How to build choosable employer brands.

Reinventing employer brand by starting with a clean sheet of paper.

This is employer branding rebuilt for modern recruiting teams: fast, evidence-driven, and designed to plug straight into your tools, templates, and day-to-day work.

What if your employer brand wasn't just some pretty platitudes and vague promises, but instead was compelling enough to be the always-on recruiting partner, making everything you're already doing clearly more effective?

The EBOS build process, step by step

A lot of employer brand work feels mysterious from the outside. Months of workshops, dozens of decks, and somehow… no one is sure what to say in the next job posting.

Here’s exactly how we build your EBOS and where you’ll be involved.
Step 1: Alignment
What problem are we really solving?
We start by getting painfully clear on what “better” looks like for you:
⚙️ A competitor and market audit (career sites, job posts, social, reviews, messaging)
⚙️ Internal signals (engagement surveys, exit data, recruiter notes, hiring manager feedback)
⚙️ External perspective (candidate feedback, synthetic panels, or market data)

The goal: find the real differences and the real obstacles—not invent a happy story you can’t live up to. You give us access to materials and a few people. We handle the digging and synthesis.
Step 2: Evidence
What’s true in your market right now?
Next, we gather proof. Depending on your situation, that can include:
⚙️ A competitor and market audit (career sites, job posts, social, reviews, messaging)
⚙️ Internal signals (engagement surveys, exit data, recruiter notes, hiring manager feedback)
⚙️ External perspective (candidate feedback, synthetic panels, or market data)

The goal: find the real differences and the real obstacles—not invent a happy story you can’t live up to.You give us access to materials and a few people. We handle the digging and synthesis.
Step 3: Positioning
Who you’re for and why you win
Once we know what’s true, we build your Choosability spine:
⚙️ Who you are for (and not for)
⚙️ The problems you’re uniquely good at solving
⚙️ The tradeoffs that come with working there (no “perfect culture” nonsense)
⚙️ The proof points that back it all up

This is where we turn “we’re a great place to work” into something specific enough to change decisions.
Step 4: The Operating System
How the system works for you
Then we turn that positioning into an operating system your team can actually use:
⚙️ Core brand architecture – your pillars, proof, and key messages
⚙️ 10 audits and battle cards – how you compare to competitors and how to beat them
⚙️ Message library – phrases, narratives, and examples that can be reused across channels
⚙️ AI instructions – prompts and guardrails so any LLM you use can stay “on brand” in seconds
⚙️ This all lives in a 25–70 page brand brief that functions like a playbook, not a museum piece.
Step 5: Activation
Showing what it looks like in the real world
We don’t stop at “here’s your strategy.” We show you what it looks like doing work:
⚙️ Rewritten job postings for critical roles
⚙️ Outreach and nurture examples for recruiters
⚙️ Career site and FAQ examples
⚙️ Interview and intake questions aligned to the brand

The idea: your team should be able to copy-paste, tweak, and go. This is where the EBOS starts paying off in less guessing and more time for real strategy.
Step 6: Enablement
Making sure it sticks
Last, we focus on making sure the system doesn’t die in a folder:
⚙️ A walk-through session with TA + key stakeholders
⚙️ Guidance on how to roll the story out to hiring managers
⚙️ A simple plan for how to keep messaging and proof updated over time
⚙️ Optional: pairing with a keynote to get everyone on the same page fast or brainstorming to get teams building

You walk away knowing what to say, where to say it, and how to keep it alive.

How Employer Brand Labs is different

On paper, a lot of employer brand partners look similar. Decks, workshops, “toolkits,” maybe a video.

This is how our model is different from the way most brand-building projects are sold.

Typical EB Agencies

Employer Brand Labs EBOS

What You Care About

Who they’re built for
Global enterprises, big budgets, complex politics
Growing companies ~200–2,000 employees competing with bigger brands
Primary output
Big deck, campaign concepts, new tagline to make you look "good"
Employer Brand Operating System: brand brief, battle cards, examples, AI prompts, enablement
Timeframe
3–9 months
3–6 weeks
How “hands-on” you have to be
Frequent workshops, steering committees, long feedback cycles
A few focused sessions; we do the heavy lifting on research and writing
How much is actually usable on day one
Select pieces; much of it needs internal translation
Designed to plug directly into jobs, outreach, career site, and tools immediately
Research approach
Traditional qual/quant; slower, more expensive
Right-sized mix of your data, competitive audit, synthetic panels, and targeted interviews
Fit for mid-market reality
Often overbuilt, expensive, and hard to resell internally
Designed to be fundable, defensible, and practical for TA leaders in the mid-market
What it changes internally
“We have a new brand deck”
“We have a system that helps us hire better and talk to leaders about growth”
Price
Custom proposals, variable scope, change orders, starting at $60,000
Fixed price: $15K for full EBOS,
$5K for Research

The ways we’re deliberately different

A lot of employer brand work feels mysterious from the outside. Months of workshops, dozens of decks, and somehow… no one is sure what to say in the next job posting.

Here’s exactly how we build your EBOS and where you’ll be involved.
Think Systemically:
Operating system, not campaign
We don’t start with “what should the career site look like?”
We start with “who are we for, why do we win, and how do we prove it?”
Everything else (site, posts, outreach, content) is an expression of that system.
We Help You Grow Your Company:
Built for TA leaders, not just brand/HR
You’re our primary buyer. That means:
⚙️ language you can use with candidates and with your CFO
⚙️ deliverables shaped around your funnel, not just around comms
⚙️ tools that make your recruiters’ jobs easier, not harder
Mid-market by Design:
You aren't the 800lb gorilla. But this is how you hunt them.
We’re not pretending to be the right answer for everyone.
⚙️ If you’re 200–2,000 employees, we’re designing around your constraints and opportunities.
⚙️ If you’re >5,000 and want a global “brand theatre” project, you probably have other partners in mind.
That focus is why we can move quickly and stay practical.
You Need Tools, Not Advice:
Productized, transparent, fixed price
No mystery proposals. No “let’s see where this goes” scope creep. You know up front:
⚙️ what it costs
⚙️ how long it takes
⚙️ what you will have in your hands at the end

That makes it easier for you to sell internally and protects your credibility if you’ve been burned before.
LLM-friendly:
Welcome to modern recruiting
We assume you’re already living in an ATS, maybe a CRM, and definitely in at least one LLM. So we:
⚙️ structure your messages so they’re easy to use in templates and workflows
⚙️ give you AI instructions so your LLM can generate on-brand content in seconds
⚙️ design outputs so a busy recruiter can grab, tweak, and send

The EBOS is the brain; your tools are the hands.
Confidence, On Demand:
Less guessing, more strategic time
Because the system answers “what should we say?” and “how are we different?” upfront, your team spends less time:
⚙️ rewriting the same job from scratch
⚙️ arguing with comms.marketing/legal/HR over language
⚙️ chasing “new campaigns”
And more time on:
⚙️ prioritizing the right roles and audiences
⚙️ partnering with leaders on how hiring drives growth
⚙️ making better long-term decisions about your talent pipeline

That’s the work that gets you treated like a strategic partner, not a ticket queue.