Employer Bland

Steve Ward, founder of the Employer Brand Club, joins Chris for a proper journey through a career that started with a painfully shy kid doing teacher impressions in a Nottingham school panto and ended up reshaping how he thinks about branding, recruitment and trust.

We go right back to the beginning. A first recruitment job built on fear and cold calling that he came to despise. Three redundancies in a single year. A mentor who spotted his strategic mind. And the hand-drawn A3 CV that flipped a switch and pushed him toward creative, personal outreach over scripted selling.

From there it's the founding of Cloud9, the move into social recruiting before anyone took it seriously, and the build of a community-first agency where people were hired to create trust rather than chase placements.

The second half gets into where the industry is heading. Steve makes the case that young people have grown up so surrounded by fake, AI-generated content that anything too polished now reads as a warning sign. His answer is to shift from a sell mindset to a trust mindset, show the real story, warts and all, and protect the human voice that AI can't replicate. He shares a story from an AstraZeneca shoot that sums it all up.

A brilliant conversation about authenticity, reputation and why the truth is the one thing automation can't fake.

Emily Firth, co-founder of The Truth Works. From a decade in advertising to building an award-winning employer brand team at Booking.com, she's now tearing up the agency model with a platform that connects companies directly with verified fractional EB experts. We get into gatekeeping in the industry, why your uncomfortable truths are the gift, and how lean teams can get senior thinking on tap without the six-month retainer.

Dave Hazlehurst spent 17 years at PH Creative, which later became Human Magic, helping build employer brand into the discipline it is today. He's worked with some of the biggest brands on the planet, spoken at LinkedIn Talent Connect, and trained more people in this space than most would care to count.

This episode is a proper debrief. Dave recently left the agency world after nearly two decades (who knows for how long), which made for a conversation with very little to protect and a lot worth saying.

We cover the origin story — four people in a Liverpool office doing websites for solicitors, a career site pitch at Nationwide that changed everything, and a chance Peroni in a Dublin hotel bar that led to a LinkedIn keynote. Then we get into the stuff that actually matters.

Why EVPs are broken by design. Why employer brand is too focused on the outside and not enough on the inside. Why the function needs to stop expressing culture and start driving it. And why AI is quietly making most LinkedIn content look the same.

If you've worked in employer brand for five minutes or fifteen years, there's something in this one for you.

Niall Macmillan has 10+ million followers across social media. You probably know his face. You might not know his name. You definitely know the milk.

He's the awkward POV guy. Silent, non-threatening, and somehow one of the most watchable people on the internet.

In this episode, Chris sits down with Niall to talk about how a green screen, a glass of milk, and a string of happy accidents built a global audience — and what that means for how companies should think about the people already inside their walls.

We get into the power of being relatable over being polished, why your most introverted employee might be your best content asset and Niall's parting advice for any brand that wants to stop being bland...

"Reveal the creatures. Let them be your Avengers."

Chris is joined by Dylan Lees-Jones, European Recruitment Marketing Manager at Wipro, for a conversation that gets right to the heart of one of employer brand's longest-standing frustrations: why does a function with so much proven impact still have to fight so hard for boardroom credibility?

Dylan brings a rare dual perspective - A career that started in consumer and B2B direct marketing before moving into employer brand and he uses it to cut through some of the noise around metrics, measurement, and making the case upwards.

They cover a lot of ground, including:

The episode closes on a genuinely exciting idea: that AI could be the thing that finally makes Employer Brand Lifetime Value measurable and what that would mean for how the C-suite views employer brand investment.

If you've ever been in a room trying to explain why your work matters and felt like you were speaking a different language, this one's worth your time.

In this episode I had a thought provoking chat with Steven Brand, Global Employer Brand Lead at Rolls-Royce and a very well respected figure on the global EB circuit, to talk about what really happens to employer brand when things get tough.

Not when you're launching a shiny new EVP.

Not when you're celebrating growth or looking to attract bucket loads of talent.

But when people are leaving, redundancies are happening and restructures are taking place... what happens then?

We explored:

• Why employer branding often gets “switched off” during tough moments.
• The danger of silence (and what fills the gap when leaders don’t communicate)
• Survivor’s guilt — and how quickly trust can erode internally
• Whether employer brand should be closer to offboarding and exit data
• Why values mean nothing if they only show up in the good times

One line that stayed with me:

“You see the strength of your employer brand in the bad times, not the good.”

If we say we stand for transparency, integrity and people-first leadership… That has to apply when it’s raining too.

Steven shared some brilliant insights on a topic that doesnt often get the airtime I feel it warrants.

Hope you enjoy!

In this episode of the Employer Brand Podcast, I sat down with Ventsislava Nikolova (Ventsi) to unpack what employer branding really means — beyond ping pong tables, fruit bowls, and career fairs.

We covered:

• Why employer branding needs to stop sounding like… employer branding
• How to connect storytelling to profit (without making CEOs’ souls leave their bodies )
• Why internal mobility is one of the most underused retention levers
• The KPI she looks at first (and it’s not traffic, clicks or impressions)
• Why employees — not companies — should be the hero of the story

Hope you enjoy!

I recently had a great conversation with Global Employer Brand & Recruitment Marketing Leader, Leah Lenihan. We went deep on a topic that I think sits right at the heart of employer branding in 2026: The gap between declared culture and felt culture.

Not what’s written in your EVP deck.

Not what’s on the posters.

But what people actually experience day to day.

Leah shared some powerful, real-world insight from her time leading employer brand and recruitment marketing across multiple regions and brands.

It reinforced something I see time and time again:

A global EVP only works when it’s translated into local, lived reality.

Consistency matters - but so does nuance.

Culture isn’t what leaders say. It’s what people live.

Trust lives in the gap between promise and experience.

We also talked about:

How local teams should be empowered to interpret EVP, not just receive it

The danger of glossy campaigns without operational follow-through

Why advocacy only works when people actually believe what they’re sharing

How leaders can unknowingly undermine their own EVP in micro-moments

One stat that really stuck with me:

Less than 23% of employees typically agree with their company’s EVP promise.

That’s a massive disconnect and a big opportunity.

If you’re working on EVP, employer brand, EX, CX or culture at scale, this episode is well worth a listen.

I recently sat down with Sang-Kyun Park (Sanny) for an episode that made me stop and reassess how we’re all using AI in employer branding and talent attraction.

Not from a hype perspective.

Not from a fear-led perspective. But from a human one...

Sanny brought a brilliantly grounded view from the front line — working in a small global employer brand team, operating at scale, with all the same pressures most of us feel right now.

A few things that really stuck with me:

AI is powerful and expedites so many tasks - but fast doesn't always equal good.

Over-reliance creates an illusion of efficiency

The “what” of EVP must stay human-led - AI should help with the “how”

Authenticity erodes quickly when everything starts to sound the same. AI amplifies 'same' by the very nature of how it works.

Human judgement still matters most at emotional moments in the journey

We also got into some tougher territory:

AI as a crutch vs AI as an amplifier

The risk of AI damaging employer brand at scale

Why rejection without human contact feels so unsettling to candidates, the long-term employer brand damage could be huge

How employer branding risks becoming generic if creativity is outsourced

Why HR and EB must move from cost centre → value driver (and how data can help connect these dots to highlight genuine bottomline business impact)

+ Lots more... We hope you enjoy!

As part of Chris Le'cand-Harwood and my Employer Content Club series, we explore the 5 pillars of Employer Content.

Among many other points, we discuss how most people don’t announce disengagement... they drift away. This conversation looks at how employer content can create space for honest voices, surface hidden signals, and help organisations listen before people leave.

Hope you enjoy!