Employer brand has been “a thing” for more than 30 years.

According to LinkedIn (apply your own “grain of salt” rule here), there are 34,000 people who call themselves an employer brander, and 600,000 more who list employer branding as a skill.

There are dozens of agencies and scores of consultants in the US alone who specialize in employer branding.

So why does it feel like we’re all still fumbling around in the dark looking for a light switch?

Now, I have no issue with the idea that there are a million ways to do good employer branding, but without some kind of shared sense of “the basics,” it feels like each new generation of branders figure things out just in time to move onto their next function and fail to pass things down.

Heck, in some employer brand forum right now, there is someone with the title of “employer brand manager” asking, “how do you build an employer brand?” You don’t see recruiters asking, “hey, I just got this job: how do I recruit?”

So let’s set up some basic laws that can apply to your employer branding, regardless of your approach or school of thought.

Hence, the laws of employer branding.