Communicating Employer Brand: 4 Employee Stories Candidates Want to Hear Right Now

Bernadette is a Growth Marketing Manager at Stories Inc. She shares her expertise in employee storytelling, recruitment marketing, and more.

By Bernadette Van Gieson | November 8, 2023

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As a talent leader at a biotech company, the best gift you can give talent is insight into your culture. 

Don’t forget: most active candidates are evaluating your open positions alongside roles at competing biotech organizations. In a sea of sameness, they’re doing everything they can to determine what sets your company apart and why they should choose to take the next step of their career with you.

Your company also has a lot to gain by clearly communicating your employer brand. By helping candidates opt-in and out of your hiring process, you’ll enjoy faster candidate cycles and convert talent most likely to thrive in your culture.  

Employee stories are the best way to differentiate your employer brand

As you look to communicate your employer brand and company culture, your most effective medium will be employee stories. Employee stories are pieces of content (think videos, blogs, and graphics) that highlight a specific experience an employee has had while working at your company. 

Because our brains are hard-wired for stories, employee stories are powerful ways to bring your employer brand to life in a memorable way. They are proof of culture in action and that you are who you say you are. 

You can and should find many, many employee stories to amplify across your employer brand channels. In this post, we share the four most important types of employee stories that biotech candidates want to hear right now, supported by real industry examples. 

Let’s get started! 

Employee Story #1: Highlight Purpose in Your Organization

There is no shortage of purpose in pharma and biotech organizations. In fact, many of your team members are drawn to the industry in the first place because of their desire to impact the future of public health and improve patients’ lives. 

By the same coin, candidates want insight into what purpose specifically looks like in your company and how team members experience it in their daily work. Employee stories are the best way to communicate this message. 

As you capture these stories, look for opportunities to highlight what makes your company’s purpose unique within the greater industry. Maybe it’s related to the scientific niche you work in, or the scale you’re able to impact patient well-being. 

We love this story from the biochemistry company, Metabalon. In the story, Senior Director & Head of Core Research, Annie Evans, shares an example of a time her work was able to directly impact a pediatric patient. 

Employee Story #2: Show How You Celebrate Diversity and Cultivate Inclusion 

According to BioSpace’s 2022 diversity and inclusion survey, 85% of respondents cited company diversity as an important factor when considering a new position. If your company has done the work to build an inclusive culture, capture employee stories from employees that show how they have experienced inclusion at work. 

Get inspired by this compilation video amplifying female voices at the life sciences company, Labcorp. We love this video because it features women from around the world as well as specific programs, like the Women in Leadership Program, that Labcorp provides to support the ongoing growth of women in their company. 

Employee Story #3: Bring Specific Teams to Life

Candidates are looking to learn about more than just an organization’s mission, purpose, and values (though they absolutely want that information, too). They are also looking for insight into the people they will be spending the bulk of their time with (The Team) and the processes and workflows that are most likely to impact their day-to-day satisfaction at work. 

Especially for hard-to-hire and always-on roles, team-specific content helps candidates understand what it means to not only work at your company but more specifically—and more powerfully—what it means to work on this team at your company. We call this the Team Value Proposition. 

The biopharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, created a Team Storytelling video to highlight the team culture of the Biopharmaceutical Division within their company. We love this compilation video because it shows what success looks like on this team while also spotlighting the personalities and culture of its passionate team members. 

Employee Story #4: Show What Career Growth Looks Like

In addition to understanding what their role could be at your company, candidates also want insight into what their future could hold. How do you create opportunities for team members to grow their skills and advance their career?  

The best way to communicate this is, you guessed it, uncovering stories from team members who have experienced career growth at your company. In fact, the global biotech company CSL Behring built their entire employer brand, ‘Promising Futures’ around the promise of a fulfilling career. 

In one example below, Packaging Regional Senior Manager Samantha Czako shares how CSL Behring paid attention to her long-term career aspirations and created opportunities for her to reach those goals. 

The most effective employer brands speaking in stories

If you’re looking to differentiate your employer brand from other biotech companies, lean on employee stories in your messaging to build trust with talent and help them make more educated candidate decisions.