Towards the end of last year, McKinsey released its State of Marketing Europe (2026) report, and one insight stood out. Employer brand now ranks among the top priorities for CMOs across Europe.
This is a significant shift. Employer brand is no longer seen as something owned solely by HR or Talent Acquisition. Instead, it’s now recognised as a critical part of how organisations attract, engage, and compete for talent.
‘Employer branding remains a priority and mirrors the broader shift toward authenticity. Today’s job seekers look for meaningful insights into what a company truly stands for.’
McKinsey, State of Marketing Europe (2026)
The growing importance of Employer Brand
Employer brand is no longer confined to HR or Talent Acquisition. It has become a board-level and marketing-level priority, driven by changes in how candidates evaluate organisations and how businesses compete for skills.
McKinsey’s State of Marketing Europe (2026) draws on insights from 500 senior Marketing leaders across Europe, to uncover the priorities and challenges shaping organisational strategy. The report highlights several themes that have long been central to building a strong and credible employer brand:
- Trust
- Authenticity
- Meaningful Insights
Authenticity has emerged as a priority in its own right, ranked #4 in McKinsey’s research. Specifically, it is described as ‘genuine expression of a brand’s values, mission, and identity through transparency and consistency that builds emotional resonance’. Organisations are encouraged to ‘shine a light on craft and the people behind it.’
For anyone working in Employer Branding or Talent Acquisition, it may feel overdue that Marketing leaders are recognising the role of candidate perception and employer reputation. Even if some of these points seem obvious, it’s valuable to see them reinforced at a senior, strategic level.
McKinsey also highlights just how much candidate behaviour is shaped by brand perception:
‘83% of candidates read company reviews before applying for a job and higher online employer ratings significantly boost employer attractiveness. In particular, Gen Z (roughly born between 1997 and 2012) places greater value on authenticity, culture, flexibility, and purpose than on salary alone. Leading companies are moving beyond slogans to genuine storytelling and building employee advocacy.’
McKinsey, State of Marketing Europe (2026)
Without a credible, differentiated employer brand, RPO risks becoming an exercise in efficiency rather than effectiveness. These insights make one thing clear: without a credible, differentiated employer brand, RPO risks delivering efficiency without impact – filling roles without creating long-term, meaningful outcomes.
Why efficiency in recruitment is not always effective
The growing recognition of the importance of employer brand to an organisation goes hand-in-hand with a growing awareness of the importance of hiring well. Over recent years, employers have been besieged by economic uncertainty, skill shortages and political change. This has seen recruitment and workforce planning move into Board-level conversations, more often talked about as a strategic lever to improve productivity and profitability rather than simply as a cost.
A more strategic view of hiring means that many organisations are looking for a strategic RPO solution, with long-term brand building capability embedded into the solution. Without an established employer brand, RPO can create the illusion of success through operational efficiency. Time to fill, cost per hire, and requisition throughput may improve through process optimisation alone. But these metrics only measure speed and cost, not quality. The outcomes that matter most such as candidate quality, offer acceptance rates, retention, and hiring manager satisfaction often reveal a different story.
Without a strong employer proposition, RPO fills seats, not sustainable teams. Engagement falls, misalignment grows, and people leave. What should be a strategic pipeline quickly becomes a revolving door.
Efficiency without effectiveness. Like a hammer without a nail.
How Employer Brand goes beyond marketing
A common misconception is that employer branding is a “nice to have” marketing exercise – careers pages, social media posts, or glossy videos. In reality, employer brand is a strategic asset that informs how RPO operates at every level. When employer brand is weak or undefined, RPO teams are forced to invent narratives on the fly or rely on generic messaging. This inconsistency damages credibility and undermines trust. Conversely, when employer brand is clear and authentic, RPO becomes a powerful delivery engine for that brand promise.
Your employer brand, working in partnership with your RPO, forms a formidable combination that helps to shape:
- Sourcing strategies (where and how talent is engaged)
- Messaging (what resonates with target audiences)
- Assessment (what “good” looks like beyond skills)
- Candidate experience (how interactions feel at scale)
The important role of RPO
Importantly, the relationship between RPO and employer brand is not one-directional. While a strong brand enables effective RPO, a mature RPO partnership can also strengthen the employer brand. Embedded RPO teams gather real-time candidate feedback, understand market perceptions, and see where the employee value proposition breaks down in practice.
However, this only works when employer branding is treated as a shared responsibility, not an afterthought. Organisations that expect RPO to “fix” attraction challenges without investing in brand clarity are effectively handing someone a hammer and asking them to build without materials.
The most successful RPO engagements are those where employer brand, talent strategy, and business objectives are effectively aligned. In these cases, RPO acts as both strategy and activation – translating brand promise into hiring outcomes and feeding insights back into brand evolution.
Why Employer Brand is critical to RPO success
In an uncertain economic climate, organisations must adopt agile and nimble approaches to keep up with changing market conditions. When they need to react quickly and scale fast, RPO provides expertise, process, and capacity. But without strong employer branding, it lacks real impact.
In today’s talent market, companies attract top talent through meaning, credibility, and trust – not activity alone. Organisations that invest in their employer brand before or alongside RPO unlock its full potential. Those that ignore it may still generate recruitment activity, but they struggle to achieve results that truly stick.
