8 Success Stories to Inspire Your Employer Branding Strategy

Coworkers taking selfies at work as part of a broader employer branding strategy.

Is your employer branding strategy stuck in the “occasional-blog-post-if-someone-has-time” rut? If so, it’s time to get on board the fast-moving employer branding train. Many companies have discovered the benefits of investing in their employer branding story. So how do you get started?

We’ve compiled a list of eight companies that created stellar employer branding content. These highlights demonstrate how storytelling can be used to inspire and engage job candidates.

By featuring real employees with real-life messages, these companies enable job seekers to imagine themselves in the role. These inspiring ideas and techniques can help you formulate a branding strategy that will resonate with job seekers, employees, and consumers.

1. General Electric: Millie Dresselhaus Video

GE made a splash with a video depicting a world in which great female scientists are treated like celebrities. The video announced GE’s goal of employing 20,000 women in technical roles by 2020. After first airing during the 2017 Oscars, the video quickly became an online favorite.

Key takeaways: Creativity, transparency, and a high level of investment by decision-makers have been the hallmarks of GE’s rebranding efforts. Values are often a critical factor in deciding whether or not to accept an offer, especially for Millennial job seekers. GE’s employer branding strategy centers on conveying its values in a smart, engaging way.

2. Accenture: #InclusionStartsWithI Campaign

Accenture went a long way toward demonstrating transparency by helping its employees share their diversity-related struggles in this highly shareable “Inclusion Starts With I” video. They also created a hashtag that employees were quick to rally around.

As a result, both Diversity Inc. and Fortune covered this campaign positively, strengthening the company’s reputation as a great employer. Accenture also readily shares its diversity numbers, allowing the general public and any potential candidates to track their progress.

Key takeaways: Transparency, honesty, and savvy use of both employee-generated content and social media make Accenture’s approach a valuable example. And since Millennials generally prioritize diversity, doubling down on the topic especially helps with talent acquisition.

3. Booking.com: One Mission Project

Booking.com challenged its thousands of employees to document their trips and vacations with a company-provided GoPro. The project led to the inspiring “One Mission” video that aligns employees with Booking.com’s mission to empower people to experience the world. The campaign created a rallying point for employees and spin-off advertisements for further recruitment marketing. That’s a strong way to attract like-minded, adventure-seeking job candidates.

Key takeaways: Leveraging employees to humanize your employer brand and its values with video storytelling can be a smart and cost-effective method for creating authentic, effective content.

4. Microsoft: “Microsoft Life” Blog and Instagram

Microsoft is a longstanding brand in the ever-evolving tech industry, which can make it tough for the company to compete for talent with newer companies.

The company’s “Microsoft Life” blog and Instagram account elevated its employer branding strategy. The blog, largely written by employees and featuring stories about the company’s unique workspaces, even delves into a company-wide networking group for cat lovers dubbed “Cats at Microsoft” or Mcats.

The Microsoft Life Instagram, which boasts more than 200,000 followers, offers an inside look at employees’ day-to-day work with pictures of projects, conferences, and even the microgreen gardens in their cafes.

Key takeaways: Microsoft faces a problem common to large, established companies: attracting younger talent that wants to work for “cool” companies. This campaign addressed this perception head-on via employee-generated content and effective use of social media.

5. Salesforce: Ohana Instagram

Salesforce is all about its Ohana, the Hawaiian word for “family.” Like any proud parent, the company loves to share photos of family members—in this case, happy employees—doing cool, fun, and interesting things via its Salesforce Ohana Instagram account.

The real story isn’t about how and what Salesforce shares on its Instagram, but rather its demonstrated employee engagement. Salesforce’s employees have jumped into the role of brand ambassadors, readily sharing why they love working for the company on their own social accounts, using #SalesforceOhana across social platforms.

Key takeaways: Salesforce empowered its employees to be brand ambassadors. That’s a great lesson in creating an employer branding strategy that put the company’s values front and center.

6. Etsy: Parental Leave Video

Good recruitment content does more than just tell—it demonstrates a company’s values in action. That includes showing the impact of benefits on the lives of real employees. After Etsy announced it would offer employees six-and-a-half months of paid parental leave in 2016, Etsy recruited its employees to share their stories and explain the difference it made in their personal lives and at work.

Key takeaways: This is a perfect example of the power of highlighting unique company benefits.

7. Twitter: Career Site

Professionals want to know how they will fit into your organization to better understand the impact they could make. Twitter has organized its career site accordingly.

As users scroll through Twitter’s teams to find open jobs that fit their experience, they won’t see typical department headers like “marketing,” “human resources,” or “product development.” Instead, they’ll read the function and impact of each team, such as “promote the business,” “keep us running,” and “build the product.”

Key takeaways: Twitter turns the stale careers page idea on its head through transparent content that anticipates job seekers’ questions. This type of employer branding strategy reveals the company’s structure and provides clear, accessible information about its goals, vision, and values, appealing to busy job seekers looking to quickly assess culture and job opportunities.

8. Johnson & Johnson and General Motors: Employee Stories

Like GE, Johnson & Johnson, and General Motors, both understand that stories shared by real employees can be some of the most compelling reasons to join a company.

Johnson & Johnson’s careers website not only highlights employees’ career paths but it does so in a visually interesting and easily digestible way. Similarly, General Motors humanizes its brand and relates to candidates through its “Our Employees” video series, in which employees share their day-to-day tasks, discuss their professional growth, and explain their work to help candidates imagine themselves working there.

Key takeaways: Like Microsoft and GE, Johnson & Johnson and General Motors are established companies that have learned to compete with the Snapchats of the world. These stories are a great way of showing off their people and what they’ve accomplished. Plus, these stories give interested candidates a taste of what they could accomplish on the job.

Is Your Employer Branding Strategy Working?

Storytelling is a big part of establishing your brand’s place in the market, but what good is branding if you’re not fully leveraging the benefits? If you’re looking to fine-tune your branding to potential employees, Monster is here to help. Start telling your company’s story today with our effective expert branding strategies.