Employer brand: an asset that few consider in the budget

Each time you pay a headhunter fee, you are paying for the absence of your employer brand (the way the labor market perceives your company as a place to work). It is not because the market lacks talented candidates, but because those candidates do not know you exist. Or they know but have no reason to actively reach out.

The true cost of passive recruitment

Headhunters charge a fee based on a percentage of the annual salary, typically ranging from 15% to 25% for mid-level management positions and can be higher for senior executive roles. For a department head position with a salary of 30 million VND per month, the search fee can range from 54 to 90 million VND for a single hire. This is the visible cost. The unseen costs are even greater. These include the time management spends interviewing unsuitable candidates, the cost of vacant positions, and the cost of re-onboarding if the new hire leaves within the first year.

In other words: a weak employer brand not only costs you more to recruit. It also narrows the list of people willing to work with you from the start.

Why top candidates won't wait to be invited

Talented candidates, especially those with stable jobs, do not browse job listings every day. They follow the companies they want to work for. They read the founder's posts on social media. They ask acquaintances in the industry. They evaluate your Recruitment page on your website before deciding whether to send a CV.

This is the mechanism that Byron Sharp refers to as Mental Availability: a brand exists in candidates' minds at the right moment when they are ready to change. If you do not build that presence continuously, you will be absent at the critical moment. And headhunters will present you as a second choice to candidates who have never heard of your company.

A brand is not found in a design file or identity system. A brand is the perception others have of you.

Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap

Conversion: how much an employer brand can save

There is no one-size-fits-all number for every industry and every scale. But it can be calculated using the following framework.

Assuming the company hires an average of 10 positions each year, with an average salary of 25 million VND per month. If 6 out of 10 positions require a headhunter with a fee of 20% of the annual salary, the total fee would be approximately 360 million VND each year. If the employer brand is strong enough to increase the percentage of active candidates, the number of positions needing a headhunter could drop to 2 out of 10. In that case, the fee would decrease to 120 million VND. The difference of 240 million VND each year is what the employer brand can achieve. This figure does not even account for the fact that active candidates often fit the culture better, have shorter onboarding times, and higher retention rates.

Three things that make an employer brand truly effective

An employer brand is not a beautiful recruitment page or a post about "happy work days" on social media. Wally Olins once reminded us that a brand is behavior, not a statement: Product, Environment, Communication, Behavior. These four vectors apply entirely to the labor market.

• A clear story: What your company is building and who is the right fit to join that journey. Not a slogan. It’s an argument that can be explained in two minutes.
• A consistent candidate experience: From the first time reading the job posting to the interview and the email notifying the results. Each touchpoint is evidence of how you treat people.
• Insights from employees: Current employees share their stories, specific and genuine, not articles edited to the point of being soulless. Candidates trust colleagues more than recruitment advertisements.

When to start intentional building

The short answer: before you urgently need to hire. An employer brand does not generate results within a month. It operates on an accumulation mechanism, just like any other brand asset. You create awareness today, and harvest active candidates after 6 to 12 months.

For businesses in a growth phase, this is a particularly valuable time to invest. Each wrong hire during a rapid team expansion not only incurs recruitment costs again. It can also slow down an entire project or disrupt the workflow of the entire team. Conversely, each person who actively seeks you out because they have been following and trusting your company tends to go further within the organization.

The starting point does not need to be large. A genuine company culture description, a purposefully designed recruitment process, and a consistent recruitment content strategy within six months. That alone can create a difference compared to most companies in the same segment in Vietnam. This is not a communication cost. This is an investment in the ability to attract talent, and it can be measured.