The Give and Get Method: A Smarter Way to Build an Employer Brand

Most employer branding tries to be liked by everyone and ends up being chosen by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. The give and get method takes the opposite view. It says the strongest employer brands are honest about the deal on offer, generous about what they give, and clear about what they expect in return. That honesty does something counterintuitive: it makes the right people want the job more, not less. This page explains what the method is, why it works, and how to put it to work in your own organisation.

What is the give and get method?

The give and get method is an employer branding approach that pairs what you give people with what you expect from them in return, so the employer value proposition works as an honest filter rather than a sales pitch. Instead of listing perks and hoping to attract as many applicants as possible, you define the genuine exchange at the heart of working for you: the meaningful things people receive, and the real commitments they take on to receive them. When both sides of that exchange are stated plainly, your what is employer branding story stops being a recruitment advert and starts being a promise the right people can measure themselves against.

The word that matters most in the method is exchange. A perk is something you hand out. An exchange is something people opt into with their eyes open. When you frame your employer brand as an exchange, you attract candidates who are drawn to the specific trade you are offering, not to a generic list of benefits that any employer could copy. That specificity is the whole point. It is what makes the give and get method more durable than a campaign and more useful than a slogan.

Why "repel to compel" is the core idea

Deliberately letting the wrong people self-select out makes you more compelling to the right people. This is the principle at the centre of the give and get method, and it feels backwards until you have seen it work. Every employer brand that tries to appeal to everyone becomes bland, because the only messages that offend nobody are the messages that mean nothing. When you are willing to say who the role is not for, the people it is for finally recognise themselves. Repel to compel is not about being difficult or exclusionary. It is about being clear enough that the people who would be unhappy in the role can step away before they ever apply, and the people who would thrive can lean in with confidence.

Consider a generic before and after. Before, a careers page reads: "We offer competitive pay, great benefits, flexible working and a supportive team where everyone can grow." That could describe almost any employer, so it filters no one and inspires no one. After, using the method, the same page reads: "This is a role for people who like ambiguity and hate being micromanaged. You will own outcomes with very little hand-holding. If you need a detailed brief before you can start, this will frustrate you. If you have been waiting for someone to trust you with the whole problem, you will love it." The second version repels the people who want structure and safety, and in doing so it becomes magnetic to the people who want autonomy. The applicant pool gets smaller and dramatically better at the same time.

The goal is not more applicants. The goal is the right applicants, arriving already sold on the parts of the job that would put the wrong people off.

How is give and get different from traditional employer branding?

Give and get is different from traditional employer branding because it is honest about the deal instead of seductive about the perks. Traditional employer branding borrows the logic of consumer marketing: identify what people want to hear, say it as attractively as possible, and cast the widest net you can. That seduction model produces employer brands that look wonderful and predict nothing, because they are written to be universally appealing rather than specifically true. The give and get model treats the employer brand as a mutual agreement, so it leads with reality and lets reality do the sorting.

The two approaches diverge most clearly in how they treat the difficult parts of a job. The seduction model hides them, then hopes new hires forgive the gap once they arrive. The give and get model puts them in the shop window, because the difficult parts are exactly what separate a good fit from a bad one. Here is the contrast at a glance.

The practical result is that a give and get employer value proposition attracts fewer but better-matched people, sets accurate expectations before day one, and reduces the early attrition that comes from candidates discovering the job is not what the advert implied. It is a quieter funnel that produces stronger hires.

The give and get exchange, explained

The give and get exchange is the two-way deal at the heart of the method: what great employers give, and what they ask for in return. Naming both halves is what turns a wish list into a relationship. Most employers are fluent in the giving and silent on the asking, which leaves candidates unable to judge whether they truly belong. The method insists on both sides being explicit, because reciprocity is what makes the offer feel real rather than too good to be true.

What great employers give

Great employers give impact, purpose and belonging, not just pay and perks. Impact means the work visibly matters and people can see the difference they make. Purpose means the organisation stands for something a person can be proud to contribute to, beyond the quarterly numbers. Belonging means people feel known, trusted and part of something, rather than interchangeable. These are the gives that people leave good salaries to find and stay for when other offers arrive. Pay and benefits are the price of entry; impact, purpose and belonging are the reasons anyone remembers where they work.

What great employers ask in return

Great employers are clear about what is expected of you in return for those gives. That might be a tolerance for pace and change, a willingness to be held accountable, a commitment to a standard of craft, or the emotional labour of a role that deals with people at their most vulnerable. The ask is not a threat. It is a courtesy. When you tell people plainly what the role will demand of them, you give them the dignity of choosing it with full information. Reciprocity is the quiet engine here: people value what they have to earn, and they commit more deeply to a deal they entered knowingly than to one they were sold.

EVP as a smart filter

A give and get EVP works as a smart filter by making ideal candidates lean in and mismatched candidates step back. The test to apply is simple. Read your employer value proposition and ask whether it prompts the right reader to think, "Do I have what it takes?" A strong EVP provokes exactly that question. It describes a bar worth clearing, so the people who want to clear it feel a pull, and the people who would rather not are gently waved through to somewhere better suited to them. A weak EVP provokes no reaction at all, because it asks nothing and therefore sorts no one.

This filtering effect is why the method is so efficient. You are not spending energy screening out mismatches later in the process, because your own words did the screening at the very top of the funnel. The candidates who reach you have already read the hard parts and decided they want in anyway. That single shift, from an EVP that flatters to an EVP that filters, changes the economics of hiring. You interview fewer people, you interview better people, and the people you hire arrive with expectations that match reality.

The universal employer brand cheat sheet

The universal employer brand cheat sheet is a five-part structure that any organisation can use to build a give and get employer brand. It works because it covers both the emotional pull and the practical deal in an order that mirrors how a candidate actually decides. Use it as a checklist when you are drafting or auditing your own employer value proposition.

The order is deliberate. You earn attention with the first three, extend the offer with the fourth, and state the price with the fifth. Skip the fifth and you are back to a seduction advert. Include it and you have an employer brand that filters on your behalf.

How do you activate a give and get employer brand?

You activate a give and get employer brand using the Heart, Head and Hands model, which turns the written proposition into felt belief, clear understanding and consistent action. A proposition that lives only in a document changes nothing. Activation is the work of moving it off the page and into the way people feel about you, reason about you and behave because of you. The three levels build on each other, and a brand that neglects any one of them will wobble.

Heart

Heart is the emotional connection and belief that makes people care about your employer brand before they analyse it. This is the story, the tone and the human truth that makes a candidate feel something and think, "these are my people." Without heart, even an accurate proposition lands flat, because people commit emotionally first and justify rationally second. Heart is where the give and get method earns the right to be believed.

Head

Head is the rational proof and understanding that lets people trust what their heart already suspects. This is the evidence, the clarity and the concrete detail that answers the sceptical question, "is this actually true?" Head work means backing the emotional promise with real examples, honest descriptions of the role and proof that the give and the get are both genuine. Heart opens the door; head keeps people from walking back out.

Hands

Hands is the behaviour and action that proves the employer brand every day, long after the candidate becomes an employee. This is where the proposition is either honoured or exposed: in how managers lead, how the hard parts are handled and whether the deal people were promised is the deal they actually get. Hands is the hardest level and the most important, because an employer brand is ultimately judged by what people experience, not by what they were told. Get the hands right and the heart and head take care of themselves over time.

Where the method comes from

The give and get method comes from the book Give & Get Employer Branding and from years of applied employer brand work at an award-winning, global-leading employer branding agency and Happydance. The book set out the framework, the repel to compel principle and the cheat sheet in full, and the thinking has since been tested across employer brand programmes for organisations in many sectors and countries. That combination of a documented method and real-world practice is what gives the approach its authority: it is not a theory written in a vacuum, it is a way of working that has been sharpened by use.

If you want the person behind the method, start with employer brand expert Bryan Adams, who originated the repel to compel idea and built the give and get framework through this work. And if you would rather apply it to your own organisation than read about it, you can work with Bryan to turn your proposition into an honest, filtering employer brand. Either way, the invitation is the same as the method itself: stop selling, start being clear, and let the right people choose you.