The Six Second Employer Brand Audit
What AI says about your company and working for you.
Okay, we want you to do something. Open an incognito browser. Go to ChatGPT. Type this:
“Tell me what it’s like to work at [your company name].”
Seriously, it will only take six seconds.
What comes back is the unfiltered, algorithmically compressed version of your employer brand. Not the version from your careers page. The real one. Built from Glassdoor reviews, Reddit threads, LinkedIn commentary, news articles, and every digital breadcrumb your current and former employees have left behind.
AI will hand back a tidy summary: pros, cons, employee sentiment, leadership reputation, compensation perception, cultural themes. It will be blunt. And it’s what your candidates are doing right now before they ever visit your website.
This is the new front door of recruiting. And for companies that have done the work to build a great employee experience, it’s actually really good news.
Smoke and mirrors don’t survive true sentiment
For years, employer branding operated like a real estate listing. Stage the house, take the photos from the right angle, write the description that makes 1,200 square feet sound like a mansion. Just don’t talk to the neighbors, because we don’t want to know what it’s really like to live there.
AI doesn’t take your career site at face value. It cross-references it against everything else it can find. If there’s a gap between what you’re selling and what employees are saying, candidates will see it instantly.
But here’s the flip side: if what employees are saying is genuinely positive, AI becomes the most powerful recruiting tool you’ve ever had. Earned reputation at scale.
You no longer control the narrative.
AI isn’t creating a narrative about your company. It’s compressing one that already exists. If AI says your leadership has a communication problem, it’s because the pattern is unmistakable across enough sources. If it says you don’t pay well, that’s what your current former employees believe.
The hardest example is always leadership communication. It’s the one thing that touches everything else. When leaders communicate clearly, consistently, and with genuine care for their people, it shows up everywhere: engagement surveys, retention numbers, Glassdoor reviews, and now AI summaries. When it breaks down, everything downstream suffers.
You can’t prompt-engineer your way out of a culture problem. But you can build your way out of one.
Understand the real experience, then build from there
This is where most organizations get stuck. They know something needs to change, but don’t have a clear picture of where the gaps actually are.
That’s why we built the NICH +Culture Employee Experience Framework. It measures eight categories that shape how people feel about their work and their workplace: Fundamental Needs, Meaningful Work, Leadership, Positive Workplace, Recognition + Appreciation, Health + Wellbeing, Development + Growth, and Trust in Organization. We are in the process of adding one more: AI Readiness + Adoption.
These aren’t abstract concepts. They’re the exact dimensions that surface in AI summaries, Glassdoor reviews, and candidate research. When you have a clear, data-driven picture of where you stand across all eight, you stop guessing and start building. You can identify where leadership communication is breaking down. You can understand if employees feel recognized, developed, and genuinely connected to the work.
And when those foundations are strong, your employer brand takes care of itself. Because AI is just reflecting what your people already know.
The opportunity
Companies that invest in the real employee experience gain an enormous advantage right now. While competitors spend money on employer brand campaigns that get contradicted by AI reality, you can build a workplace that speaks for itself.
The question isn’t whether AI is summarizing your employer brand. It already is.
The question is whether you’ve built something worth summarizing.
Links
The A.I. Disruption We’ve Been Waiting for Has Arrived
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How to Ace a Job Interview With an AI
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Why Some People Thrive on Four Hours of Sleep
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This Is No Miracle—It’s Team USA History to Remember Forever
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https://gradient.horse/
SpeedStudio Podcast:
Ep. 128 – Santa Vall race report with Michael Garrison
This week’s special episode is a post-race analysis of Santa Vall, where Michael started the season with a Top 5 finish, beating most of the world’s top gravel racers in the process. In the race, he debuted the new Basso Palta 3 and unreleased Tune gravel wheelset (not a bad debut if we say so ourselves). We chat how gravel is becoming more like road racing, what it’s like racing against guys you watched as a kid, comparing Europe vs US racing (it’s way more chaotic and requires more skill), and how growing up in Atlanta prepares you for that chaos. We chat how CARBS Fuel has completely changed his nutrition strategy and how all our partners are the best at what they do. Lastly, we talk through what it takes to build a sustainable program: sticking to it and lots of trust.