James Ellis

Employer Brand Nerd.

More than a decade of employer brand and talent strategy experience

I am the Employer Branding Nerd 🧪, an authority on employer branding, focusing on companies who think they have no choice but to post and pray for talent. Over the past decade, I have built the brands for more than a dozen of companies and supported the development and activation of dozens more. I've authored what’s been called the bible of employer branding, managed the number one employer brand newsletter in the world, and helped companies globally establish and develop their ability to hire talent.

Transform 2024 finalist for Inspiring Resource of the Year 🏆

You may have seen/heard/read me at:

I do my thinking in public

Pushing the industry forward

I have spent the last decade pushing the boundaries and advancing the field of employer branding to help companies hire better talent more effectively. Take a look at some of the frameworks, approaches and books that have changed the way companies around the world think about their employer brand:

Passionate about solving recruiting problems

Look, I love employer branding. I fell in love with it and haven't looked back. And while I've developed brands for Fortune1000 companies, 125-person startup, and everything in between, what I do best is teach people how to use employer branding, how to turn it into a force multiplier for recruiting, how to leverage it as the human side of their corporate brand, how to tell a story that great talent will fall in love with (even when there's no job to apply for).

After 220+ episodes of The Talent Cast podcast, 150+ editions of Employer Brand Headlines newsletter, three books, countless presentations and webinars, I've come to accept the label someone gave me as the "Alton Brown of Employer Brand."

Having invented a number of frameworks and models, been the first person to prove content positively impacts applications, and turned a failing brand activation department into a multi-million dollar growth engine, I'm ready to help businesses who thought they couldn't afford it take advantage of the power of employer brand.

How can you work with me?

Bringing someone in to create results via employer branding isn't a simple decision, for you or me. This process works best with companies with 200-2,000 employees, generally in biotech, life science, technology or fields where new hires are expensive and time-consuming.

So the best way to start is with a conversation. Let's chat about your situation and see if it makes sense for us to make more solid plans.

Let's take the next step!

Talent strategy is never "off the rack." It is about uncovering and leveraging your unique advantages to hire better. Here are a few ways we can get to know each other.

Book time so we can define a scope and solution that suits your company best

Need to get your company excited about employer brand and strategy? Let me talk to them!