Your Culture Is a Competitive
Advantage.
Most companies are losing candidates before a single conversation happens. MarketDesign's Employer Brand practice gives you a clear view of what candidates actually see — and a path to make sure your story gets told.
How you do what you do is who you are.
Nothing defines the experience of working at an organization more than how the people who work there feel — and talk — about it. Your employer brand is the promise you make to candidates and team members about what it means to be part of your organization.
The problem? Most employer brands exist only inside the building. What candidates find externally — on your careers page, your job descriptions, your Glassdoor profile, your social channels — tells a different story. Or no story at all.
What they find — or don't find — determines whether they click or walk away. Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and your careers page are the first interview.
A strong candidate experience directly influences whether your top choice says yes — before you've made an offer.
Time-to-fill, agency fees, productivity gaps, and bad hires all compound when your employer brand isn't doing its job.
Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the promise you make about opportunity and culture. Most organizations either don't have one, haven't deployed it externally, or have one that hasn't been pressure-tested for truth and relevance. MarketDesign closes that gap.
Exceptional internal culture is common. Exceptional external visibility about that culture is rare. The organizations that win talent are not necessarily the best places to work — they're the ones that make it obvious they are.
The Candidate
Journey
Building a healthy workforce is a perpetual cycle — not a linear process. A candidate who becomes a team member in Stage 6 becomes your referral source in Stage 8, feeding Stage 1 again. MarketDesign evaluates and optimizes every stage.
Employer Brand
Diagnostic
See your organization exactly the way candidates do — then fix what's costing you talent. MarketDesign's Employer Brand Diagnostic is a comprehensive, outside-in audit of every public-facing touchpoint a candidate encounters, conducted with no internal bias and no assumptions.
Can a candidate find you, understand you, and picture themselves here in 60 seconds?
Is there a story being told — or just job posts and silence? Are rogue accounts diluting your brand?
Do your JDs compel or repel? Are they written for the candidate or for a hiring manager checklist?
What does Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn say — and is anyone responding to it?
Is there a community a candidate can join — or does recruiting start from zero every time a role opens?
How many clicks? How much friction? Does anyone follow up — and how fast?
A fully branded PPTX ready for leadership — cover slide, candidate journey, methodology, one slide per touchpoint, cross-touchpoint SWOT, prioritized road map, next steps, and close. Speaker notes on every slide.
A shareable, self-contained web report with navigation anchors, candidate journey visualization, SWOT grids, and road map phase cards. Easy to navigate, easy to reference, easy to share with stakeholders who weren't in the room.
Strengths, gaps, opportunities, and risks mapped for each of the six areas — not as generic observations, but as specific findings framed from the candidate's point of view.
Three phases: fix now, build next, amplify. No vague recommendations. Every item is specific, sequenced, and actionable — tied to a stage of the candidate journey and a measurable outcome.
Employer Brand
Services
Whether you need a full diagnostic + activation program or a single deliverable to fill a gap, MarketDesign offers the full spectrum of employer brand services — standalone or as an integrated engagement.
- Employer Brand Explained — education + framing for your team
- Candidate Journey Map across all 8 stages
- Six-touchpoint external audit (no internal access)
- SWOT by touchpoint + cross-touchpoint synthesis
- Prioritized 3-phase road map
- Findings deck (PPTX) + interactive HTML report
- Live walkthrough presentation with your leadership team
- DEI lens available as expanded scope
- EVP Development — articulate your unique employer promise
- EVP Messaging + Deployment across all candidate touchpoints
- EVP Refresh for organizations with an existing but stale position
- Workshop facilitation (survey design, 1:1 interviews, scribing, synthesis)
- Messaging pillars + messaging components
- Strategy deck + road map for internal adoption
- Careers page content audit + rewrite
- Candidate-centric copywriting throughout
- EVP integration across all page sections
- Culture content strategy + production support
- Careers blog content planning + writing
- UGC (user-generated content) strategy
- Job description review + audit
- Batch rewrites using Candidate-Centered JD Framework
- "Anatomy of a Job Description" training workshops
- Candidate persona development by role type
- Salary transparency recommendations
- DEI language review + inclusive language consultation
- Social media content strategy — employer brand channel
- LinkedIn employer brand content + training
- Executive ghostwriting for talent-facing thought leadership
- LinkedIn strategy, content, and training
- Employer brand content calendar
- Employee ambassador program design
- Glassdoor + Fishbowl response program
- Reputation monitoring + management
- Talent community design + launch
- Boilerplate library for repeatable recruiting communication
- Contingent workforce branding + EVP for contractors
- Employee engagement surveys, focus groups + facilitation
Delivery
Framework
Every engagement begins with understanding what candidates see, what the market believes, and what your team knows that isn't visible externally yet. We never build before we audit. We never recommend before we listen.
Company basics, talent profile, pain points, brand context, competitive landscape.
Six touchpoints evaluated from the outside — no internal access, no bias.
Cross-touchpoint analysis, candidate drop-off risks, quick wins identified.
Three phases, sequenced by impact. Specific, actionable, measurable.
Both deliverables built. Live walkthrough. Implementation support available.
The Right Fit
for This Work
MarketDesign's employer brand practice is built for organizations with a real culture story that isn't translating externally and for the HR, People, and Marketing leaders who need a trusted partner to help them close that gap.
- High time-to-fill or poor pipeline quality
- Glassdoor reviews that don't reflect the real culture
- Onboarding issues tied to expectation mismatch
- Retention problems in competitive talent markets
- No formal EVP or an EVP that hasn't been deployed
- EB brief handed to marketing with no strategy behind it
- Careers content that reads like a client pitch
- Social channels that have no employer brand presence
- Need to integrate EB into existing brand + content systems
- Executive thought leadership without a talent-facing angle
- Competing for talent against better-known brands
- Scaling fast and need a talent pipeline that keeps up
- Strong internal culture that candidates can't see externally
- Prior recruiting spend that isn't producing quality results
- Preparing for a rebrand or culture transformation
Your Employer Brand
Starts Here.
MarketDesign will run your full diagnostic, build both deliverables, and walk your team through a clear, prioritized path forward.
Start with the audit, everything else follows.
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