WE'RE HIYA. AND WE THINK EMPLOYER BRANDING IS BROKEN.
- Lucas Jeffcoate
- Mar 3
- 3 min read
Let’s be honest: most employer brands look the same.
Same stock photography. Same “we’re like a family” messaging. Same careers page that hasn’t been updated since 2022. And then companies wonder why they’re struggling to attract the people they actually want.
We started HIYA because we believe there’s a better way to do this, and because we were tired of watching brilliant companies say absolutely nothing interesting about what it’s like to work for them.
Why we built HIYA.
The employer branding industry has a problem. It treats talent attraction like a campaign, something you switch on when you’ve got roles to fill and switch off when the budget runs out. But the best employer brands aren’t campaigns. They’re experiences. They’re what happens when someone first discovers you, when they apply, when they get rejected, when they start on day one, and when they’re six months in wondering whether they made the right choice.
Every single one of those moments is an employer brand moment. And most companies are getting at least half of them wrong.
That’s why we exist. HIYA is a creative employer branding agency that helps companies build brands people actually want to work for, not just brands that look good on a careers page.
The HIYA. Talent Loop
At the heart of everything we do is the HIYA Talent Loop. It’s our framework for the entire talent journey, and it replaces the traditional recruitment funnel with something that actually reflects how people experience your brand.
The Talent Loop has six stages:
Attract: This is where you grab attention before someone is even actively looking for a job. Bold creative, smart targeting, content that makes people stop scrolling and think “who are these people?”
Convert: Once you’ve got their attention, make it ridiculously easy for them to take the next step. No twelve-page application forms. No broken links. No ghosting.
Nurture: Not everyone is ready to apply right now. Keep them warm. Give them value. Build a relationship so that when they are ready, you’re the first name that comes to mind.
Respect: This is the one almost everyone gets wrong. What happens when you reject a candidate? If your answer is “a generic email three months later,” your employer brand has a leak. We fix that.
Onboarding: Day one matters. The period between accepting an offer and actually starting matters even more. We help you make new hires feel like they’ve made the best decision of their career before they’ve even logged in.
Belong: The talent journey doesn’t end at onboarding. We help you turn employees into advocates whose stories feed back into the top of the loop, creating a self-sustaining employer brand.
The reason the Talent Loop works is because it’s not linear. It’s a loop. Great employer brands don’t just attract people… they create advocates who attract more people. That’s the culture we help you build.
What this means for you
Whether you’re a scale-up trying to compete with bigger names for talent, or a large organisation whose employer brand hasn’t kept pace with your growth, HIYA is built for you.
We work with companies who know their employer brand matters but don’t have the time, creative resource, or strategic clarity to do it justice. Our clients typically sit in one of two camps: they’re spending money on recruitment marketing but not seeing the return, or they know they need to invest in employer branding but don’t know where to start.
Either way, we meet you where you are. If you just need to get numbers in, we have an Attract and Convert package that does exactly that, smart targeting and frictionless applications. But if you want to build something that lasts, the full Talent Loop is where the real magic happens.
We’re not here to sell you a one-off campaign. We’re here to build something that compounds.
Come say HIYA.
We’re just getting started, and we’d love you to be part of it.
If you’re a HR leader, talent professional, or employer brand manager who wants practical thinking on how to build a brand people actually want to work for, sign up below. We’ll send you honest, useful content — no fluff, no spam, just ideas that make your employer brand better.
And if you’re sitting there thinking “we need this”... get in touch. We’d love to chat.
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