Employer Branding

Employer Branding

Building Employer Brands That Attract and Retain Top Talent

Why is employer branding so important today?

In today’s hyper-competitive talent marketplace, your employer brand is as critical as your consumer brand. It shapes how potential employees perceive you, why current employees stay, and how alumni talk about your company long after they’ve left. For many organizations, employer branding has become a CEO-level priority because talent is one of the most important determinants of business success.

At Starfish, we believe employer branding is about much more than recruitment marketing. It is about authentically expressing your culture, values, and opportunities in a way that resonates with both candidates and employees. When done right, it becomes a powerful differentiator in attracting the right people and galvanizing them once they are inside your organization.

Who owns employer branding inside an organization?

The most successful employer branding initiatives are driven by partnership. Typically, the CMO and CHRO lead this work together, with the full support of the CEO. Marketing ensures the employer brand aligns with the corporate brand, while HR ensures it reflects the real employee experience.

As your employer branding agency, we bring the outside perspective and strategic process needed to connect these functions. Our work helps leadership define and articulate a clear Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and then translate it into consistent experiences across recruitment, onboarding, development, and internal engagement.

How does Starfish create an employer brand?

Our employer branding services follow a comprehensive, insight-driven process:

• Employer Value Proposition (EVP) Development: Defining the promise and benefits that make your workplace distinctive.
• Employer Brand Strategy: Aligning your talent brand with business goals, talent priorities, and the corporate brand.
• Recruitment Marketing: Bringing the brand to life across digital, social, career sites, and candidate communications.
• Employee Experience Design: Ensuring the EVP is felt at every stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding to recognition.
• Internal Communications: Building understanding and advocacy so employees become brand ambassadors.
• Measurement & Optimization: Tracking impact on recruitment, retention, engagement, and performance.

This holistic approach ensures that the employer brand is not only compelling to candidates but also authentic and sustainable within the organization.

What are prime examples of Starfish’s employer branding work?

Our experience spans industries and global organizations, helping leaders align culture, employer branding, and business strategy:

• A major higher education institution: We developed an EVP and employer brand narrative that unified faculty and staff, reinforcing its reputation as a world-class place to learn and work.
• A global leader in air freight: We created an employer branding system that aligned a dispersed workforce under a shared purpose of reliability and innovation.
• One of the world’s largest healthcare organizations: We partnered with HR and marketing to design an EVP and employee engagement framework that elevated culture while strengthening patient-centered care.
• A top 10 global law firm: We helped define and activate an employer brand that positioned the firm as both a demanding and rewarding workplace, strengthening recruitment of top-tier associates.
• One of the world’s largest consulting and professional services firms: We created an employer branding platform that attracted top graduates and experienced hires globally, while reinforcing the firm’s reputation for innovation and leadership.

These examples illustrate how employer branding drives business impact, from attracting the right candidates to energizing existing employees and aligning entire organizations around shared values.

What business impact does employer branding deliver?

The ROI of strong employer branding is clear. Organizations that invest in authentic employer brands see:

• Reduced recruitment costs and shorter time-to-hire.
• Higher-quality and culturally fit new hires.
• Stronger employee engagement and productivity.
• Decreased turnover and related costs.
• Enhanced reputation in both the job market and the marketplace.

Ultimately, a strong employer brand is a competitive advantage, ensuring the people you need to grow and transform your business choose you over your competitors.

How does employer branding connect to culture and brand experience?

Employer branding does not exist in isolation. It’s most powerful when it reflects the culture employees actually live and the brand experience customers actually feel. At Starfish, we bring these dimensions together:

• Internal Culture: We ensure your employees are inspired by, and aligned with, your brand promise. Culture is the foundation of authenticity.
  
• Brand Experience: We define and design how your brand is felt across all customer touchpoints. Experience is the outward expression of your brand.
  
• Employer Branding: We articulate your value to employees and candidates, ensuring the internal reality and external perception are seamlessly connected.

This “top-down, inside-out” system ensures consistency. The CEO sets the vision, and the CMO and CHRO partner to activate it; every employee becomes an authentic ambassador of the brand.

When employer branding, internal culture, and brand experience are integrated, organizations build not only stronger workplaces but also stronger businesses and places where talent thrives, customers feel valued, and the brand remains distinct and resilient.

Why choose Starfish as your employer branding agency?

For over two decades, Starfish has helped organizations connect their brand, culture, and talent strategy. Unlike recruitment agencies that focus narrowly on hiring campaigns, we build end-to-end employer brand systems that connect external perception with internal reality.

Our differentiator is the ability to integrate:

• Brand strategy that ensures alignment with your corporate identity.
• Employee experience design that ensures authenticity at every stage of the journey.
• Employer branding campaigns that attract top talent while strengthening internal culture.

Looking to attract and retain top talent?
Contact Starfish today to discover how our insight-driven employer branding agency in NYC can help you build an authentic, compelling, and transformative employer brand.