The Complete Guide to Public Sector Employer Branding

Use this step-by-step guide with downloadable templates to understand, analyze, and build your public sector employer branding and strengthen your recruitment strategy.

Article Highlights

• What is Employer Branding in Government?
• The Power of Strong Employer Brands
• 3 Steps to Take Before Building Your Employer Brand
• How to Build a Public Sector Employer Brand
• Tools to Create Your Public Sector Employer Branding (+ FREE Employer Branding Starter Kit)
• Government Hiring & Branding FAQs

A shift in recruitment is underway, and it’s having a major impact on public sector employer branding. According to The Hopeful Horizon of Recruitment report, applications to government jobs surged 14.6% from 2023 to 2024 as more job seekers prioritize purpose-filled work and stable careers.  

While the influx of qualified applicants presents exciting opportunities for agencies, how candidates feel about your organization has become a deciding factor for many job seekers. While hiring managers focus on qualifications, more job seekers are evaluating job-fit based on the perceived values, culture, and employee experience of a potential employer.

This is especially true for the younger generation of workers – Forbes reports 75% of Gen Z job seekers research the societal impact of a potential employer before applying for a role. Moreover, 9 in 10 Gen Z and Millennial workers consider ‘sense of purpose’ key to their job satisfaction and overall well-being as employees.

Public sector agencies are perfectly positioned to attract job seekers actively searching for purpose-filled careers. But if your mission and impact aren’t visible to these candidates, you risk losing them to agencies telling a better story. 

Employer branding helps you shape how candidates perceive you as a potential employer. It’s more than logos and fonts – in government hiring, branding is about authentically showcasing what makes your organization special and continually reinforcing why you are an employer of choice.

When done well, employer branding empowers you to compete on more than salary by bringing your unique mission, culture, and career opportunities front and center. This guide walks you through the steps to build a strong employer brand and improve the candidate experience in public sector recruitment – and gives you the tools to bring it to life. Let’s dive in.

What is Employer Branding in Government?

Logos, colors, and fonts are what most people associate with branding, but there’s so much more to an employer brand than the visible elements.  

Think of your employer brand as your reputation as an employer. It represents how employees and candidates perceive what it’s like to work at your agency and what you stand for. This perception forms through real experiences, workplace culture, and the actual value you provide to employees – not just how your materials look.

5 Factors that Shape Your Employer Brand:

1. Culture encompasses the day-to-day experience of working at your agency, from management styles to decision-making processes and workplace atmosphere.
2. Core values that guide your agency’s decisions, culture, and daily operations.
3. Benefits and opportunities include not just health insurance and retirement, but unique perks like flexible schedules, professional development, and tuition reimbursement. 
4. Reputation reflects what your agency is known for in the community, among peer organizations, and across professional networks. 
5. Purpose and differentiation highlight the meaningful work you do that sets you apart from other employers.

While your employer brand reflects how others perceive you, brand identity is how you shape that perception. Brand identity includes the visible elements of your brand, such as logo and fonts, how you articulate your mission through messaging and tone, and intentional characteristics that shape your employer brand.

5 Key Elements of Brand Identity: 

1. Work environments that reflect and embody your core values, such as collaborative workspaces, lactation rooms, and branded way-finding signs. 
2. Unique differentiators and specific qualities that set your agency apart from other employers are unique to your agency.
3. Community impact stories and examples that demonstrate the meaningful difference your work makes.
4. Visual brand elements such as logos, colors, fonts, and design style that create consistent recognition. 
5. Brand messaging including your tone of voice, writing style, communication templates, how you communicate your value proposition.

When your brand identity authentically reflects your employer brand, you create alignment between perception and reality. Then, candidates know what to expect, employees feel proud to represent their workplace, and your reputation as an employer of choice strengthens. 

The Power of Strong Employer Brands 

Investing in an authentic, compelling employer brand sets your agency up for long-term success. Strong employer brands create lasting competitive advantages that benefit your agency for years to come. 

Attract qualified and diverse candidates who will contribute to your mission. 

Instead of spending time sourcing qualified candidates and sifting through hundreds of applications, you’ll start to attract people who are genuinely excited about working at your agency.  This deeper connection means candidates who join for the right reasons embody your mission in their daily work and stay committed long-term – ultimately boosting your retention. 

Build a steady pipeline of interested candidates to aid in faster hiring. 

Rather than starting from scratch every time a position opens, you’ll have relationships with candidates who already know and appreciate your organization. For hard-to-fill positions or roles with frequent turnover, having a continuous pipeline of interested candidates is essential for maintaining staffing levels. 

Maintain meaningful connections with candidates throughout their career journey. 

Strong employer brands support the creation of lasting professional relationships. Candidates who aren’t selected for a role may be perfect matches for future opportunities, so it’s important to continuously nurture positive relationships with them so they’ll look forward to applying to work for your agency again. 

Unify your workforce around a shared sense of purpose. 

When your employer brand clearly articulates your mission and values, current employees feel more connected to the work and proud to represent your organization – and candidates are excited for the opportunity to contribute to that mission. 

Enhance your reputation as an employer of choice. 

When your agency becomes known for living out its mission and values, people take notice. Your positive reputation does the foundational work for you, which makes recruitment easier, strengthens community relationships, and attracts the right talent. 

Let’s start building your employer brand step-by-step. 

3 Steps to Take Before Building Your Employer Brand

Before you start building your employer brand, there are a few steps you need to take to ensure it's effective for both your agency and for candidates. Here's where to start.

Step 1: Assess Your Current Employer Brand

First, you need to know what stories your brand is currently telling. How do current and future employees perceive your agency? 

By assessing your current brand, you will uncover opportunities to strengthen processes, improve culture, and revise messaging. This will give you a starting point to craft a new narrative that will serve as the foundation for your employer brand moving forward.  

Start by gathering feedback from multiple sources:

• Current employees are your greatest source of truth and perspective. Survey them to learn what they love most about working at your organization, what attracted them to their role, and what keeps them coming back everyday. Ask them about their own hiring experience and whether they’d refer others to work at your agency.
   
• Review your social media and online presence through the eyes of candidates. Do your social media posts, website, and job descriptions tell a cohesive story? Do your mission, culture, or unique differentiators stand out in your messaging? Analyze the comments and engagement on your posts to gauge public perception.

Next, take a look at current processes and initiatives:

• Analyze recruitment outcomes and candidate feedback to identify patterns. Are you attracting the right candidates? Where do you lose people in the hiring process? Look at application rates, interview feedback, and reasons candidates decline offers. Consider implementing exit surveys for candidates who don’t accept offers to better understand their decision.
  
  
• Review your strategic initiatives and consider if your branding aligns with the direction your agency is headed. If your agency is on a journey to modernize operations, does your employer brand reflect this evolution? Are you attracting candidates who will support your strategic goals? 

Step 2: Develop Your Agency Story

Now it’s time to craft a narrative that showcases the unique value of your employment. Your agency story should accurately reflect your mission, culture, experiences and opportunities in a way that resonates with potential candidates. 

1. Start by gathering stories that already exist.

Real-life stories provide authentic insights into your agency’s culture and purpose and resonate most with candidates. 

• Look for examples of how your agency positively impacts the community by searching news articles and social media mentions. 
• Interview council members and community leaders on the initiatives they’re most excited about.
• Speak to program managers to understand the direct impact projects have on businesses, neighborhoods, and individuals.
• Collect testimonials from current employees about the experiences and projects they find rewarding.

2. Identify your agency’s unique qualities. 

Take what you’ve learned and list the tangible and intangible qualities that set your agency apart. 

• Tangible benefits for employees could be job security, opportunities for professional development, or competitive compensation. For the community, this may look like timely responses to service requests, a robust small business program, or meticulously maintained public spaces. 
  
  
• Intangible benefits could include a supportive work environment, a strong sense of community, opportunities to work on special projects, a commitment to diversity and inclusion, or a sense of pride in the work being done.  

3. Articulate your agency’s mission, vision, and goals. 

Armed with the knowledge of how others currently perceive your agency’s culture, initiatives and experiences, you can determine whether your mission, vision, and goals align with reality. This is an opportunity to correct any misalignment or re-envision the strategic direction of your agency. 

Clearly define what your agency does (mission), what it aspires to achieve (vision), and the overarching objectives that guide this work (goals). This is the foundational narrative of your employer brand that connects individual roles to a larger purpose. 

4. Develop your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) statement. 

Your employer value proposition in HR is a concise, compelling statement that summarizes the unique benefits an employee receives in return for their skills and contributions in your agency. 

Your EVP should mention your mission, vision, core values, and unique differentiators. This statement will serve as a guiding principle for all your employer branding efforts.

Let’s look at an example EVP:

Need help developing your EVP? Download the step-by-step Employer Value Proposition Worksheet from our Employer Branding Starter Kit to craft your agency’s own unique EVP.

Step 3: Map the Candidate Journey

Now that you’ve now defined how you want your agency to be perceived, it’s time to map out where this will happen. Mapping the candidate journey sets your employer brand in motion by outlining every touchpoint a potential candidate has with your agency – from initial awareness to post-hire onboarding. 

Examining this journey from the candidate’s perspective is crucial to ensure your employer brand is consistently communicated and experienced at every opportunity. 

Start by identifying every stage where a candidate might interact with your brand:

• Discovery: Where and how do candidates first learn about your agency? This could be job boards, your agency’s website, social media channels, job fairs, internships, or employee referrals. 
  
  
• Application: What is the experience like when they apply? Consider the job posting itself, the ease of the application process, the confirmation of their submission, and their ability to track its status. 
  
  
• Interview: How are interviews scheduled? What is the interview experience like? What kind of post-interview follow-up do they receive?
  
  
• Decision: How is the offer process handled? How do you inform candidates who were not chosen? What is the onboarding experience like once they accept a position?

Once you’ve mapped the candidate journey, ask yourself the following questions of each stage:

• What do you want candidates to feel? Consider emotions like excitement, confidence, and feeling heard or valued. Think about how incorporating personal touches, such as personalized communication or genuine interactions, can elicit these feelings and create a positive, memorable experience. 
  
  
• What do you want candidates to see and know? Think about the potential content you could create to present a clear and compelling picture of your agency’s culture, values, and impact. Consider posting articles, videos, and images of employees actively carrying out your EVP. 
  
  
• What do you want candidates to do? For each touchpoint, determine the preferred action or outcome candidates should take and evaluate whether your branding makes that possible. Do you want candidates to apply to jobs easily, click links to learn more about your culture, or show up prepared and excited for an interview? Your employer brand should support and encourage these actions.

Map out your own candidate journey by downloading the Candidate Journey Mapping Worksheet from our Employer Branding Starter Kit.

Now let’s bring it all together. 

How to Build a Public Sector Employer Brand

Once you’ve assessed your current brand, developed your agency story, and mapped the candidate journey, it’s time to activate your employer brand. This involves strategically integrating your brand identity into every aspect of your recruitment and retention efforts to ensure a consistently positive experience for candidates and employees alike. 

Here’s how to build a public sector employer brand: 

Align All Messaging and Communication 

• Ensure all job descriptions, emails, and interview communications reflect your EVP. Every piece of communication should reinforce your Employer Value Proposition. Use consistent language, tone, and messaging across all touchpoints to create a unified brand experience. 
  
  
• Refresh websites, email signatures and leave-behinds. Although small, these details add up and contribute to your overall brand perception. Ensure your website is up-to-date, easy to navigate, and visually appealing. Implement consistent visual branding across all media types, from employee email signatures to paper brochures.
  
  
• Create templates for all messaging and content types. Standardizing email formats, email signatures, employee testimonials, social media posts, and website design ensures brand consistency over time.  

Showcase Your Agency’s Impact

• Use specific storytelling to illustrate the real-life impact of your work. Go beyond telling candidates about your mission – show them how your agency’s work positively impacts the community, solves problems, and creates meaningful change. Write blog posts, create a social media series, generate videos, or dedicate space on your website to telling these stories. 
  
  
• Share employee testimonials and encourage employees to be brand ambassadors. Featuring real employee experiences is the heart of your employer brand. These stories serve as authentic confirmation of your EVP to candidates. Highlight stories of employees sharing what they love about their role, what it’s like to come to work everyday, and the impact their work has on the community. Empower employees to share their pride in working for your agency in their professional networks. 
  
  
• Create branded landing pages tailored for specific departments, teams, events, or projects. Break away from generic “Careers” pages by creating dedicated spaces that speak directly to the interests of different candidate segments. For example, a landing page for IT roles could showcase specific tech projects and team culture, while a page for social outreach positions could highlight community initiatives.
  
  
• Create content that gives candidates a glimpse inside your agency. There’s nothing more engaging than behind-the-scenes content. Write an article or shoot a video showing a typical day in a certain role, interviewing employees and their career paths, or spotlighting teams working on a project. This helps candidates visualize themselves working at your agency. 

Personalize Candidate Interactions

• Send personalized emails to prospects. Stand out from other employers by how you communicate with potential applicants. Utilize candidate relationship management (CRM) software to proactively send candidates in your database job opportunities that match their skills and interests. 
  
  
• Create personalized ‘thank you’ pages and emails. After a candidate submits an application, demonstrate your respect for their time by personalizing the ‘thank you’ page and sending regular follow-up emails on the status of their application. Not only do applicants appreciate transparent communication, but keeping them updated can help applicants prioritize and make decisions about multiple opportunities. 
  
  
• Send personalized emails to job fair attendees. Collect contact information from job seekers at hiring events and take the extra step of notifying them of relevant job opportunities. This personal touch can make a significant difference in a candidate’s perception of your agency. 

Leverage Technology Strategically 

When you combine authentic storytelling, consistent messaging, and personal touches with the right tools, you create an employer brand experience that attracts top talent and sets your agency apart as an employer of choice. 

Candidate relationship management software pulls it all together to amplify your employer brand. Here’s how:

• Scale your messaging. CRM software enables you to automate personalized messaging, stay connected with candidates after events or interviews, keep track of interactions, and analyze the effectiveness of your employer branding strategy.
  
  
• Automate time-consuming processes. Leveraging candidate experience software to automate outreach and personalization can reduce the amount of manual follow-up during recruitment, which frees up time to build relationships with candidates and develop strategic campaigns. 
  
  
• Draw in qualified candidates and fill positions faster. NEOGOV’s sourcing tool, Attract, gives you access to over 2.7M public sector job seekers and the ability to email good-fit candidates automatically. Using a public-sector focused CRM means you can connect with strong candidates in minutes.
  
  
• Market your agency with public sector hiring technology. With NEOGOV Attract, you can create branded landing pages, post behind-the-scenes articles, build automated email campaigns, create custom online forms, and personalize candidate outreach within one platform. 

Tools to Create Your Public Sector Employer Branding

You now have a framework for building an authentic employer brand that brings purpose-driven talent to your agency. The next step is putting these strategies into action.

We created a comprehensive Employer Branding Starter Kit with practical resources to help you level up your public sector employer branding. Click each element to download the template for that item.

If you’re ready to amplify your government hiring, branding with public sector technology designed specifically for government agencies makes all the difference. Learn how candidate relationship management software like NEOGOV Attract strengthens your employer brand by helping you implement these strategies at scale. 

Government Hiring & Branding FAQs

What is an employer brand and why does it matter in public sector hiring? 

An employer brand is an organization's reputation as an employer, encompassing culture, values, benefits, and purpose. In public sector hiring, a strong employer brand is crucial because today's job seekers, especially younger generations, are prioritizing purpose-filled work and values alignment. It helps agencies attract qualified, diverse candidates, build a steady talent pipeline, and compete beyond salary by showcasing their unique mission and impact.

How can government agencies build their employer brand?

Government agencies can build their employer brand by assessing their current reputation, developing a compelling agency story with a clear Employer Value Proposition, and mapping the candidate journey. They should then activate their brand by aligning all messaging, showcasing their impact through storytelling and testimonials, personalizing candidate interactions, and strategically leveraging technology like CRM software to scale these efforts.

What tools support employer branding in government HR?

Technology plays a key role, especially a Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) system like NEOGOV Attract. These tools automate personalized messaging, track interactions, and analyze strategy effectiveness, enabling agencies to scale branding efforts, streamline processes, and connect with qualified candidates more efficiently.