Originally published April 2019. Edited on Jul 4, 2026.
Marketing and HR run different plays but chase the same asset: the company's reputation with the people it needs — customers on one side, talent on the other. The companies that treat them as separate departments compete against the companies that connect them.
In a tight talent market, the brand you build for buyers is the same brand candidates evaluate before they apply. Culture, reputation, employer rankings, Glassdoor scores, LinkedIn presence — these are marketing surfaces now, whether HR is staffed to run them or not.
Build the Employee Persona
Marketing teams build personas for customers as a matter of course. HR should use the same discipline for talent. Who is the person you want to hire? What do they read, where do they look for work, what do they value about an employer, what would move them off a competitor? Marketing has the frameworks. HR has the substance. Neither runs the exercise well alone.
Run a Multichannel Recruiting Strategy
Recruiting has stopped being a job-board exercise. The best candidates hear about a company through content, through employee posts, through press coverage, through executive visibility — the same channels that build the buyer brand. HR and marketing should share the channel map, split the workload, and measure the pipeline the same way marketing measures a demand-gen funnel.
Own the LinkedIn Surface Together
LinkedIn is where employer brand lives and where candidates form first impressions. Executive posts, employee advocacy, careers content, culture posts — HR sets the message, marketing runs the distribution. The company page, the executive pages, and the employee posts all need to say the same thing.
Measure Employer Brand Like a Marketing Funnel
Track the metrics marketing already tracks — reach, engagement, application volume, conversion, source of hire. Add the employer-specific signals: Glassdoor ratings, "best places to work" rankings, employee referral rates, offer acceptance. HR gains the analytics discipline marketing already has. Marketing gains a second business case for the same content investment.
The Point
The wall between marketing and HR is a legacy of org charts, not of how talent decisions actually get made. Companies that connect the two functions build a stronger employer brand at lower cost than companies that run them in parallel — because the audience for the employer brand and the audience for the customer brand overlap more than either team assumes.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
