Are there simply too many people working in employer branding?
Every few days I get a message from someone in employer branding who has been laid off, is struggling to find their next role, or is thinking about giving up and doing something else entirely.
At the same time my LinkedIn feed is full of people with “employer brand”, “EVP”, or “talent storyteller” in their title. Consultants, in house people, people trying to break into the field. If you judged by volume alone, you would assume employer branding is booming.
It does not feel that way inside most organisations. Not even close.
Employer branding was a massive trend during the last big hiring wave. Especially in the twenty-teens. Anyone who could make a decent careers site, run a social campaign, or develop even a mediocre EVP was in demand. Then the brakes were slammed on. Post Covid - or more precisely, post the Great Resignation - many of those same people were among the first to lose their jobs when the cuts came.
Some pivoted into broader marketing, comms, or HR roles. Many did not or could not. They went independent, set up as consultants, or have simply been stuck in a much colder job market while still being surrounded by “employer brand” noise online. LinkedIn has become even cringier than before (which I never thought possible).
Your employees know the truth. Does your EVP? At Fathom we measure the "Credibility Gap" between your promise and their reality.
So yes, on the surface it now looks as if there are too many people in employer branding and not nearly enough jobs (or projects) to go round. But what is really happening is more complicated than simple oversupply.
The boom, the bust, and the aftermath
For a long time employer branding sat on the side of someone’s desk. It belonged to the keen recruiter, the ex agency copywriter, or the one HR person who liked LinkedIn a bit too much.
Then the last hiring boom arrived. Remote work opened more markets, tech companies were hiring in batches, and everyone was chasing the same skills - somewhere in the sweet spot between HR, Comms, and Marketing. Leaders finally accepted that candidates were researching them before applying, that reviews actually mattered, and that the careers page was not just a legal requirement but pivotal in landing quality talent.
In that environment, employer branding became a “proper” function. Job titles appeared, teams were built, and senior roles were created. People built real careers in the field and, in many cases, made a big difference within the organisations they operated within.
Then, as hiring slowed and layoffs hit, the logic flipped. Anything that looked remotely connected to growth or volume hiring landed on the chopping block. Employer branding, whether it sat under HR, TA or Marketing, was often interpreted as recruitment marketing (or redundant in the current climate) and seen as an unnecessary luxury.
The humans behind those roles, many fantastic, did what humans do. They tried to stay in the game.
- Many rebranded themselves as EB consultants and went out on their own.
- Some doubled down on posting, sharing, and building their personal brand.
- Some took jobs that had “employer branding” in the title but looked very little like the work they used to do.
From the outside that looks like a flood of EB professionals in the market, all vying for attention. In reality, it is a wave of people who were trained and hired in a very specific phase of the market and are now trying to find their place in a different one. Not an easy situation for people to find themselves in.
Helping HR, talent acquisition, employer branding, and company culture professionals find careers worth smiling about.
Wildly different skills, equally loud voices
One of the awkward truths about employer branding is that competence is all over the place. And most people have very little idea or what good looks like.
You have some people who can:
- work with leaders on workforce planning
- run proper primary research and build an EVP with real trade offs
- navigate legal, comms, and unions
- shift sentiment with careful, honest storytelling across the lifecycle
- build, manage, and protect a company's reputation in the market
You also have (many more) people whose main experience is:
- posting cheerful LinkedIn content
- repurposing corporate videos
- writing a few nice job ads during a time when hiring managers were saying yes to everything
- flick things off to agencies
Both sets of people can claim the same job titles. Both can talk about “strategy”. Both can post thought leadership threads about culture and brand (including AI slop). LinkedIn does not display a competency label next to your headline. And, guess who it is that feels they need to shout the loudest? Yep, not the most accomplished and hirable.
From the outside, especially for leaders who do not live in this world, it starts to all blend together... and that's not good for anyone.
The people with deeper experience can look and sound like everyone else. The people who are still learning can present themselves as fully fledged experts (and often do). The result is a field that feels noisy, chaotic, and becomes increasingly harder to trust. Some days, it just looks like the Wild West.
EBN
Most employers still don't fully understand employer branding
There is another major piece of the picture that rarely gets said as clearly as it should.
Way too many employers still do not really understand what employer branding is for, or what an employer branding leader should actually do - either day to day or big picture.
You see it in job ads. Huge organisations hire “Head of Employer Brand” or “Global Employer Branding Lead”. The titles often sound senior and impressive. Then you see the salary and role requirements and something smells off. If you scroll through the responsibilities you'll discover that the job is basically:
- manage our LinkedIn careers page
- post happy employee stories
- make some videos
- support recruitment campaigns when we remember to involve you
Maybe there is a vague line about “owning the EVP”. There is almost never any mention of real access to data, participation in workforce planning, involvement in internal change, brand or reputation management, or the authority to say “we should not run this campaign because it does not match reality”.
In practice, those roles are filled by relatively junior hires. I know many of them personally. Smart, capable people, but without the experience or organisational clout to do much more than keep the content calendar ticking over.
They sit in small corners of TA or marketing. They get measured on impressions and likes. Then, when the cuts come they get cut.
From the outside, this still shows up as “Employer Brand Lead” on LinkedIn. From the inside, it is closer to “person who makes us look nice on social”. Then they're back out in the wild (LinkedIn) giving off their loud I'm senior and look at me routine. My heart goes out to them, but if you spend a bit of time in this field you can see how this cycle is so rife and so damaging.
Momentum isn’t always progress, especially when you always end up back where you started. Fathom helps you escape the loop. With insight, not intuition.
How this hurts experienced EB professionals
If you are an experienced employer branding practitioner, this mismatch is brutal.
On paper, there are roles that look like they should be a fit. Senior titles. One person teams where you could, in theory, shape something meaningful. Mentions of EVP and strategy.
Then you get into the details and discover:
- the budget is tiny or non existent
- there is no access to decision makers
- the remit is limited to “attraction”
- the organisation is not ready to talk honestly about its reality
You are expected to bring strategic thinking and stakeholder management, but paid and scoped as if you will mostly be posting content. If you turn those jobs down, you can feel as if you are being picky in a market that is already tough enough. If you take them, you risk being frustrated and underused, then blamed when “employer branding” does not magically fix deeper issues.
It also skews the market. When big employers fill “Lead” roles with relatively junior people, it settles expectations around pay and scope. It tells the rest of the business that employer branding is a junior function, or not very serious. That makes it harder for more senior, more experienced EB professionals to argue for the depth and positioning the work truly needs.
The net effect is a lot of mid to senior EB people sitting on the sidelines or being pushed into consultancy, while the available in house roles are shallow and underpowered.
EBN
So are there too many EB people, or too few real EB jobs?
This is the uncomfortable answer.
There probably are too many people whose employer branding experience starts and ends with attraction content in a hiring boom. The market rarely needs that many pure campaign producers once things settle - and certainly not now whilst things are ice cold.
There are also too few genuinely strategic employer brand roles. The ones that combine:
- research and insight
- EVP and narrative
- internal and external storytelling
- Brand and reputation management
- a seat at the table when workforce and change decisions are made
The problem is that the shallow roles are much easier to design and justify. Anyone can imagine a person running the LinkedIn account (it's a one eye closed job). It is much harder to picture and sell a role that asks difficult questions about culture, behaviour, and trade offs.
So we end up with lots of EB-shaped jobs that do not let employer branding do what it is actually capable of, and a surplus of EB-shaped professionals who either will not or cannot shrink themselves down to fit those boxes.
What employers could do differently
If you are a leader who genuinely believes your employer brand matters, the question is not “are there too many EB people”. The more useful question is “what kind of employer brand capability do we actually need, and are we brave enough to hire for it properly”.
A few practical shifts:
- Be honest about scope. If the role is mostly campaigns and content, say so and hire accordingly. Do not dress it up as a “Head of Employer Brand” and secretly expect a one person miracle.
- Create at least one truly strategic seat. In larger organisations, there should be one role that is explicitly responsible for the bridge between reputation, people experience, and business decisions. It will cost more than a junior content role. It will also be the one that survives more than one budget cycle.
- Stop separating EB from reality. If the person in charge of employer brand is the last to know about layoffs, restructures, or culture issues, you do not have employer branding, you have a PR filter.
- Hire for courage, not just creativity. The best EB people are the ones who can say “this sounds good, but it is not true yet” and help you close the gap. That is not a junior skill set.
If more organisations did this, a lot of the apparent oversupply would resolve itself. Many of the experienced people currently freelancing or drifting out of the field would gladly take on serious, well defined roles where they can do more than polish the careers site.
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What EB practitioners can control
If you are one of the people currently in or around employer branding and wondering whether there is still a future in it, some of this is outside your control. You cannot single handedly fix how the market designs jobs.
You can, however, make it very clear what you actually do.
- Show your work beyond campaigns. Talk about how you have influenced decisions, not just creative outputs.
- Be precise about your level. If you are essentially a content specialist, that is valuable, but it is different from EVP ownership or reputation strategy.
- Keep learning the uncomfortable bits: data, measurement, internal politics, change comms. The more you can work across the lifecycle, the easier it is to justify a deeper role.
- Be willing to walk away from jobs that only want a cheerful LinkedIn presence dressed up as leadership.
That last point is hard, especially when you need income. But every time an experienced EB person accepts an under scoped “Lead” role that is really a junior attraction job, it quietly signals to the market that this is all employer branding is.
A crowded field that is still under built
So, are there too many people working in employer branding?
There are certainly more people than ever using the label. Some are brilliant. Some are still learning. Some are shouting louder than their experience justifies. That mix is not unique to employer branding, but because our work is so visible, it shows up more clearly.
Underneath the noise, the fundamentals that made employer branding important in the first place have not gone away. Candidates still research companies. Employees still talk. Reputation still hits hiring, retention, and trust.
What has not caught up is how many organisations understand and properly design for employer branding as a function. They know they should “do something about it”. They are less clear on whether that “something” is a junior social media role, a senior strategic role, or a small ecosystem of both.
Until that gap closes, it will continue to feel as if there are too many EB people and too few EB jobs. In reality, there are too many shallow roles and not enough space for the kind of employer branding work that can actually survive more than one economic cycle.
That is frustrating if you are one of the people who built your career in this field and now find yourself on the outside. It is also an opportunity. The more clearly we can name the difference between “making the company look nice on LinkedIn” and “telling the truth about work in a way that helps the business make better decisions”, the easier it becomes for both employers and practitioners to find the matches that actually make sense.
What’s the way forward?
If employer branding has become the Wild West - unclear roles, uneven skill levels, and constant boom-and-bust hiring - then the solution isn’t simply “hire better people.”
The real opportunity is building a model that separates strategy from execution, and replaces guesswork with evidence.
In reality, even a talented Head of Employer Branding is often politically constrained. They sit inside the system, are dependent on it, and are rarely in a position to tell leadership the uncomfortable truth about how the company is actually perceived.
That’s where independent, research-led insight becomes valuable.
The most effective employer branding teams going forward won’t be built around a mythical EB unicorn who can do everything. They’ll be built around a clearer division of labour:
- Leaders who make decisions based on reality, not internal narratives or politics
- Specialists who deliver credible, data-backed EVP and reputation insight
- Operators who run content, comms, and activation
Data beats vibes every time. But most organisations don’t have the data they need, or the capability to interpret it, challenge it, and act on it.
And in a market where budgets are tighter and patience is thinner, speed matters. Employers can’t afford 12 months of trial-and-error hiring just to rediscover what candidates and employees already know.
The next era of employer branding won’t reward the loudest voices or the most colourful campaigns. It will reward the clearest insight — and the teams willing to act on it.
A note on how Fathom fits into this
Much of what’s described above is exactly why our organisation, Fathom, exists.
We work with organisations who already have capable people in employer branding, TA, or HR - but who need independent, research-led insight to understand the gap between what they promise and what people actually experience. We help those starting out, too.
We don’t replace internal teams. We give them evidence so they can move faster, argue more effectively, and avoid repeating the same hire-cut-rehire loop.
If employer branding is going to survive beyond the next cycle, it has to be built on truth, not intuition. That’s the problem we help teams solve. Need help? Give us a shout.
Takeaways
Employer branding grew fast during the hiring boom, but most companies never built a clear hiring model for it.
When budgets tightened, EB was easy to cut because its role, impact, and ownership were poorly defined.
There are now more employer branding professionals than available, well-scoped EB roles.
The market is oversupplied with experienced EB talent, while demand is constrained by unclear expectations and inconsistent investment.
Many employers still confuse employer branding with recruitment marketing or social media.
This misunderstanding leads to misaligned job descriptions, poor hiring decisions, and frustration on both sides.
Employer branding is often treated as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a core hiring and talent strategy function.
That perception makes EB roles among the first to be cut - and the hardest to rehire correctly.
The future of employer branding depends on clearer definitions, better education, and stronger ties to hiring outcomes.
Companies that understand how EB supports recruitment, retention, and reputation will be the ones that hire (and keep) EB talent successfully.
EBN