Employer Branding & Recruitment Marketing

Chris Hoyt: All right. So Nicole, you are in a military testing zone? Is that what’s going on? We might hear some booming and shooting and radar noises. What’s happening today?

Nicole Fritz: Yeah, it might be things that only the dogs actually hear, but there’s some far-off distance practicing going on at a military base nearby. We’ll hope for the best today.

Chris Hoyt: And where are you? Are you near Area 51?

Nicole Fritz: I’m in New Jersey, and there’s a training site called Picatinny Arsenal about 45 minutes away. Every once in a while, we hear some practice sessions from there.

Chris Hoyt: Nice. You’re basically Jerry’s neighbor—or were, since Jerry was in Jersey for quite a while.

Gerry Crispin: Not only that, but my son, who’s now retired from the military, was in charge of artillery for the New Jersey National Guard. So if you’re hearing booms at the Arsenal, you might’ve heard him.

Nicole Fritz: Wow. There you go—we know who to credit for the disruptions.

Chris Hoyt: We’ll send him a text—ask him to hold off for an hour.

Nicole Fritz: Thanks! Appreciate it.

Chris Hoyt: And Rachel, where are you?

Rachel Duran: I’m in the Dallas, Texas area. I used to be in Arlington, now I’m on the north side in Lewisville. Still figuring out my office setup, but yeah.

Chris Hoyt: I love the art in the background. Looks great.

Rachel Duran: Thank you!

Chris Hoyt: All right. We’ve got a fun topic. We did a research bit—we can dive right in. Everybody ready?

Rachel Duran: Let’s go.

Chris Hoyt: Here we go.

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Chris Hoyt: You know it’s gonna be a good day when the bumper music runs and you’re kind of bobbing your head. Jerry, you feeling it this morning?

Gerry Crispin: No.

Chris Hoyt: All right, everybody—welcome to the Recruiting Community Podcast. We do weekly conversations with people in the space. I’m your host Sherlock, and with me today is Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson, how are you?

Gerry Crispin: I’m wonderful. I read every single Sherlock Holmes book when I was a kid.

Chris Hoyt: I think the only mystery you want to solve these days is how many more character duos I can come up with for this podcast. It’s getting hard—I may have to use ChatGPT.

I’m excited today. We’re diving deeper into insights from a recent report we did on the relationship between employer branding and recruitment marketing. We’ve got two of the research panelists with us: Rachel Duran, Head of Global Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Nicole Fritz, Lead Director of TA Marketing and Employer Branding at CVS Health.

Before we dive in, a little housekeeping: we’re streaming live on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitch. If you want to catch past or future episodes, check out cxr.works/podcast. If you’re on LinkedIn during the stream, drop us a note—we’ll try to respond. And a reminder: this is an ad-free labor of love. Our guests aren’t paying to be here; they’re here because they’re doing great work.

Let’s welcome our guests. Nicole, Rachel—how are you both?

Rachel Duran: Good!

Nicole Fritz: Great to be here!

Chris Hoyt: Rachel, let’s start with you. You’ve been in the employer branding space for quite some time—how long have we known each other?

Rachel Duran: At least ten years! I’ve been in this space for ten years, mostly with tech companies. I came from a marketing and advertising background, never a recruiter, but in retail, I recruited my own people. That experience helped me bridge the gap. Now I’m loving what I do at HPE.

Chris Hoyt: Love it. Nicole, your turn—give us your elevator pitch.

Nicole Fritz: Sure! I grew up at KPMG—over 20 years there. I grew into the employer brand function before we even called it that. We were placing print ads in newspapers—pre-social media! I helped pioneer social for recruiting internally.

I spent a year at EY working on global tech branding before heading to CVS Health. I’ll hit three years there in January. I lead a large team supporting recruitment marketing across business areas—from hourly roles to corporate and clinical. I also lead our creative team for our career site and social media.

Chris Hoyt: Time flies! So, about this research panel—it ran four to five weeks. You both were involved in a group of 40–50 experts. Nicole, let’s start with you: any standout insights for you on the relationship between employer branding (EB) and recruitment marketing (RM)?

Nicole Fritz: Yeah, we had great dialogue. We spent time defining what EB and RM are and aren’t. Employer branding is the “who” and “why”—why someone should want to work for your company. Recruitment marketing takes that story and turns it into tactics—how we tell the story, through which tools and channels.

They can work independently, but they’re far more effective together.

Chris Hoyt: Great summary. Rachel—same for you? Any lightbulb moments?

Rachel Duran: Yeah, definitely. These kinds of working groups give you validation even when there are differences of opinion. I think we all agreed that EB and RM must overlap—they’re connected and lead each other down the funnel.

Employer brand influences; recruitment marketing gets the click to apply. They’re not the same, but they work in tandem.

Chris Hoyt: Were there any practical takeaways? Something teams could implement immediately?

Rachel Duran: Yes—define the problem you’re solving. That lets you decide whether it’s an EB issue, an RM issue, or both. Once that’s clear, you can align the right metrics and assign ownership. Even if you’re a team of one, that clarity helps you ask for support from recruiting or brand partners.

Chris Hoyt: Great point. Nicole, anything from you on that front?

Nicole Fritz: Absolutely. There are tons of metrics, but they’re meaningless without strategy. Know what success looks like short-term—clicks, impressions, social engagement—but also long-term: reduced turnover, improved time-to-hire, better quality hires.

The hard part is helping leadership understand the marathon metrics, not just the sprints.

Chris Hoyt: Rachel, I saw you nodding. You’ve seen that too?

Rachel Duran: Yes! Different stakeholders care about different things. So, tailor your dashboards. Your internal team might need detailed campaign-level data. Executives want high-level impact. Educating stakeholders about what metrics mean is crucial.

Chris Hoyt: Speaking of dashboards, what does that look like for your team, Rachel?

Rachel Duran: It’s a work in progress! We use Phenom for CRM and career site data. We pull from our ATS, social channels, ad platforms, and events. Eventually, we want to automate more and bring in APIs. For now, it’s a combination of dashboards and presentations.

Chris Hoyt: Nicole—how about CVS?

Nicole Fritz: Same here. Nothing “sexy” yet—lots of spreadsheets and manual reporting. We’re also new to Phenom and learning how to leverage it. Right now, our business-aligned RM managers track campaign-level results: cost, performance, social metrics, career site traffic, etc. Holistic reporting is tough at our scale, so we keep it targeted.

Chris Hoyt: Let’s shift gears a bit. What does the future hold for EB and RM? Any trends or predictions?

Nicole Fritz: AI is the big buzzword, of course. But we talked about not losing the human touch. It’s about using tech to streamline repetitive tasks so we can focus more on candidate relationships and human interaction.

Rachel Duran: Totally agree. And I’ll add: we need to get serious about video. Blogs are fading; short-form video is rising—especially for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Video works across job descriptions, social, CRM campaigns—everywhere.

Chris Hoyt: Any examples? What kind of video content are we talking about?

Rachel Duran: Not big-budget drone shots. We’re talking quick, authentic clips—hiring managers talking about a role, interns describing their day, employees sharing their “why.” Shot on phones, formatted for social (9:16). It’s about being real and nimble.

Chris Hoyt: Love that. Shoutout to Maury Hannigan from Spark—she’s been championing video for years and recently dropped a great ROI calculator on their site.

Jerry, let’s talk structure. With EB and RM covering so much—candidate experience, advocacy, referrals—are we going to see shifts in org design?

Gerry Crispin: We’ve had recent conversations about this. Nicole, Rachel—where do you see EB and RM sitting organizationally?

Nicole Fritz: We discussed this a lot in the panel. It varies by company—some roll up under marketing, some under TA. At CVS, we’re under TA Enablement, part of TA Ops.

The key takeaway: where it sits is less important than how it collaborates across brand, comms, legal, social, etc. With the right leadership support, you can get things done.

Chris Hoyt: Love that. And as Jerry mentioned, we see these themes cycle back—DEI, candidate experience, etc.

Jerry, do you think AI is going to revolutionize candidate experience—or is it just about getting better at being human?

Gerry Crispin: I think AI gives us new opportunities. Right now, we mostly use tech to speed up what we already do. But AI could enable things like interviewing every single applicant using avatars, giving everyone a fair shot.

It depends which stakeholder needs rise to the top—hiring managers, recruiters, candidates. That shifts the focus and the tools.

Chris Hoyt: Well said. All right—we’re about to wrap. But before we go, we ask every guest this:

If you were to write a book based on your five-week panel experience and the report—what would the title be?

Nicole Fritz: Oh jeez… I wasn’t ready for that one! Barb told me to prep a dad joke, not a book title. Hmm… I don’t know—maybe something like “Employer Branding & Recruitment Marketing: Better Together.”

Chris Hoyt: That works! Rachel?

Rachel Duran: “What Is Employer Brand? The Never-Ending Story.”

Chris Hoyt: Nice. Nicole—present company excluded—who gets the first signed copy of your book?

Nicole Fritz: My mom! She’s been my forever supporter—and fun fact, she worked at KPMG too. I met my husband there too. So she’s been on this whole journey with me.

Chris Hoyt: That’s awesome. Rachel?

Rachel Duran: I’d give mine to Craig Fisher. He was my first boss in employer branding—pulled me from agency world, said, “You’d be good at this.” He was right. He’s always been a cheerleader.

Chris Hoyt: I love that. Craig’s a good guy.

All right—if you want the report, head to cxr.works/research. You can also raise your hand to join a future panel. The employer branding topic was hot—we’re doing another round!

Nicole, Rachel—huge thanks for joining us. We appreciate you both!

Rachel Duran: Absolutely—thank you!

Nicole Fritz: Thank you so much!

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