35 employer branding experts you should add to your Linkedin network

Want to launch a vibrant employer brand but don’t know where to start? Add these 20 employer branding experts to your feed to help.

35 employer branding experts you should add to your Linkedin network

Note: This post has been updated for 2020.

Employer branding can be challenging for human resources professionals and hiring managers who are new to the topic. You know how it feels to step into your workplace every day, but how do you turn that feeling into engaging content that attracts outstanding candidates? Getting some answers can be as simple as clicking “Follow.” LinkedIn is full of employer branding experts who share their wisdom regularly.

Derina Adamczak

The senior director of client strategy at Recruitics Derina Adamczak has spent nearly 20 years focused on how companies find and acquire new talent. Adamczak is an enthusiastic champion of using technological tools to improve talent relationships and the communication of a strong employer brand.

Adamczak’s experience comes from the IT, engineering, construction, corporate, and retail sectors, making it widely applicable to a vast range of companies and recruiters.

Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams, CEO and founder of Ph.Creative, is driven by a passion for employer branding, as well as the dismay that comes from realizing how many companies aren’t communicating the depth of value demonstrated by their people and their brand. As a result, he regularly shares tips and insight to help organizations define themselves and communicate their deepest values to the rest of the world.

Elissa Barrett

Elissa Barrett is the VP of human resources at HubSpot, a company with nearly 4,000 employees that understands the value of employer branding as well as any organization. In fact, “Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing,” is the first point HubSpot’s Culture Code makes.

Barrett’s background in tech companies as well as in music (she was a faculty member at Berklee College of Music) gives her an especially focused perspective on talent acquisition and employer branding.

Laszlo Bock

Laszlo Bock, cofounder and CEO of the behavioral science software company Humu, is widely known for having been the SVP of people operations at Google for more than a decade. Now, his company is looking for ways to make people better able to work together through machine learning. Bock is quite active on LinkedIn and has more than one million followers.

Sarah Brennan

Accelir Insights founder and principal Sarah Brennan has more than 15 years of experience in leading companies’ recruitment and growth strategies. Her specialty, however, is in managing people and growing great teams.

In March 2020, TecHR Series named her one of the eight most celebrated women in HR tech.

Bryan Chaney

Bryan Chaney leads Indeed’s global employer brand and talent acquisition teams. This means he has had the opportunity to spend the last five years helping people tell the stories of how they landed their dream jobs.

Chaney is also a cofounder of the Talent Brand Alliance, which hosts an excellent annual summit in Austin.

Carrie Corbin

In the past few years, Carrie Corbin has helped lead the global employer branding initiatives at Dell, American Airlines, and Randstad Sourceright. Today, she continues that work as a consultant for some of the biggest employers in America.

Corbin is frequently cited as an employer branding and recruitment leader to follow, and that recognition is confirmed by the thousands of people who already follow her on LinkedIn.

Three businesswomen meeting in a colorful conference room; employer branding experts concept

Shirley Davis

Dr. Shirley Davis consults Fortune 100 companies on issues related to strategic growth, which includes employer branding and workplace inclusion.

Before that, Dr. Davis held senior leadership roles at Exelon Corporation, Bank of America, and Capital One, among other major employers. She also served for eight years as the global head of diversity and inclusion and workplace strategies at the Society for Human Resource Management.

Allison Dunsmore

Allison Dunsmore’s master’s degree in HR Management was only the start of her training, experience, and insight into employer branding and recruitment marketing. Her track record includes a recently started position as a senior analyst of talent attraction and employer brand at American Airlines. She has also honed her skills at large employers such as Banfield Pet Hospital and PwC, giving her a range of experience that shines through in the depth of her insights.

James Ellis

“‘Change agent’ isn’t the right term. ‘Fearless inventor of your future’ is closer,” James Ellis writes on his LinkedIn profile, and his work bears out the description. Inventor of several tools that are now commonplace in employment branding, Ellis constantly asks what isn’t being done and turns that into what everyone is doing.

If you want to know what’s next for employer branding, see ideas as they develop, or simply have a go-to source for what’s new and interesting in employer brand development, Ellis is a must-follow expert.

Tannen Ellis-Graham

Tannen Ellis-Graham is cofounder and master career coach at CareerKarma360. She spends her days training, coaching, and speaking on topics related to recruitment, hiring, and retaining talent, including how to build an outstanding employer brand.

As a member of the National Speakers Association Mountain West, board member of the Salt Lake chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management), and an appointee to the Utah State Workforce Development Board, Ellis-Graham is constantly engaged with questions of branding and recruitment in the real world, giving her a perspective that is well worth following.

Jill Felska

Jill Felska is the director of people and culture at Limelight Health and the founder of Want to Work There, an organization that helps companies become the best places to work within their respective industries. Felska’s perspective is informed by 10 years’ experience researching some of the most pressing questions in recruiting and employer branding, including “How do people find and decide what companies to work for?,” and “Once hired, what makes great employees stay?”

Felska’s insight and advice is a must-read for recruiters and hiring managers who seek to use their employer brand to build lasting relationships and sustainable success.

Keesha Galindo

Keesha Galindo is the VP of HR and talent at Apogee, Inc., where she has been tasked with quickly scaling up sales teams, creating career paths for talented employees, and positioning the company as a standout employer in Austin’s competitive tech sector. In her own words: “I’m building the programs that attract, retain, and reward employees.”

Terri Green

Terri Green is the founder of Outstand, an employer and personal branding consulting firm. With over 15 years’ experience in recruiting and related fields, Green helps businesses understand their own unique brand features while also maintaining the perspective necessary to see how those elements play out as part of the organization’s overall success.

If you want to use your employer brand to improve employees’ experience as well as attract new talent, Green is an outstanding source of info.

Charlotte Hågård

Charlotte Hågård has 25 years’ experience in employer branding and related topics. As a member of LinkedIn’s invitation-only Top Influencer Group, she’s also connected to a wide range of professionals in the recruiting and employer branding sphere. Her flexibility in focusing on both employer and candidate branding gives her a 360-degree view of the field that can be invaluable for employers seeking to understand how value branding works as a means of communication with candidates.

Two businessman shaking hands; employer branding experts concept

Noelle Holdsworth

Noelle Holdsworth is the North American director of talent acquisition, sourcing, and recruitment at Sutherland. Prior to that, she was an employer brand manager at T-Mobile, where she helped build and maintain a consistent, organization-wide approach to employer branding, and to identify and track the necessary metrics to understand its success. She’s a busy contributor to LinkedIn, posting a series of useful articles on recruiting, employer branding, and how to engage productively with the work world.

Maureen Crawford Hentz

Maureen Crawford Hentz is the VP of human resources at the A.W. Chesterton Company, a major manufacturer and supplier in the heavy industry sector. A veteran consultant, too, Hentz is much sought after for her experience in career strategy and “teaching recruiters how to recruit,” as she says. Hentz is very active on LinkedIn, and her shares and comments will be an invaluable part of your news feed.

Alex Her

Alex Her owns the entire candidate experience at the software company Informatica, where he leads employer branding and recruitment. His efforts have made the company a coveted place to work in the places where it has offices, including Austin and Ireland, among others. He has also helped drive up Informatica’s Glassdoor rankings and grown the company’s talent pool to several thousand candidates.

Christopher Herron

Christopher Herron leads the talent attraction initiatives at Indeed, where he has spent years honing his skills as a recruiter. He’s an active person on LinkedIn, where he talks recruitment with others and looks for ways to connect technical talent with available opportunities. Herron is also a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

Alyssa Krane

Alyssa Krane is chief talent strategist at Powerhouse Talent, Inc. With over 18 years’ experience, Krane has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Money, and similar publications.

On LinkedIn, Krane contributes to the conversation by publishing articles on the how-to aspects of employment branding. Her work focuses on concrete tips like how to build a careers website or page that puts your employer value proposition front and center for top talent.

Margie Kwan

Margie Kwan is “a brand strategist, account director, and employer brand manager rolled into one enthusiastic expert.” Her unique blend of skills allows her to focus on how companies answer one key question: “Why should candidates want to work with us?”

With the answers in mind, Kwan also helps organizations build the programs they need to attract and retain top talent. If you’re struggling to move your employee value proposition from the abstract to the concrete, Kwan’s advice is a great place to start.

Tiffany Lee

Tiffany Lee is the Talent Engagement Manager at Zoom Video Communications. She puts people and their stories first. Her work includes building relationships with other employees in order to “lift the curtain, and show off our creative minds, terrific problem solvers, and innovative hackers” to candidates in order to attract similarly creative and enthusiastic team members.

For any business seeking to leverage human connection to build an employer brand, Lee’s insight is a must-follow.

Alexandra Levit

Many recruiters and hiring managers are familiar with Alexandra Levit’s work. Levit’s writing has appeared in syndicated columns in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, and Forbes. She’s also the author of several books that speak to the heart of employer branding and organizational development, including “They Don’t Teach Corporate in College and Humanity Works: Merging Technologies,” and “People for the Workforce of the Future.”

For organizations that want to focus on futureproofing their employer brands, Levit offers  perspective and wisdom that can help them do just that.

Two young hip businesspersons at a desk looking at the same monitor; employer branding experts concept

Charlotte Marshall

Since 2019, Charlotte Marshall has led the Danaher Corporation’s employer branding efforts, but her experience in the field runs much deeper than that. For 15-plus years, Marshall has been helping global employers with their branding strategies and with building top-performing teams.

Her previous employer-branding leadership roles have been at Magellan Health, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Life Technologies. In 2019, the organizers of World Employer Branding Day named Marshall the global employer branding leader of the year.

Jennifer McClure

Building relationships is at the top of Jennifer McClure’s priority list, as well as her LinkedIn profile. The CEO of Unbridled Talent & DisruptHR, McClure is a popular keynote speaker who mixes inspiration, how-to tips, and insights into best practices and concrete strategic details in her talks and her writing. The result is a treasure trove of wisdom in her profile that recruiters and hiring managers can use right away to start improving their own branding and value propositions.

Holland McCue

Holland McCue is an employer brand and employee experience leader at Delta Air Lines, giving her a valuable perspective on the connection between employees’ day-to-day experiences and the company’s overall value proposition for new candidates. She also focuses on connecting the human elements of recruiting and retention with the metrics and data needed to deepen perspectives and develop insights on employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity.

Jessica Miller-Merrell

For 15 years, Jessica Miller-Merrell has been the chief innovation officer at Workology, a publication and resource for HR professionals she founded in 2005. She writes, gives talks on, and trains companies on human capital, and she’s been listed among the industries top influencers by Forbes.

Miller-Merrell has a very active LinkedIn presence, where she has more than 14,000 followers. She’s a great follow for anyone seeking comprehensive knowledge on HR — from employer branding to HR operations and industry technology.

Nikoleta Miteva

A number of nations have fast-growing economies full of innovations for recruiting and keeping the best available talent, and Nikoleta Miteva has her finger on the pulse of that growth in Bulgaria. A graduate in organizational psychology, Miteva regularly blogs on employer branding questions and discoveries, giving her followers a new perspective on a fast-growing topic.

Ed Nathanson

Ed Nathanson is the VP of talent and talent branding at EQRx, LLC, and he takes a deeply personal approach to building an employer brand. “It’s about effort. It’s about dedication. It’s about doing your homework and about being authentic and understanding the importance of humor and heart,” Nathanson told a Talent Connect breakout session titled “Build a Compelling Employer Brand Without the Big Bucks.”

Nathanson’s LinkedIn presence is a mix of this personal humor and keen insights into recruiting and the importance of an employer’s brand and presence.

Tana M. Session

Dr. Tana M. Session is an organizational development strategist who has a special focus on human resources, particularly on developing organizations that are committed to diversity and inclusion.

“My process works because I have 20+ years of HR experience, including 10 years at the executive leadership level,” she writes. “I have been researching, strategizing and executing Inclusion & Diversity and Multi-Generational workplace initiatives since 2007.”

Dr. Session is an excellent follow if you’re seeking guidance on fostering a diverse, inclusive workplace that will attract top candidates.

Joe Shaker, Jr.

The third generation of his family to run Shaker Recruitment Marketing, Joe Shaker, Jr. understands the value of personal relationships when it comes to addressing cultural fit. That one-on-one human sense infuses Shaker’s work on employer branding and communication. As a result, his advice is inspirational for companies that want their employer brand communications to feel like a personal conversation between their company and the top talent that will thrive within its ranks.

Tracie Sponenberg

Tracie Sponenberg has been the chief people officer at The Granite Group, a wholesale distribution company based in New England, for five years. As a member of the group’s executive team, Sponenberg helped overhaul the company’s HR technology and created new programs for developing leaders and onboarding new hires.

She’s a great follow if you’re curious to see how strong leadership directly impacts an organization’s ability to attract talent.

Jim Stroud

Jim Stroud has one of the biggest followings on this list. Stroud is a long-time recruiter who led Randstad Sourceright US’s sourcing and recruitment for many years. Today, he is the VP of marketing at Proactive Talent, an organization of recruiters and talent brand professionals who come together to help major organizations solve hiring challenges.

Stroud is very active on LinkedIn, and he has long been a great follow because of the information he shares.

Jeff Waldman

Jeff Waldman sees employer branding as part of a larger picture that includes technology and marketing, and his approach to branding and value proposition questions reflects this perspective. The founder of SocialHRCamp, Waldman currently focuses on helping the Canadian Hearing Society modernize its entire HR infrastructure. His contributions to LinkedIn cover a wide range of questions and issues related to recruitment, marketing, technology, and branding. Waldman is well worth following for insights on some of the stickiest intersectional problems in human resources today.

Jeff Weiner

While LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner isn’t everyone’s first guess when it comes to employer branding experts, we’re including him here because his understanding of what businesses need for success lands squarely in the realm of building a strong employer brand.

In a speech at a Talent Connect event, Weiner told audiences that companies need to define their What and their How in order to succeed. Defining these two factors is also essential to building an employer brand, and companies that focus on these will find their own brand clearly laid out before them.

Weiner’s business advice is easy to access via the platform he leads, and that’s why he’s a must-add to your list of employer-branding experts.

Images by: Cathy Yeulet/©123RF.com, Dmitriy Shironosov/©123RF.com, Dmitriy Shirosonov/©123RF.com, wocintechchat.com

You might also like...