Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Ep 822: How To Win Investment For Employer Branding

Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Show Notes

Hi there, welcome to episode 822 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder.

Employer branding teams are still under sustained pressure. Budgets have shrunk and headcount has been reduced across many organizations, even when the hiring the business needs has become more specific and more critical. Despite all of the cuts, some employer brand leaders are still winning investment and influence.

What sets them apart is how closely their work connects to what the business is trying to achieve and how effectively they communicate its impact.

So what does it take to make employer branding matter to the business?

My guest this week is Stephen Quinn, CEO of Atomic, an insight-led agency working with employer brand leaders at some of the world's largest organizations. In our conversation, Stephen shares what the most effective employer brand leaders do differently, which metrics carry weight with the business, and how to plan employer branding for the long term.

In the interview, we discuss:

Trends and challenges in Employer Branding

What separates the most successful employer brand leaders

Attaching Employer Branding to the critical needs of the employer

Where should employer branding sit in the organization?

Building relationships across the business

Measuring and reporting on impact and ROI via the right metrics

Long-term strategy thinking rather than short-term campaign thinking

What does the future of Employer Branding look like

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Follow this podcast on Spotify.

More from Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Oct 22, 2026

If you've not listened to Round Up before, it's a short review of the episodes that I've published in the last month to make sure you don't miss out on the valuable insights that my guests are sharing.

Oct 15, 2026

AI is moving from a specialist technology to something employees in large parts of the organization are increasingly expected to be using. Skills, mindsets, and long-established habits are much harder to change than software, which is why meeting that expectation is proving difficult. If the challenge is mainly a human one, AI readiness is as much a matter for HR and talent leaders as for technology teams. So what does it take to get a workforce ready for AI, and what opportunity does that create for talent leaders?

Oct 14, 2026

Redundancies have become a constant feature of the talent market. AI is taking a lot of the blame, but the drivers behind this are much broader. Jobs and skills are changing faster than most organizations can keep track of and the conventional response is to restructure the workforce and then hire in the new skills that are needed. That approach relies on a ready supply of perfectly qualified candidates, and in a fast-moving skills market those candidates are increasingly hard to find. It also assumes that employers already have a clear view of the skills and potential within their existing workforce, which is rarely the case.

Oct 9, 2026

There is a lot of pressure on talent acquisition to adopt AI, and the discussion about how to do it tends to focus on tools and skills. With layoffs attributed to AI in the headlines, the people in TA teams have good reason to feel anxious about the technology they are being asked to use. That anxiety makes people less willing to experiment, and addressing it has less to do with the technology than with how leaders handle uncertainty.

Oct 8, 2026

TA leaders have to keep delivering for the business while they use AI to transform how hiring works. At RecFest USA in Nashville, AI was the main topic of conversation, although the people I spoke to talked about much more than the technology. So where should TA leaders be focusing their attention?

See all episodes →