How to attract top talent with employer branding

How to Attract Top Talent with Employer Branding

In the race for elite tech talent, compensation alone isn’t enough. The best software engineers, data scientists, product managers, and ML engineers aren’t just choosing jobs – they’re choosing missions, values, and work environments where they can thrive.

That’s where employer branding comes in. Companies with strong, authentic employer brands don’t just fill roles faster—they attract better-fit candidates, reduce churn, and build teams that scale.

Why Branding Matters in Tech Hiring

In-demand tech talent, especially remote-first candidates, are flooded with recruiter messages. The ones they respond to? They’re from companies that tell a clear story:

• What do you stand for?

• What kind of problems do you solve?

• What is it like to work on your team?

For example, a frontend engineer who thrives in design-focused teams may skip over a generic job post, but will jump at a role at a company known for elegant UX, async collaboration, and ownership over UI decisions. A data scientist might be drawn to a company that speaks openly about its experimentation culture and commitment to clean data infrastructure.

1. Make the Work Real

Top candidates want to know what they’ll actually be doing. Vague job specs don’t cut it.

Instead, get specific:

• “You’ll lead the development of a new analytics dashboard used by over 10,000 users monthly.”

• “You’ll help us optimize real-time ML models for fraud detection in under 200ms.”

Highlight the scale, the challenge, and the impact. Tech talent wants to solve interesting problems–not fill headcount.

2. Showcase Your Engineering Culture

Open-source contributions? Technical blogs? Thoughtful documentation? These are all signals of a healthy tech culture.

If you’re hiring for backend engineers or ML talent, don’t just talk about “agile teams” – share what tools you use (Kubernetes, Snowflake, HuggingFace), how you handle code review, and whether you prioritize mentorship or autonomy.

Use your careers page, blog, or LinkedIn to feature short team interviews, architecture overviews, or even GitHub activity. Candidates want a glimpse behind the curtain.

3. Tell Stories, Not Just Benefits

Yes, remote flexibility and equity matter. But great branding is rooted in narrative.

For example, instead of just saying “We’re a fast-growing startup,” tell the story:

“We bootstrapped to $3M ARR with a four-person dev team, and now we’re scaling our infra to handle 10x the traffic. We’re looking for engineers who want to build clean systems, fast.”

That’s way more compelling than listing “growth opportunities” or “fast-paced environment.”

4. Match on Values and Communication Style

A mismatch in culture, especially in remote teams, can tank even the best technical fit.

Are you a team that communicates in long Notion docs or quick Looms? Do PMs spec work tightly or give engineers lots of room? Is your feedback culture direct or diplomatic?

Your employer brand should reflect this. Engineers, PMs, and data folks care about how work gets done, not just what gets shipped.

5. Leverage Your Current Team

Your best employer branding asset is your current team. Feature real team members in your posts, job descriptions, and outreach. Encourage them to talk about what they’re working on.

A machine learning engineer sharing how they deployed a real-time model in 30 days is more powerful than a marketing blurb. Let the builders do the talking.

Final Thought: Branding Is Recruiting at Scale

Think of employer branding as a funnel that works while you sleep. Done right, it:

• Reduces time-to-fill

• Increases candidate quality

• Improves long-term retention

At Rockwell, we help companies not just find top talent – but attract it by aligning messaging, job specs, and hiring processes to what candidates actually care about.

Take the Next Step

Click “Start Hiring” to complete our quick onboarding to will help us get an idea of your your budget, hiring goals, and ideal candidate profile. We’ll schedule a free 30-minute consultation to review top-matched profiles and show how our team can help position your brand to win over the best tech talent. We look forward to meeting you!