Notes for owners · Branding and communication
What employer branding means for a company of fifty people
Employer branding is what candidates find and hear about working for you before they apply. A company of fifty already has one. This post shows how to see it, who shapes it and what to fix first.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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The owner of a fifty-person firm may say there is no employer brand, because there has never been a campaign. There is one anyway. It is whatever a candidate finds and hears about working for you before applying, plus what your own staff say once they have joined. It lives in the way you talk in interviews, in what ex-employees tell their cousins, in a half-built careers page and in two reviews. Planning it means finding out what is there and correcting what is false.
Where a candidate actually hears about you
Picture a press operator thinking of leaving an employer. Before applying to yours, the operator may ring someone who works or worked there, glance at your Google listing, and read the last job post they can find. You wrote or shaped little of that.
| Where | What the candidate hears | Who controls it | A fifteen-minute check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff and ex-staff | Pay date, supervisor's manner, whether leave is given | Nobody, but the owner shapes it daily | Ask three people what they would tell a friend |
| Google listing | A star score and a few lines | You can reply, not delete | Search your name plus "reviews" on a phone |
| Job posts | The role, pay and tone | You | Read your newest post as a stranger |
| Careers page or site | What you say about yourself | You | Does it name the work, the place and the next step? |
| The interview | How the manager treats a visitor | The interviewer | Did it start on time, and was the job explained? |
| WhatsApp groups | Who works here, who left | Partly you | Count how many left within a year of joining |
Look down the "Who controls it" column. Most of it is what you do daily, not what you publish.
The say-and-hear sheet
This is the artefact to use first. Make two columns on one page. In the left column, write what you tell candidates about five things: pay, hours, the manager, growth, and what the work is like. In the right column, write what a staff member or ex-staff member would say if a friend rang them. Fill the right column by asking, not by guessing.
Wherever the columns disagree, one of them is wrong. Change the left column if you were exaggerating, or change the job if the right column describes something you would be ashamed of. Do not argue with the right column. It is the one candidates believe.
A printing and packaging press in Sivakasi
This is an invented firm, not a client. Fifty people, offset machines, a pre-press room and a finishing floor. The owner needs a press operator and a pre-press designer, and gets few applications. The owner thinks the town has run out of skilled people, and fills in the say-and-hear sheet.
On pay the owner says "paid on the first". Staff agree. On hours the owner says "general shift". Staff say the general shift becomes a late one when a big order is on the press, and no one is told in advance. On the manager the owner says "friendly". Staff say the floor supervisor explains a new machine properly and does not shout. On growth, nothing is said, and staff say a pre-press trainee became a senior in three years.
The Google listing has two reviews, both about a bonus delay in an earlier year. The job post copies another press's wording, down to a phrase about "state of the art machinery".
What was wrong is not hard to see. The best facts, on-time pay, a supervisor who explains and a visible route up, appeared nowhere a candidate could read, while the late shifts surprised people on the first Saturday. The owner rewrote the post using the staff's own words, added a line saying late shifts happen when a big order is on, and said how they are paid. The old review got an answer about what had changed, and two long-serving operators agreed to take a call from an applicant. There was no film.
The result was modest. Over the next month three more people applied, one was worth interviewing, and one withdrew after reading the late-shift line. That is the line doing its job, but it also means the pile did not grow as much as the owner hoped.
What employer branding is not
It is not a video with background music and a slogan about family. A candidate who reads "we are a family" and then hears a supervisor shouting at the gate has no reason to believe the rest.
It is not a replacement for fair pay or clear roles. If pay is below the market and the role keeps changing, branding only brings the disappointment sooner. Fix the job before you advertise it.
What to fix first
- Read your last three job posts as a stranger. If you cannot tell pay, place and hours, rewrite them.
- Search your company on a phone. Reply, calmly and factually, to any open review.
- Fill in the say-and-hear sheet.
- Check that what you promise in interviews matches day one.
- Only then look at photographs, a careers page or paid advertising. For that choice, see employer branding or recruitment advertising, and for the same search from the candidate's side, what candidates check before accepting an offer.
When this is not worth the effort
If you hire one or two people a year, all through people you already know, you need less than this. Write honest job posts, answer reviews and be straight in interviews. If staff leave because of how they are managed, branding will not hold them, and the first work is there.
Start with the sheet
Fill in the say-and-hear sheet this week, and ask three people for the right-hand column. The employer branding hub takes it further. If you want help seeing how your company is read from outside, employer branding is the service for that, and you can tell us what you need.
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