A job posting goes up, applications come in, but the profile you were looking for does not. Or an offer goes out and the candidate picks another company.
What gets discussed at that point is the employer brand: how a candidate sees your company as a place to work.
LinkedIn is where this happens. While weighing an offer, a candidate opens your company page, looks at your employees’ profiles, and reads what you post.
This article covers what employer brand work on LinkedIn actually rests on, and what to ask before you choose an agency to do it.
Where the employer brand sits on LinkedIn
In four separate places.
The company page. The first thing a candidate looks at. What you do, how many of you there are, where you are, and what you posted most recently all show up here. A page that is empty or out of date shapes the first impression directly.
Employee profiles. This is where a candidate collects the most information about your company. Gaps or inconsistencies in those profiles contradict whatever the company page says.
Content. What the company posts, who posts it, and how often. A job posting on its own does not count as content.
Advertising. Targeted reach aimed at a specific role, sector, or location. This is the accelerator on employer brand work.
None of the four works alone. If the company page is polished but employee profiles are empty, the candidate sees the gap.
Eight things to ask an agency
1. Do you work on employee profiles? Employer brand work cannot be run from the company page alone. If the answer is no, the scope is incomplete.
2. How many people are covered? Profile work scales with headcount. The scope has to be settled at the start.
3. Who produces the content? Does the agency write it, does your team, or both? How does approval work?
4. How do you work with the HR team? Employer branding sits between marketing and human resources. An agency needs a way of working with the HR side.
5. Are leadership profiles included? The profiles candidates look at most are the leadership profiles.
6. Do you also run the advertising? Keeping organic work and targeted reach with the same agency makes the process easier to run.
7. Do you provide training? A team that can post on its own reduces dependence on the agency over time.
8. What do you measure? Follower count on its own is not a result. Which indicator gets watched has to be agreed up front.
The eighth item is the one skipped most often. When measurement is not defined before the work starts, six months later everyone argues about what the result was.
Who should do the work
There are three models and all three work.
| Model | When it fits | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Agency handles everything | No one inside has time for LinkedIn | The company’s own voice should not disappear |
| Agency and internal team together | There is an HR team but limited LinkedIn experience | Put the split of roles in writing |
| Train the team and run it in-house | The team is willing and can keep it up | Training needs follow-up |
What decides the model is the time available inside. LinkedIn asks for regular attention, and irregular work does not produce results.
What to measure
These are the indicators that show whether employer brand work is doing anything:
1. Company page visitors, and which sectors and job functions they come from
2. Not the rise in follower count, but the profile of those followers
3. How many people your posts reach, and the engagement rate
4. Career page and job posting views
5. Not the number of applications, but their quality
6. The audience reached by employee posts
The fifth one deserves emphasis. A rise in applications looks like good news, but if they are not coming from the profile you want, it only adds load to the recruiting team.
What Suit Your Job offers
Suit Your Job runs both corporate and individual LinkedIn services, and employer brand work is built from the combination of them.
On the corporate side, LinkedIn page management, LinkedIn profile optimization, LinkedIn training and LinkedIn advertising management sit as separate service headings. That means company page management, content, team training and targeted reach can all be run from one place.
On the individual side there is LinkedIn profile optimization and profile management. This lets leadership and employee profiles be handled together with the corporate work.
The agency’s service headings are not limited to LinkedIn. Social media management, website setup and management, Yandex advertising management and AI visibility optimization are the other headings.
To work out which of these you need, get in touch through suityourjob.com.
Frequently asked questions
How a company is perceived as a place to work. The sum of what candidates, employees and former employees think about it.
Ask the scope questions before you look at a client list: does it work on employee profiles, how does it work with the HR team, who produces the content, is advertising included, and what does it measure.
While weighing an offer, a candidate looks at the company page, at employee profiles, and at what gets posted. All three sit in the same place.
No. Employee profiles get read alongside the company page, and a candidate notices when the two contradict each other.
Yes. Employee and leadership profiles are where a candidate collects the most information.
What sets the pace is consistency. On a page posted to irregularly, results come late. Defining the measurement indicators at the start is what lets you read the process correctly.
The profile of the followers matters more than the number. Followers from the sector and roles you are targeting mean more than a total.
No. A posting on its own does not count as content; candidates need material that tells them something about the company.
Not required, but when you need to reach a specific role or location quickly, targeted reach speeds things up.
You can. After training, a team can carry it on internally; what decides the outcome there is keeping it consistent.
Summary
An employer brand is read in four places on LinkedIn: the company page, employee profiles, content and advertising. When the four do not work together, the candidate sees the gap.
When choosing an agency, ask the scope questions before you look at the client list. Does it work on employee profiles, how does it work with HR, who writes the content, what does it measure.
On the measurement side, look at the quality of applications rather than the count, and at the profile of followers rather than the number.
You can review Suit Your Job’s LinkedIn services at suityourjob.com.
