While everyone assumes Google and Apple have recruiting on easy mode, the reality is far more complex. Both big-name brands and lesser-known employers face hiring challenges that can make or break their growth plans.
Brand recognition seems like the ultimate recruiting advantage. When candidates instantly recognize your company name, surely they’ll flock to your job postings, right?
Well maybe, but that’s only part of the story. Google gets 3 million resumes a year but struggles to fill roles. Meanwhile Tiny-Town-in-Ohio Engineering LLC might receive only five applications, interview them immediately, and fill the role inside a week.
Research consistently shows that job seekers consider a company’s employer brand when applying for a job, so the household names should have a head start. But reality is nuanced, and the relationship between brand recognition and recruiting success is more complex than most organizations realize.
Hiring Without Recognition Is Tough
When nobody knows you, hiring can feel like shouting into the wind. Candidates are around 40% more likely to apply for positions at companies they recognize versus those they haven’t heard of. Right from the get-go, lesser-known organizations must work exponentially harder to capture attention.
The visibility challenge
The challenge starts with basic visibility. Candidates spend at least some time investigating employers, even if they are using ChatGPT. But they typically only do this research after initial interest is sparked. For unknown companies, that spark may never happen. For startups and companies with a sparse digital presence, there’s another problem – artificial intelligence and search engines won’t have much to go on. Unfamiliar companies simply don’t surface as attractive or trustworthy options, and candidates may never move beyond the first scroll or swipe.
The credibility gap
Beyond application volume, unknown companies face a credibility gap. Candidates worry about career stability, growth prospects and the all-important question of whether the role will enhance their resume. Salary is only one area where the lesser-known company must compete – they must work hard to create alternative value propositions in place of brand prestige.
Hiring challenges
Overall, there’s just more skepticism around no-name employers, and they encounter a particular set of obstacles in their hiring efforts:
- Less organic traffic coming to their jobs and fewer inbound applications.
- Forced to cast wider nets and invest more heavily in sourcing.
- Difficulties engaging passive candidates.
- Candidate pools skewing junior, as experienced applicants seek the prestige of bigger names.
- Meeting expectations on salary and benefits.
- Building trust.
- Selling the culture (and finding the right culture match).
- Keeping talent in the pipeline – offers are frequently declined in favor of established names.
When Brand Recognition Becomes a Burden
Well-known companies face a completely different set of challenges, many of which ironically stem from their success. Brand recognition creates a whole bunch of expectations and assumptions that can complicate hiring efforts no matter how many candidates you attract.
The expectations game
Take Google for example. Those 3 million job applications create massive filtering and processing requirements. High application volumes can overwhelm recruiting teams and create bottlenecks that actually slow down hiring – but candidates applying to prestigious companies expect exceptional candidate experiences. When reality falls short of these heightened expectations, disappointment (and negative reviews) quickly follow.
Almost every former candidate at Google comments on how slow the recruiting process was. Google has enough star power that good candidates may stick through it; others may not be so lucky.
Candidates have preconceived ideas
Preconceived notions can also get in the way. Candidates form fixed opinions about what it means to work at famous companies, but their expectations are formed from being a customer at the company, not a potential employee. These experiences may be wildly different or even conflicting. For example, L’Oréal’s Global Employer Branding Manager frequently encounters the misconception that employees must be obsessed with beauty to work there, which is not especially helpful when you’re hiring a data engineer to optimize warehouse inventory systems.
Competition intensity
Well-known companies often compete directly against each other for the same talent pools. The tech world is famous for cannibalizing staff – 26.51% of Meta’s workforce has previously worked at another tech giant, for instance – illustrating the constant talent circulation among major players. Top candidates routinely field multiple offers, and the winners are those who can move fastest and pay more.
Hiring challenges
The difficulties big-name recruiters face are different but no less challenging:
- Dog-eat-dog competition.
- High application volumes created by broad brand appeal.
- Meeting candidate experience expectations.
- Maintaining employer brand consistency across multiple touchpoints.
- Multiple approval layers and complex interview processes.
- Balancing the need for both speed and quality in recruiting.
- Finding the right cultural fit –candidates aren’t always honest about their motivations to work for an attractive brand.
Building a Sustainable Competitive Advantage
It’s not all doom and gloom for the little fish – or the big fish either, for that matter.
Lesser-known players offer autonomy and impact that large corporations often cannot match. Employees often enjoy broader responsibilities and direct access to leadership; those coming in at the start-up stage get an opportunity to shape company culture from the ground up. The key lies in authentically communicating these benefits rather than fighting against it or trying to mimic established brands. The following strategies should help.
#1. Build an Effective Employer Value Proposition (EVP)
When people think about employer branding, they imagine flashy career pages and marketing campaigns. But “brand” is really about perception, and perception starts with clarity around your organization’s mission, culture, and the impact a candidate can have. Some candidates will always care about their employer’s size and status, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. A far greater number are motivated by different considerations. They want to know:
- Will I fit in here?
- Will my work matter here?
- Is this company going places?
- Will my career benefit from me working here?
EVPs are typically composed of four interrelated factors: material offerings (salary, benefits, perks, flexibility, schedules), development opportunities (training, job rotations, promotions, skills development), community (inclusion and belonging, what the team is like, social relationships), and meaning and purpose (why the work matters, people and communities you serve). Lesser-known organizations can often win on autonomy, impact and authentic culture, while larger ones naturally excel at competitive compensation, development programs, and global mobility — though they might also throw significant resources behind the other elements to craft an all-round attractive EVP.
We’ve written before about crafting an EVP — see our deep dive Defining Your EVP: How to Craft a Magnetic Employer Value Proposition for tips and learnings on what Fortune 500s are doing in this area. Working through the steps can make up for a lack of brand recognition. In fact, lesser-known companies and startups often have a unique storytelling advantage — they can showcase the journey and invite candidates to be a part of it, instead of relying on a legacy or prestige the candidate didn’t help create.
#2: Make sure your career site reinforce your values and culture
Career sites represent a critical battleground where the advantages and disadvantages of brand recognition play out most clearly. For unknown companies, the career site serves as the primary introduction to the organization, and must work hard to establish credibility. For familiar brands, this is the place to weed out the wannabes and dispel all the myths and stereotypes so only genuinely motivated candidates move forward, and those candidates get a clear, authentic look at what working there is really like.
So what specific strategies can you use to improve candidate engagement and quality application rates? Here are some best practices:
- Position your EVP prominently on the homepage and job listing areas, where visitors immediately understand what makes working at your company distinctive.
- Add project examples, promotion rates, community outreach, specific learning programs, technologies, examples of career growth, founder stories, etc. to back up your EVP claims.
- Add videos, quotes and narratives from current employees, providing tangible evidence of what it’s really like to work there.
- Include voices from various backgrounds, job roles and experience levels to create an emotional connection, and so different candidate segments can “see themselves” in the role.
- Incorporate relevant keywords naturally within job descriptions to improve search visibility.
- Make it really easy for candidates to apply. Place calls to action (Apply Now / Join Our Team) throughout the site and remove any barriers, such as account creation screens and multi-step requirements that could drive candidates to abandon the process.
- Keep content fresh and updated to engage returning candidates and support any urgent hiring needs. Old PR pieces and stale blog posts give the impression of neglect or worse, signal to candidates that you aren’t invested in their experience.
#3. Leverage employee advocacy
Some of the best advocates for your organization can be your own employees. Chances are they’re already on social media and talking about their work, so why not harness their voices to amplify the organization in your industry or location? Your own employees offer a unique “inside look” that’s far more persuasive than any corporate marketing, especially when your company is unfamiliar to potential candidates.
If you’re starting from scratch with employee advocacy, it’s a good idea to get executives involved. This signals that employee advocacy is a true company priority and inspires team members at all levels to join in. To keep advocacy an active part of your recruitment marketing, offer simple incentives to encourage participation – try offering gift cards, merchandise, tickets and team outings. Employee referral bonuses are common if team members bring in quality candidates or hires.
Obviously, you want your team to post authentic, not scripted, posts. Candidates appreciate honest discussions about projects, teams, activities, success and challenges. Establish guardrails around what’s appropriate to share, then give employees room to speak genuinely and in their own voice.
For unknown businesses, employee advocacy is a win-win. It’s an opportunity to boost brand awareness and potentially discover new hires, and data shows that employees who take an active part of advocacy programmes are far more likely to stay at their company.
Big Brand or Bootstrap – Smart Employer Branding Wins
Building an employer brand that stands out among bigger, flashier competitors takes patience and imagination, but you don’t need a massive budget to get results. Career sites need more creativity than investment, and word of mouth is free. But even if you’re rolling in Google’s billions, the basics are the same. Pretend you’re the candidate and ask – Do I trust this company? Are there good opportunities? Can I see myself working here? Selling your strengths in these areas can make all the difference, basic as it seems.
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