical content, and behind-the-scenes posts
- Implement a candidate experience survey for all interview processes
- Encourage Glassdoor reviews from current employees
- Train hiring managers on candidate experience best practices
Month 3: Measurement and Iteration
- Establish baseline metrics for all tracking dimensions
- Analyse the first round of candidate experience surveys
- Adjust content strategy based on engagement data
- Present the employer branding business case to leadership with data
The StakTeck Perspective
At StakTeck, employer branding is woven into how we work with clients. When we present your opportunity to candidates through our permanent staffing or executive search services, we are representing your brand. The companies we represent most effectively are those with a clear, authentic employer value proposition that we can communicate confidently to candidates.
We have seen firsthand how employer branding transforms recruitment outcomes. Clients who invest in their brand see higher response rates to our outreach, faster interview-to-offer cycles, and significantly better offer acceptance rates. The best recruitment strategy is not finding more candidates — it is making more candidates want to find you.
The Bottom Line
Employer branding is not a one-time project — it is an ongoing discipline. The companies that dominate IT talent acquisition are those that invest consistently in how the market perceives their workplace. In a world where every candidate has instant access to employee reviews, social media, and peer networks, your reputation precedes your recruiter. Make sure it says the right things.
Related Reading
- How Indian Startups Can Compete for Talent Against MNCs — Employer branding is a startup’s most powerful weapon in the talent war
- How to Write Job Descriptions That Attract Top IT Talent — Your job description is the front line of your employer brand
- Careers at StakTeck — See our employer brand in action
