When I entered the job market, the logic was simple. The company opened the position, placed an ad in the newspaper, and candidates showed up. The company chose. The candidate accepted or not. Done.
That changed completely over the last few years.
How do I know this? First, I am a partner in a group of companies that form an ecosystem specialized in organizational culture and corporate reputation. There we study and provide solutions for new business behaviors and situations that are becoming increasingly common. So what I am about to share may not be news to some, but viewed through the right lens, we can see a major transformation coming in people management.
The fact is that Generation Z has completely reversed the traditional hiring dynamic. And this is not a criticism or reverse ageism. Know that before sending a resume, 83% of these young people have already researched the company on Glassdoor, LinkedIn, TikTok, and through people who work or have worked there. They read reviews, checked how the company responds to criticism, and verified whether what the careers page says matches what former employees report. Only after that do they decide whether it is worth applying. The company no longer chooses first. It is evaluated first.
This has a name: employer branding. And many companies still have not understood that employer branding is not a nice team photo on Instagram. It is what people say about you when you are not in the room.
The data point that stands out most to me is this: companies that improve their Glassdoor rating by just half a point see 20% more clicks on job listings and 16% more applications. It is not an expensive marketing campaign. It is real reputation, built by people who have worked there. And that reputation arrives before any selection process begins.
But what makes a company attractive to people between 18 and 28 years old today?
It is not salary. Salary is the floor, not the ceiling. Deloitte interviewed more than 22,000 young people in 44 countries in 2026 and the result was clear: purpose, well-being, and development are the three factors that decide where this generation wants to be. Nearly half of them do not feel financially secure, so money matters, but it is not what makes them choose a company and stay.
What makes them choose is knowing that the company has a clear position on what it believes in. They do not want to work for a brand that has no opinion on anything. They want to know whether the company has real diversity or only diversity in the ESG report. Whether the manager who appears in the institutional video is the same one who treats the team poorly on Monday morning. They are digital natives and detect inconsistency at a speed that is striking.
There is another data point I cannot ignore. Randstad surveyed 11,250 workers in 15 countries in 2025 and found that entry-level job openings fell 29 percentage points since January 2024. In technology, the drop was 35%. In finance, 24%. This means that competition for young talent will concentrate around fewer positions and more qualified candidates. Companies with a weak employer brand will lose the best candidates before the process even begins.
So how do you become attractive to this generation?
The first step is to stop pretending. Real employer branding starts with an honest question: what is it like to work here? If the answer is uncomfortable, the problem is not communication. It is culture. And culture cannot be fixed with a LinkedIn post.
The second step is to show the next chapter. This generation thinks in 18-month cycles, not in decades. When you open a position and fail to make clear what the person will learn, where they can go, and what is expected of them at six, twelve, and twenty-four months, you are asking them to board a ship with no course. They will not board. Randstad showed that 41% of Gen Z always consider long-term goals when changing jobs. They are not short-sighted. They simply no longer accept traveling in the dark.
The third step is to be where they are. It is not about having a profile on TikTok. It is about having real employees talking about work in an authentic way. A 60-second video of a team member sharing what they learned last quarter is worth more than any recruitment campaign produced by an agency. Seventy percent of candidates are more likely to apply when the employer is active and present on the platforms where they search.
The fourth step is to respond. Seventy-one percent of candidates improve their perception of a company when it responds to negative reviews. You do not need to agree with everything. You need to show that you listen.
The fifth step is to take care of the first ninety days. More than twenty percent of young people who accept a position do not show up on the first day. That number rises to 40% when onboarding is disappointing. What resolves much of this is straightforward: a message from the future manager one week before the start date, a colleague designated as a buddy for the first thirty days, and clarity about what is expected before the person has to ask.
Employer branding is not an HR project. It is a strategic business decision. Because the talent you fail to attract today will work for your competitor tomorrow. And they will carry with them exactly what you needed. And here we will not even address the brand reputation that this talent can damage with a single public comment on the internet. I will leave that for another article, since there is already plenty to think about here.
Article originally published on GazzConecta.
