Advertising Jobs With a Company Logo is Probably a Waste of Time!

Whilst we offer a service that can advertise your jobs with a company logo, we often don't recommend it because of the following issues:

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You’ll Get A Lot of Interruptions

Including your company logo or name mainly increases the response from recruitment agencies and salespeople. This is the main reason many employers hate advertising their company name. It’s as if every recruitment agency doesn’t have enough jobs to work on, or a third party can offer an outsourced solution, or other job sites can also advertise the job to get more applicants! Inevitably, staff answering sales calls will start being aggressive gatekeepers trying to deflect all the interruptions.

You will also be inundated with calls from applicants chasing the progress of their job applications. While I respect applicants for using their initiative and being persistent, you should manage their expectations better and provide feedback so they don’t keep calling you.

Overall, the cost of not being able to get on with your job doesn’t outweigh any perceived benefits, especially as...

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You Don’t Get (M)any More Applicants

Job sites love selling “employer branding” because it makes them more money, or they include it free of charge to win business.

They often justify the increased expense by saying that a well-known brand got more applications by including their logo. Whilst this is correct, the increased application rates resulted from strong brand recognition. The job sites also don’t explain that jobseekers still click on other adverts. That is because when a jobseeker is presented with a list of relevant jobs, they will review almost all of them because they want a job – including the unbranded ones and those from recruitment agencies.

The main reason why company logos aren’t that important is because they don’t stand out:

• Our eye-tracking studies show that many jobseekers have developed the equivalent of “banner blindness” and hardly notice the logos.
• The company logos are small and aligned to the right of a page, where many jobseekers don’t notice them in their peripheral field of vision. This problem is particularly acute on mobile devices.

While writing this article, I worked with a distinguished home improvement company based in the UK. They wanted to try both branded and anonymous adverts. Everything else remained the same; the only change was that their logo was included in some adverts. At the end of the test, the in-house recruiter concluded they saw no discernible difference in the quality of applicants and actually more applicants from the anonymous advert.

Indeed, I’ve worked with a diverse range of prestigious clients, including royalty, governmental bodies, and renowned organisations such as the NHS, Shell, Tesco, Specsavers, Nestlé, and PlayStation. A common factor among these varied clients is their preference to advertise anonymously.

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Google Proved Logos Don’t Matter

The problem of banner blindness and small logos isn’t just an issue with job adverts but online advertising in general. Take Google, for example, which makes money by users clicking on its sponsored (aka paid-for) adverts. When they tried including company logos, it failed to generate more clicks and make them more money. That’s why Google doesn’t include company logos.

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<span class="purple-callout"><p>If you need assistance, I can advise and provide practical help (get your free consultation).</p><p>My best-selling recruitment book can also be a valuable resource.</p><p>And I can advertise a job advert on the UK's top job boards for only £199.</p></span>

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The “Party Test” Proves Most Employer Names Aren’t Worth Mentioning

The truth is most organisations aren’t well-known. Most small companies don’t have a well-known consumer brand, let alone an employer one.

To appreciate this, use the “party test”. If you’re asked at a party what you do, do you begin with your organisation’s name or your job title? If you mention your job title first, you identify more closely with your role than your employer’s brand. For example, if someone works in retail at Apple, they’ll say, “I work at Apple”, but if they work for a less famous company, they’ll just say, “I work in retail”.

If your employees don’t mention your company name when asked this question at a party, you likely don’t have an employer brand worth mentioning in a job advert, and the cost of being interrupted by calls is too high.

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Well-Known Brands Are The Exception

We’ve found that well-known organisations, such as Virgin, Google, and Disney, are exceptions to this rule. Most need only whisper that they’re recruiting, and they’ll receive many applications (particularly during recessions when jobseekers want the security of working for a well-known employer).

But there are exceptions to this exception!

• When the brand trumps the job: A minority of applicants want any job so they can be associated with a famous brand. Big companies don’t need desperate applicants; they want Great Performers, so they may still want to advertise anonymously.
• When the consumer branding doesn’t match the workplace culture: Some employer brands have a reputation that isn’t borne out in reality. For example, jobseekers might think that Innocent Drinks offers a fun, quirky work environment where you blend smoothies all day. However, Innocent is majority owned by Coca-Cola and requires staff with high business skills and commercial aptitude. Consequently, if the perception is wrong, they may end up with the wrong applicants.
• When brands are misunderstood: For example, the NHS is often seen as a single organisation, but it is actually operating as multiple providers, each with distinct and significant differences.

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Solve Many Problems by Advertising Anonymously

In today’s market, you may need to hide your company logo and name:

• Prevent impression of high staff turnover: Companies which constantly advertise, even if this is because they’re growing fast, may be perceived as having a high staff turnover. Active jobseekers notice this because they visit job sites regularly.
• Plausible deniability for jobseekers: Some applicants prefer applying to anonymous jobs because this gives them plausible deniability if the job is with a competitor.
• Maintain confidentiality: You may prefer not to signal to your employees, competitors, and the stock market that you’re about to enter a new market.
• Maintain good customer relations: If you’re bragging about how much you pay your employees and all the holidays you take them on, customers may notice and wonder if they are getting good value for money.
• You won’t get inundated with interruptions: If you identify yourself, you’ll get flooded with calls from applicants chasing their application’s progress and salespeople trying to sell you recruitment services. If you can’t extend the courtesy of speaking to them, you may damage your employer and consumer brand.
• Prevent negative bias: A few brands have poor reputations. For example, some people wouldn’t want to apply to work at a tax office or a fossil-fuel company.
• Prevent inaccurate bias: Other brands may be perceived inaccurately. For example, I’ve recruited for royal households, and some applicants incorrectly assume only upper-class, ex-military personnel can get a job there. Similarly, a budget airline like Ryanair may be considered an inferior employer to an upmarket airline like Emirates – but these are just impressions, not necessarily facts.

It is straightforward to hide your company logo. You could either use non-brand adverts or set up an account on a job site named “Confidential”.

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<span class="grey-callout"><p><span class="text-color-purple">Tips:</span> If you decide to advertise a job with your company name or logo, brief your team on managing enquiries. At the very least, your team should know what jobs are being advertised and who is managing the applications.</p>
<p><li>I’ve often phoned employers to discuss an advertised vacancy and received a very unprofessional response. If applicants receive a similar response, it immediately damages an employer’s brand, which is ridiculous when they spend so much time and money trying to portray themselves as an “employer of choice”.</li>
<li>Simply asking the caller, “Are you applying for the job?” is sufficient to clarify the reason for their call; they don’t need an interrogation.</li>
<li>Never try to fob off an applicant by asking them to send an email. If they’ve taken the time and initiative to call, take their call. </li>
<li>They may ask for basic information you forgot to include in the advert – this feedback helps you improve it.</li>
<li>Often, they’ll just want confirmation that you have received their application and any updates. To prevent this, send acknowledgement emails and include a statement similar to, “If you haven’t received a response within 14 days, this may sadly mean your application has been unsuccessful”.</li>
</li></p></span>

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Additional Resources

• Talent Acquisition Book: The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Emloyees.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Revealed: The Ultimate Structure for High-Impact Job Adverts.
• Article; How to Write a Advert That Attracts Great Performers: Secrets Revealed.
• Article; Write a Job Advert: Crafting the Perfect Posting to Attract Quality Applicants.
• Article; How to Optimise a Job Advert: Techniques Proven to Boost Your Application Rates!
• Article; How to Publish Job Adverts: Manual vs. Automated.
• Article; Best Time to Advertise a Job: Recommended Schedule.