8 Employer Brand Story Devices Guaranteed to Hold Attention

Use these themes to set up some compelling content that engages candidates and paints an authentic picture of company culture and individual workplace experience...

How it feels now compared to before I achieved it

If you're writing an employee story focus on the benefit of the journey. It can be story gold, articulating how it felt before versus how it feels after it is a really good device. Navigate through from one to the other.

What I learned that I really wasn’t expecting

Surprise is innately interesting to people. It's a great way to create intrigue, and have an audience lean in and make the narrative a little bit more interesting or colourful. It also leaves the audience in an imaginative state and might spark ideas or a different way of reflecting on something and change somebody's perspective.

The difference between why I joined and why I stay

When we do our research, we discover a difference between why somebody joined and why they stayed. It is often one of the best ways to find out the real value of an organisation and then take that and put it front and centre. A way to authentically reinforce a genuine, authentic selling point from the mouths of employees.

The biggest mistake I eventually learned from

It leans into a safe space to fail. It's a great story device because it's firmly based around an obstacle or a challenge or an adversity that could evoke fear or a reason not to click apply. It paints a picture of potential career growth but also personal growth, learning and development and so on. And that type of thing appeals to our nature of wanting to further and improve ourselves. 

What I admire in team mates most

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it gives you a very clear sense of what to expect from a belonging point of view and of the culture of an organisation.  And two, it's usually a licence for the storyteller, i.e the employee, to talk about the values that they hold most dear to them. So, it's a really good way of getting to know the person that you're interviewing and gives you an opportunity to explore the value of that, taking that externally. It's a very clear window for people to look through to see what it might be like to work in that team or with that person.

What it is really like here at its worst

This has got a little bit of a shock value, like clickbait, a sort of freshness and honesty about it that will draw people in. It gives you a very authentic canvas to paint a balanced view, because the summary can be why you put up with it; are there benefits, how you thrive under those conditions, and so on. It's content that creates an opportunity to differentiate and get interest and traction. It's not something that typically people talk about. But it's probably the top thing people try and research when they go to the likes of Glassdoor and Comparably etc.

How people successfully deal with stress and pressure here

This is about leaning into the things that are usually brushed under the carpet. It’s a way of putting into context and acknowledging that there is stress and pressure, just as in every organisation, but anticipating a potential objection to working at a place, by offering up a solution and a reassurance that there's an answer to that stress and pressure. It is not just a pressure cooker, where people explode and leave. It's an interesting backdoor to being able to put your benefits front and centre in the context of people caring about that pressure, basically.

Start with a profound achievement and tell the story of how it happened

From a career progression perspective, or just personal growth and human-interest perspective, if the finish line is where you start, it's an opportunity to create intrigue, and the journey of how you got there is an opportunity to talk about career progression, support, management style, culture, and all the things that have contributed to that success. The reader can vicariously imagine themselves in those shoes and start to paint a picture of how they might progress their career in a similar situation.