Category: Candidate Attraction

Employer Brand Social Media Strategy: Tactics for Building Your Buzz

Posted on by jpatel

Candidates can see and engage with your brand at hundreds of touchpoints before ever seeing a job posting or visiting your career page. Prospective employees research companies extensively through social media, employee reviews and digital content long before they consider applying. With remote and hybrid work now standard, an organization’s digital presence has become the primary way candidates form impressions about company culture and values. While this shift may sound daunting at first, digital recruitment marketing and the rise of social media mean organizations today can spread their message and establish a strong knowledge of their employer brand with prospective candidates—often before those candidates even think about looking for a job. Regardless of the economic climate and whether we’re experiencing talent shortages or market abundance, a strong employer brand social media strategy is imperative to an employer’s recruitment mix.

Building Your Employer Brand Social Media Strategy

Regardless of the platform, simply posting job openings isn’t going to cut it. Instead, think about how you can best show prospects what it’s truly like to work for your organization—whether that means showcasing your hybrid work culture, office environment, or remote team collaboration. In addition to insightful thought leadership, share employee activities, first-person stories, and authentic content that shows candidates how they can contribute and connect to your company in ways beyond their skills.

Let’s look deeper into how you can improve your employer brand social media presence on each of the five major social media channels and how you can utilize each of their unique features to your benefit.

LinkedIn

As the largest professional network, LinkedIn remains unmatched for B2B employer branding. With more than 900 million registered users globally, nearly half of whom are active monthly, it’s the number one platform to reach both passive and active prospective candidates across all experience levels.

Reach more candidates by:

  • Posting career advice and industry insights
  • Encouraging employee advocacy and content sharing
  • Using LinkedIn’s native video and document features
  • Leveraging LinkedIn Stories and newsletters
  • Optimizing your company page with relevant keywords
  • Utilizing LinkedIn Live for virtual events and Q&As

Instagram

With over 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram has become essential for reaching talent and showcasing company culture visually. The platform’s engagement rates consistently outperform other networks, making it ideal for building authentic connections with potential candidates through visual storytelling.

Engage employees and candidates with:

  • Instagram Stories and Reels (the platform’s fastest-growing features)
  • Story highlights for evergreen content
  • Creative feed posts and carousel content
  • Instagram Live sessions
  • IGTV for longer-form content
  • Comments, DMs and interactive stickers
  • Behind-the-scenes content and employee takeovers

TikTok

With over 1 billion monthly active users and the fastest-growing user base among social platforms, TikTok has become crucial for reaching Gen Z and millennial talent. The platform’s algorithm-driven content discovery makes it possible for employer brand content to reach massive audiences organically.

Capture attention and showcase culture with:

  • Short-form video content (15-60 seconds)
  • Trending sounds and hashtags
  • “Day in the life” employee content
  • Behind-the-scenes workplace footage
  • Company culture challenges and trends
  • Authentic, unpolished content that feels genuine
  • Employee-generated content and takeovers

X (formerly Twitter)

With approximately 450 million monthly active users worldwide, Twitter remains valuable for real-time engagement and thought leadership. The platform’s fast-paced nature makes it ideal for sharing timely insights, participating in industry conversations, and showcasing your company’s voice and values.

Utilize:

  • Industry conversations and trending topics
  • Twitter Spaces for live audio discussions
  • Thread-style content for deeper insights
  • Retweets with thoughtful commentary
  • Quick responses to showcase company personality
  • Employee advocacy through authentic sharing

Facebook

With nearly 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers the largest potential reach and sophisticated targeting capabilities. While younger demographics have shifted away from the platform, it remains valuable for reaching experienced professionals and building community around your employer brand.

To showcase your industry expertise as well as your company culture, take advantage of:

  • Facebook Groups for building professional communities
  • Facebook Live for virtual events and behind-the-scenes content
  • Detailed targeting options for recruitment advertising
  • Facebook Events for job fairs and company events
  • Employee advocacy through sharing and tagging
  • Facebook Insights for detailed analytics and optimization

Case Study: Employer Brand Social Media Strategy in Action

The Challenge: The UK Civil Service Fast Stream graduate program had no shortage of applicants, but faced a critical diversity problem. Research revealed that underrepresented groups perceived the Civil Service as “stuffy,” “outdated,” and only accessible to elite backgrounds—despite the organization’s goal to reflect the communities they serve.

The Employer Brand Social Media Strategy: Rather than traditional graduate recruitment advertising, PeopleScout developed an innovative influencer marketing approach specifically designed to reach diverse talent where they already engage online.

Key Tactics:

  • Partnered with Vee Kativhu, a YouTube influencer and Oxford graduate who advocates for underrepresented students, to create authentic “day in the life” content
  • Leveraged her 250,000+ YouTube subscribers plus Instagram and LinkedIn networks
  • Amplified reach through 12 diverse nano-influencers with targeted followings
  • Created genuine, behind-the-scenes content that challenged preconceptions about government work

Results That Matter:

  • 3,200+ increase in applications from diverse backgrounds
  • 18,056 views on YouTube in less than 48 hours (36,000+ total)
  • 351,304 social media impressions across the campaign
  • Significant increase in candidate diversity, including ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and those with disabilities or from lower socio-economic backgrounds
employer brand social media

Why It Worked: By meeting candidates on platforms they already trusted and using voices they could relate to, the Civil Service transformed perceptions and attracted talent that traditional job postings never could have reached. The campaign proved that innovative social media strategies can solve complex diversity challenges while staying cost-effective.

Conclusion: Employer Brand & Social Media

It’s no secret that candidates are going to research your organization prior to applying for any of your positions or even considering you as a potential employer. By balancing postings on job boards with an employer brand social media strategy and other touchpoints along the hiring process, you can create a well-respected online presence that accurately represents your employer brand and company culture. So, the next time a candidate researches your company, reads reviews or looks at what current employees are saying online, rest assured that a strong employer brand social media presence and strategic recruitment campaign will give you all you need to create a lasting impact in a candidate’s mind.

Project RPO in India Solves a Healthcare Tech Company’s Global Talent Challenges

Posted on by akessler
Project RPO in India Solves a Healthcare Tech Company's Global Talent Challenges

Project RPO in India

Project RPO in India Solves a Healthcare Tech Company’s Global Talent Challenges

Through a tailored project RPO in India, PeopleScout successfully recruited niche IT professionals across three Indian cities, coordinating complex interview schedules across three time zones.

Situation

A healthcare technology company needed a trusted recruitment partner to support their demand for skilled technology professionals across multiple Indian cities, including Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Their hiring needs ranged from technical consultants and senior database administrators to network engineers, software packagers, and senior business architects—all critical roles in the digital healthcare delivery chain.

The challenge was not just to find niche IT talent but since these roles support global operations for the client, they also needed help managing a complex, multi-location hiring process that spanned three time zones, including candidate pipelines in Finland. Coordinating interview schedules, managing time-sensitive communications, and ensuring a seamless experience for candidates and hiring panels required a recruitment partner with agility, precision and global alignment.

Solution

To meet the client’s technology hiring needs, PeopleScout deployed project RPO in India through our  Recruiter On-Demand™ (ROD) solution, tailored for the healthcare domain. Our delivery team collaborated with the client’s internal talent acquisition function, ensuring that all requisitions were aligned with the client’s project demands and compliance protocols.

One of the key aspects of our approach was the end-to-end coordination of interview logistics, including aligning schedules across Indian Standard Time (IST), Eastern European Time for operations in Finland, and U.S. time zones. This required meticulous planning and proactive communication to ensure a smooth interview process and minimal delays.

Additionally, PeopleScout provided strategic talent sourcing support to attract highly skilled professionals for roles such as senior database admins, business analysts, and senior business architect, utilizing a combination of targeted outreach, talent mapping and employer branding techniques to engage the ideal candidates. Our team also conducted pre-screens and assessments, ensuring candidates were not only technically sound but also culturally aligned with the client’s values and work ethos.

Results

The success of the engagement was evident through positive feedback from both the candidate community and the client’s interview panelists. Our ability to streamline interview coordination across borders and source high-quality candidates helped reduce time-to-fill for several critical roles.

Impressed by the quality of talent delivered and the professionalism in execution, the client extended PeopleScout’s mandate, increasing the volume and scope of roles. We are now managing end-to-end candidate sourcing for a broader set of positions, serving as a trusted advisor to the client’s talent acquisition leaders for both immediate needs and long-term workforce planning.

This collaboration not only addressed the client’s initial hiring challenge but also laid the foundation for a scalable recruitment strategy that aligns with their mission to transform healthcare through technology.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Healthcare Technology Company
  • INDUSTRY
    Technology
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Amplifiers
  • LOCATIONS
    Multiple locations across India, including Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad
  • ABOUT THE CLIENT
    As a leading data, analytics, and technology partner to the global healthcare industry, this organization is helping the healthcare sector—from providers and payers to public health institutions—make smarter decisions that improve patient outcomes and drive innovation. With a workforce of approximately 3,000 employees spread across five locations in three countries, they play a pivotal role in shaping the future of digital healthcare transformation.
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Scaling Healthcare Recruitment in India: Meeting Regional Challenges with Local Solutions

Posted on by akessler
Scaling Healthcare Recruitment in India: Meeting Regional Challenges with Local Solutions

Healthcare Recruitment in India

Scaling Healthcare Recruitment in India: Meeting Regional Challenges with Local Solutions

Through a strategic healthcare recruitment initiative in India, PeopleScout delivered qualified multilingual talent for 220+ hearing clinics while maintaining less than 5% candidate drop-off rate.

Situation

A hearing care provider was looking to deepen its reach across India where it operates over 220 clinics, providing expert audiological services and a diverse range of hearing aids to customers with varying degrees of hearing loss.

The organization was encountering significant challenges in recruiting for customer-facing roles, especially in certain cities. These roles not only required professionals with strong service acumen but also with regional language proficiency to deliver personalized care. Given the diversity of the Indian landscape—linguistically and culturally—recruiting the right talent with the appropriate communication skills became a critical priority.

Simultaneously, the client was undergoing a restructuring of its sales and administrative delivery model, thereby requiring urgent, geography-specific hires to avoid any disruption in service continuity and sales performance.

The client needed a recruitment partner who could mobilize quickly, understand local hiring dynamics and execute with precision.

Solution

The client engaged PeopleScout to deliver targeted recruitment process outsourcing in India. Our team collaborated with the client’s HR and talent acquisition leaders to map out hiring demand by geography, clinic size and role type.

We were tasked with hiring for three key roles—customer service executives, customer advisors, and healthcare roles like audiologists—with specific requirements around language fluency, cultural fit and interpersonal skills. PeopleScout leveraged its deep network of recruiters across India, implementing a hyperlocal sourcing strategy and tapping into regional job portals, local social media groups and community networks.

Additionally, we conducted structured pre-screening assessments to ensure that candidates met both the soft skills and technical criteria. Throughout the process, we maintained seamless coordination with the client’s talent acquisition team, ensuring a positive candidate experience and minimizing drop-offs.

Results

Through this partnership, PeopleScout was able to accelerate the client’s hiring timelines, meeting and exceeding expectations for the swift placement of qualified talent in hard-to-fill geographies. We helped ensure uninterrupted operations at the clinic level, enhancing the client’s customer satisfaction levels.

Our proactive approach to candidate engagement and regional customization resulted in less than 5% candidate drop-off rate and consistently high feedback from the client’s hiring managers.

The strategic alignment between our delivery teams and the client’s evolving needs allowed us to expand our delivery—demonstrating our flexibility commitment, and value as a long-term talent partner. PeopleScout continues to scale its support for this client across India, delivering talent that aligns with the client’s mission of accessible, personalized hearing care.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Medical Device Company
  • INDUSTRY
    Healthcare
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • LOCATIONS
    220 clinics across India
  • ABOUT THE CLIENT
    As part of a globally renowned hearing care conglomerate, the client is a pioneer in digital hearing aid technology with a strong presence across 29 countries and a workforce of 16,000 employees worldwide. Headquartered in Italy, the organization is dedicated to transforming lives through personalized hearing care solutions.
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Project Recruitment in India: Solving a Global Fintech’s Hiring Challenges

Posted on by akessler
Project Recruitment in India: Solving a Global Fintech's Hiring Challenges

Project RPO

Project Recruitment in India: Solving a Global Fintech’s Hiring Challenges

PeopleScout’s tailored project recruitment in India enabled a fintech organization to scale hiring operations while maintaining quality during peak demand periods.

Situation

A leading global fin-tech organization was experiencing rapid digital transformation and market expansion on top of seasonal spikes in hiring demand and the ongoing need to acquire niche technology talent. These included complex roles in cyber security, AWS, product development, quality assurance and product management.

The internal talent acquisition team was struggling to manage surge hiring, maintain speed without compromising on quality and find specialized talent within India’s highly competitive technology landscape. Another critical issue was navigating the long notice periods in India, which often led to candidate drop-offs and delays in onboarding.

The company turned to PeopleScout for a flexible, high-touch recruitment solution that would strengthen their talent pipeline while also acting as a consultative partner to manage local market complexities.

Solution

To meet these objectives, PeopleScout deployed our Recruiter On-Demand™ (ROD) solution tailored to suit the client’s business and talent priorities. Our India-based team partnered with their internal talent acquisition function, aligning on hiring needs, internal processes and cultural expectations.

The engagement focused on recruiting for tech and digital talent including over 35 critical roles across technology, technical support, production support and solutions consulting. PeopleScout’s recruiters operated as an extension of the client’s talent acquisition team, offering end-to-end support from requisition intake to offer rollout—ensuring strict adherence to policies, brand voice and compliance standards.

Leveraging the client’s global EVP and employer branding strategies, PeopleScout recruiters enhanced candidate outreach across major platforms like LinkedIn and Naukri, a leading employment website in India, resulting in stronger engagement and improved visibility among passive candidates. The team also worked proactively to identify strategies to mitigate notice period risks, thereby improving offer-to-join conversion rates.

Results

Through the ROD partnership, PeopleScout enabled the organization to scale hiring operations with agility and control, ensuring consistent quality while managing peak season demands. The seamless collaboration between their internal teams and PeopleScout recruiters contributed to faster turnaround times, better candidate experiences and higher stakeholder satisfaction.

PeopleScout’s India-based delivery team evolved into a trusted advisor to the client’s talent acquisition leadership, offering strategic insights on local talent market trends, salary benchmarks and onboarding practices. This guidance has been instrumental in mitigating the impact of long notice periods, allowing the client to make informed decisions around offer strategy and candidate engagement.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Global FinTech
  • INDUSTRY
    Technology
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Amplifiers
  • LOCATIONS
    India
  • ABOUT THE CLIENT
    A global leader in technology-driven payment solutions that enable smart and secure money movement. With a strong presence in over 200 countries and operations in more than 140 currencies, the client has established an international footprint backed by a global workforce of 2,000+ employees spread across 36 locations.
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Bridging the Gap: Modular RPO for Hard-to-Fill Positions 

Posted on by akessler

The competition for skilled talent continues to intensify, with LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends reporting that 76% of hiring managers struggle to find qualified candidates for their most challenging positions. This talent shortage affects organizations across industries, particularly when recruiting for roles requiring specialized knowledge, rare skill combinations, or experience in emerging fields. 

Many internal recruitment teams excel at handling standard hiring needs but face significant challenges with specialist or hard-to-fill positions. According to a recent McKinsey survey, 68% of talent acquisition leaders acknowledge limitations within their teams when tackling these difficult searches. Even well-resourced internal teams may lack the specialized networks, market insights and targeted approaches needed to successfully attract candidates for these positions. 

This is where modular RPO solutions offer strategic value. Unlike traditional full-service RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) models, modular RPO allows organizations to selectively outsource specific components of their recruitment process. This targeted approach enables companies to augment their in-house capabilities with external expertise precisely where they need additional support, while maintaining control over their broader recruitment strategy and employer brand. 

Build vs. Buy: The Case for Modular RPO  

Building in-house capabilities to handle all recruitment challenges involves substantial investment that may not deliver optimal returns. Organizations must consider whether dedicating internal resources to occasional hard-to-fill roles makes financial sense, especially when these specialized recruitment needs fluctuate. 

Modular RPO solutions provide a flexible alternative that complements existing recruitment teams. Benefits include: 

  • On-demand access to specialized expertise without increasing permanent headcount 
  • Scalable support that adjusts to hiring volume fluctuations 
  • Predictable fee structures for better budget management 
  • Ability to keep in-house recruiters focused on positions where they excel 

For challenging recruitment needs—particularly those that are intermittent or require specialized approaches—modular RPO delivers compelling value through faster hiring, higher-quality candidates and a cost structure that aligns with actual business demands. 

Use Cases for Modular RPO 

Understanding which roles or parts of your recruitment process would benefit most from modular RPO interventions, like PeopleScout Amplifiers™, is the first step toward an effective talent acquisition strategy. Here are just a few areas where an RPO partner can deliver value: 

In-Demand Technical Roles & Emerging Skill Sets with Limited Talent Pools 

Modular RPO solutions excel when it comes to sourcing positions in high-demand technical domains like software development, cybersecurity, data science and cloud architecture. This approach is particularly valuable when recruiting for emerging specialties with limited talent pools like quantum computing specialists, blockchain developers or AI ethics experts. 

These specialized roles require targeted sourcing strategies and access to niche communities. Rather than having your in-house recruiters spend extensive time finding and engaging passive candidates, consider outsourcing the sourcing stage through a modular RPO engagement. For example, PeopleScout’s Talent Sourcing solution provides dedicated recruitment specialists who identify qualified candidates and generate excitement about your opportunities. This delivers a personalized candidate experience while providing you with a curated list of qualified, enthusiastic applicants. 

Positions with Compliance Requirements 

Industries like healthcare, financial services and pharmaceuticals operate under strict regulatory frameworks that add complexity to the hiring process. Beyond finding qualified talent, recruiters must navigate industry-specific regulations and compliance requirements, as well as ensuring candidates have necessary certifications. Even in less regulated industries and high-volume hiring scenarios, recruiters are required to ensure confirm background checks and right-to-work document verification has been completed.  

Modular RPO solutions can target these specific administrative compliance tasks without requiring a full-scale outsourcing engagement. PeopleScout’s Recruiter On-Demand™ solution allows you to supplement your team with experienced project-based recruitment professionals. This solution can be implemented quickly for short-term needs, giving you targeted RPO benefits precisely where they’re needed in your recruitment process. 

Roles Requiring Specialized Assessment Solutions 

Positions that require unique assessment approaches—such as technical roles requiring coding tests or roles demanding simulation exercises—benefit from RPO providers with expertise in designing and delivering custom talent assessment solutions. These partners can create evaluation protocols that effectively measure both technical competencies and cultural fit. 

Assessment-focused modular RPO services can help organizations implement tailored evaluation methods. For example, PeopleScout’s Assessment Transformation helps organizations deploy talent assessments that not only enhance the recruitment experience for candidates but also accurately assess candidate capabilities. By outsourcing just this component of the recruitment process, you can enhance your ability to identify truly qualified candidates with the right skills and aptitudes. 

Strategic Advantages of Modular RPO 

Organizations that strategically leverage modular RPO gain a significant advantage in securing hard-to-find talent. By selectively enhancing your recruitment capabilities with specialized expertise exactly where needed, you can overcome persistent hiring challenges while maximizing the effectiveness of your internal team. 

Ready to transform your approach to hard-to-fill roles? Explore PeopleScout’s Amplifiers™ suite of modular RPO solutions, designed to provide targeted expertise exactly when and where you need it most.  

The Essential Guide to Employer Branding From Concept to Competitive Advantage 

Posted on by akessler

The Essential Guide to Employer Branding 

From Concept to Competitive Advantage

In today’s competitive talent landscape, your employer brand isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential for survival. Our comprehensive ebook delivers actionable strategies to revolutionize how candidates perceive your organization.

 

Why This Guide Matters to Your Organization:

  • 82% of candidates research your reputation before applying
  • Companies with strong employer brands see a 43% decrease in cost-per-hire
  • Yet only 8% of HR leaders have dedicated employer branding budgets

 

What You’ll Discover:

  • Proven frameworks to align your employer brand with business objectives
  • Practical strategies to authentically showcase your culture across channels
  • Step-by-step approaches to measure and optimize your employer brand ROI
  • Real-world case studies from organizations that transformed their talent attraction

 

While your competition invests in employer branding, can you afford to fall behind? Download our guide today and build the magnetic employer brand your organization deserves.

Beyond Intuition: Data-Driven Employer Branding for the Modern Talent Landscape 

Posted on by akessler

With the research today’s candidates do before applying, a strong employer brand is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s essential. Your employer brand directly impacts your ability to attract and retain top talent, yet for many talent acquisition leaders, demonstrating the value of employer branding remains challenging.  

How do you quantify something that often feels intangible? How do you translate employer brand sentiment into metrics that resonate with stakeholders outside HR? 

The Employer Branding Paradox 

Despite 80% of HR leaders believing employer branding significantly impacts their recruiting efforts, only 8% report having a dedicated budget for these initiatives. This disconnect highlights a fundamental challenge: without concrete metrics and benchmarks, employer branding can be relegated to a “nice-to-have” rather than recognized as the strategic driver of recruitment success that it truly is. 

The reality is that today’s candidates approach job searches with consumer-like behavior. They research, compare and evaluate potential employers with unprecedented thoroughness.  

Your employer brand is front and center whether you’re actively managing it or not. 

From Gut Feel to Data-Driven Strategy 

For too long, employer branding has relied on subjective assessments and anecdotal evidence. Leaders might know intuitively that their brand needs improvement, but without comparative data, it’s difficult to: 

  • Identify specific areas requiring attention 
  • Prioritize investments for maximum impact
  • Demonstrate ROI to key stakeholders 
  • Track progress over time 
  • Understand how you stack up against competitors 

This is precisely why we’ve developed the Outthink Index—a proprietary benchmarking tool designed to transform employer branding strategy from an art to a science. 

Introducing the Outthink Index by PeopleScout 

The Outthink Index by PeopleScout provides comprehensive analysis across nine critical components of employer branding: 

  1. Search: Are your job openings easy to find in digital spaces? 
  2. Social Reach: What’s the breadth of your social media footprint? Are you achieving significant reach through interactions and engagement across audiences? 
  3. Social Authority: How much of the conversation does your brand own compared to competitors? How influential is your voice in the talent marketplace? 
  4. Social Impact: How effectively does your content engage your audience? Are you interacting with your talent audience on social media or just posting? 
  5. Values & Proposition: How clearly articulated and differentiated is your EVP? Are your values clear, authentic and evidenced? 
  6. Employee Experience: Can candidates get a clear understanding of what life is like within your organization?  
  7. Content: How compelling and relevant is your employer brand content? How authentically does it showcase your organization and your employees? 
  8. User Experience: How seamless and intuitive is your career site and application process?   
  9. Candidate Experience: How transparent, consistent and innovative is your recruitment process? 

Built by our in-house talent advisory experts and leveraging data from hundreds of employer brands, the Outthink Index delivers actionable insights with just a few clicks. 

Translating Insights to Action 

One of the most valuable aspects of the Outthink Index is its comparative nature. While self-assessment can identify obvious gaps, true optimization comes from understanding how you measure against both industry benchmarks and specific competitors. 

The real power of data-driven employer branding isn’t just in the metrics—it’s in what you do with them. The Outthink Index is designed to facilitate more productive conversations with stakeholders by providing concrete evidence of: 

  • Current employer brand strengths and weaknesses 
  • Competitive positioning within your industry 
  • Specific improvement opportunities with the highest potential ROI 
  • Progress tracking over time 

The Outthink Index helps companies to transcend gut instincts and harness concrete insights to maximize their employer brand. It provides organizations with precise visibility into how their brand measures up against competitors, highlights specific enhancement opportunities, and ultimately strengthens their capacity to attract and retain exceptional talent. 

Armed with these insights, talent leaders can make more strategic decisions about where to invest resources, how to refine messaging and which touchpoints in the candidate journey need the most attention.  

The Future of Employer Branding is Data-Driven 

Employer branding isn’t a one-time project but an ongoing strategic initiative. The Outthink Index provides both a snapshot of current performance and a framework for optimizing and measuring progress over time. By establishing clear benchmarks today, organizations can track the impact of their employer branding initiatives, demonstrate concrete ROI and continuously refine their approach. 

As the competition for talent continues to intensify, organizations that take a data-driven approach to employer branding will gain a significant advantage. The Outthink Index by PeopleScout equips talent leaders with the tools they need to transform employer branding from an intangible concept to a measurable business driver. 

Want to see how your employer brand stacks up? Explore the Outthink Index or contact us to receive your custom report. 

Wates: Reconstructing Industry Perceptions Through Vibrant Employer Branding

Posted on by akessler
Wates: Reconstructing Industry Perceptions Through Vibrant Employer Branding

Early Careers

Wates: Reconstructing Industry Perceptions Through Vibrant Employer Branding

PeopleScout helped Wates to attract and engage a wider range of candidates to the male-dominated construction industry through a vibrant and inclusive employer brand and assessment center.

7,918 applications generated (30% from women)
343 candidates assessed
1 / 3 of offers went to women despite being underrepresented in the industry

Situation

The construction industry’s image has remained virtually unchanged for years—dominated by hard-hats, high-vis, and steel beams rather than stories highlighting inclusion, innovation, collaboration or opportunity.

When Wates, a UK development, building and property maintenance company, needed to recruit 81 trainees across 21 roles and 28 locations, our priority was to stand out meaningfully in a crowded market. Despite its impressive 125-year legacy as an industry leader, Wates suffered from limited brand awareness.

Our objectives were clear:

  • Raise overall awareness of the Wates organization
  • Encourage a shift in industry perception
  • Attract a more diverse range of candidates

Solution

With these hard-to-fill roles distributed nationwide, we needed a targeted approach. Based on research, we developed four distinct audience personas that represented our target demographics, which then informed our channel strategy and creative approach.

Authentic Messaging

We crafted a new compelling, narrative that brought together everything Wates stands for:

Creating tomorrow together.

Headlines embodied Wates’ core values, speaking directly to the impact individuals would have on the company’s legacy while highlighting key benefits of joining the organization.

Distinctive Visual Identity

We developed bold, vibrant visuals that stood apart from industry norms. Our creative approach demonstrated how professional and personal lives intertwine, visually representing work-life balance and inclusivity. A dedicated photoshoot allowed us to not only capture images but also collect employee stories that inspired a bespoke set of illustrations.

Inclusive Assessment Process

We redesigned the video interview process to ensure accessibility for all candidates. While maintaining a standardized process to ensure fairness, each of the 21 roles required careful manual shortlisting based on performance metrics. With 343 candidates advancing to assessment, we conducted virtual assessment centers over three weeks, with each role getting a dedicated day.

Results

The campaign generated exceptional engagement:

  • 518,000 impressions (40% from TikTok)
  • 7,918 applications
  • 2,022 candidates invited to video interview
  • 343 candidates progressed to assessment centers
  • 30% female representation at application stage, increasing to 34% at offer stage
  • 117 offers extended

“We’re delighted with the quality of candidate applications and how much the collaborative work ethic stood out.”

– Annette, Wates

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Wates
  • INDUSTRY
    Building & Construction
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT WATES
    The Wates Group was established in 1897 and is one of the leading privately-owned, construction, development and property services companies in the UK. They employ almost 6,000 people, working with a range of clients and partners from across the public and private sectors.
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