Time to Hire

Ep 39 Diana Doro of Orion Talent: Why Employer Brand Matters More Than Ever (And What to Do About It)

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Research shows referred candidates get hired at a rate of 30% compared to just 7% for applicants sourced through traditional job boards. 

Today's employers face an unprecedented challenge: quality candidates no longer fill the top of the funnel the way they once did, rendering traditional job board strategies obsolete. Candidates have stopped downloading job board apps and browsing corporate career sites. Instead, they rely on trust, transparency, and referrals from their professional networks. In an era of Glassdoor and rapid Gen Z information sharing, employer reputation spreads faster than ever, demanding authenticity at every touchpoint. Companies that ignore online conversations or misalign their employer brand with actual employee experience risk losing top talent before interviews begin.

In this episode of the Time to Hire podcast, host Lamees Abourahma speaks with Diana Doro, VP of Business Development at Orion Talent and RPO Association founding member, to explore how organizations can build authentic employer brands that resonate across diverse talent pools. The conversation focuses on military and veteran candidates, the second-largest unique talent pool in the workforce, while demonstrating measurable effects on business through retention, time-to-fill, and quality of hire metrics.

 Join the RPO Association today to stay ahead of the latest trends and best practices in talent acquisition, achieve your professional goals, and benefit from improved business performance.

Contact the RPO Association at info@rpoassociation.org

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Key statistics referenced:

30% of new hires come from employee referrals compared to just 7% for applicants sourced through traditional job boards. - ERIN

Whether you're a seasoned talent acquisition professional or just starting in the field, "Time to Hire" provides an invaluable platform to expand your knowledge, learn from industry leaders, and stay up-to-date with the rapidly changing world of recruitment.


Lamees Abourahma: 00:08

Hello and welcome to Time to Hire from the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association. I'm Lamees Abourahma. In this episode, I speak with Diana Doro, VP of Business Development at Orion Talent, a leading talent solutions company and a founding member of the RPO Association. Today we dive into the evolving landscape of employer branding, exploring how companies can authentically connect with diverse talent pools, including military and veteran candidates, and why employer brand matters more than ever in today's challenging market. Diana shares her unique insights on building trust, measuring impact, and creating a cohesive culture in a remote and rapidly changing world. Welcome Diana.

Diana Doro: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

About Orion Talent

Lamees: So before we get started, tell us about Orion Talent.

Diana: Orion Talent is a talent acquisition services company that specializes in access to the military and veteran talent pool.

Why Employer Branding is a Hot Topic

Lamees: 1:26

Fantastic. And today's conversation—employer branding is such a hot topic in the industry today. What's your perspective before we dive into discussing the challenges and opportunities? Why is it such a hot topic?

Diana: First of all, I actually think it's very appropriate that companies and candidates are becoming so much more aware and interested in a company's employer brand before they join. I think it's because of the bit of economic uncertainty that our country is in right now. Having been in the workforce for the past five years, the post-COVID workforce, there has just been generally a feeling of uncertainty and maybe unease about where the economy is going, where the workforce is going.

There were so many predictions at the beginning of COVID for how companies were going to find candidates differently, how the workforce was going to change. All of that is not just a discussion that's happening on the employer end—it's happening with employees as well around the water cooler, if you will. And so candidates are also becoming increasingly more aware of where they're putting down their roots, right?

Things that were not important to them or maybe were not a big topic of discussion pre-COVID have suddenly become the forefront of the discussion. And so companies have had to shift how they are finding candidates, how they're engaging those candidates, and their employer brand is a big part of that. It really lives and breathes in the entire recruitment process. So this being something that companies are concerned with, or that people like you and me are talking more about, I think is very appropriate given the climate that we're in.

Defining Employer Brand

Lamees: 3:16

Yeah, and when we talk about employer branding, just for clarity, from my perspective, it's what's a candidate's perspective about the company as an employer, not as a customer. Is that aligned with how you think of employer brand?

Diana: I actually think that that is going through a big shift. I think that employer branding pre-COVID was solely reliant on what a candidate who was going to apply and go through the interview process at a company was experiencing—what their impression was of that company. But because recruitment and the talent marketplace has shrunk so much, employer branding really has evolved to also include the customer impression, but also the employee impression. And we'll talk a little bit more about that I think as we get through some of these questions for why that is the case.

Lamees: I love that. I like that clarification. So you just added more dimension to what employer brand is—more than just the candidate perception.

Diana: Because it has become so multi-dimensional, which is something that is very much only in the most recent years.

Brand Authenticity in the Age of Transparency

Lamees: 4:25

So let's get into these questions and let's start with brand authenticity in this age of transparency. And that comes from all this technology that we are seeing, things like Glassdoor and other platforms. How can companies ensure their employer brand truly reflects what it's like to work in that company? And what do you think are the risks if that doesn't happen?

Diana: This is such a good question because authenticity in an employer brand, of course, is important. And part of that go-to-market is going to be the fight against misinformation, right? So if you ever watch an interview with a celebrity who says, "I see stories about me all the time and they're just not true," I think a lot of talent acquisition teams at very large companies might feel the same way. Like they are the celebrity of their company that is getting this bad rap, especially because they're currently employed there and their full-time job is to make other people interested in joining that company. Of course they think it's wonderful because they work there and they can see the truth.

That's also not always the case that every company culture is great. I think that company culture is a lot like a professional reputation. I think of it as what somebody says about you when you're not in the room. And employees very often have nice things to say about their employer, but candidates, especially candidates that have decided not to join an organization, might not be saying very nice things. If they've had a bad experience, they have an opportunity to share that bad experience everywhere. And 10 years ago, this was not the case.

I think this is also something that's become especially true in Gen Z, which is a very online and very social generation, and news travels quickly between them. So if you think about the way that you want your employer brand to be reflected authentically, you need to meet that brand where it is in the marketplace to start. You cannot go in with blinders on. I think ways to combat what's being said about you online first lies with being aware of what's being said about you online.

There needs to be a very, very active effort to see what's out there. What are people saying about you? What are people saying about you in exit interviews especially? That would be one of the places that I point to as a starting point before you go to Glassdoor or another site where candidates that have decided not to join might be able to express their opinion about why that's the case.

So meeting that impression where it is is kind of the first step. That's important because whatever is the impression in the marketplace of your employer brand, you cannot escape it as it lives today. You can only hope to mold that for the future. So very much the way that a seller knows what is being said about their product, talent acquisition teams need to know what is being said about their company so that they can slowly start to chip away at those inaccurate impressions, if such there be.

Employer Branding for Military and Veteran Candidates

Lamees: 7:39

So I want to piggyback on what you just said about meeting that audience where the brand impression is. I guess you related that very, very well. Given that Orion Talent is a military and veteran recruiting or talent agency, if you will, help me understand how does that tie into employer branding?

Diana: Of course. I speak to so many TA leaders who say to me, "Of course we want to hire veterans, of course we want to hire transitioning military" because they know the value of that talent pool. I rarely have ever spoken to an audience that says that they don't see that value. However, they have difficulty meeting them in the marketplace.

Many, many companies know the value of that audience and of that talent pool, but they are doing very little, if anything, to appeal to that audience. And so, if you're meeting these candidates where they are in the market and you are with a company that does not have a strong military hiring brand—and that brand does need to go to market very differently than the brand for other talent pools, like recent college graduates is another good example. How companies market to and attract recent college graduates should be very different than how they reach and attract other talent.

The same is true of military. Even though many veterans are in the workforce, they are looking for things from their employer that might not be very easy to pick out of a standard employer brand. Some of the ways that they can do that are through the voices of the company that are already in that talent pool. And so, whether or not they have a way to get that talent to speak up about why they think their company is a fit for military and veterans, it really is something that should be prioritized, the same way that so many companies are prioritizing a strategy for attracting recent college grads.

In fact, military talent is the second largest unique talent pool second only to recent college graduates. And so it absolutely should be a focus and there should be a clear message and a relevant message for that talent in your overall employer brand.

Working with External Partners

Lamees: 10:13

That's fantastic and I appreciate the clarification. There is a lot to unpack there. Obviously, talent teams can do this internally for their organizations, but it does require a lot of specialization, I would expect, and expertise. So for those who do not have the resources and they're looking for an outside partner with expertise, like Orion Talent, can you help us understand how they can work with that external partner to bring that expertise specifically in hiring military and veteran workforce and how you can help with their employer brand?

Diana: Of course. And this absolutely should be a part of discussion with any kind of partnership with a company like mine. As an RPO company, what we do that is so unique is we go to market as our clients to the best of our ability. Many times that includes an overhaul of the employer brand or the way that companies have previously been going to market.

I think pre-COVID, a lot of that had to do with helping in the way that job descriptions were written because there was an overflow, just a huge pool of job boards in the market. And job boards were a way that many candidates were finding employers. That's just the state of the market pre-COVID, where because the talent marketplace wasn't shrinking and there wasn't a skills shortage, it was easy for a candidate who was interested in finding a new employer to go online and apply to a job from a job board or from a corporate website.

And so an RPO would help a lot in the way that those jobs were branded, how they were written, kind of what the overall message was for that active or semi-passive candidate to find them. And that has really evolved post-COVID into a much more proactive branding strategy than ever there has been. That really is because the active talent market doesn't exist the way that it did pre-COVID, not just because of the way that so many job boards are merging or being dismantled, but because candidates truly are not downloading job board apps on their phones anymore. It just really isn't the way that candidates are going to market.

Candidates now are more relying on trust in an employer that they're familiar with or have recently become familiar with because of a referral or having someone in their professional network or in their personal network who can make an introduction. So there is a social aspect of hiring that has I think really come by surprise to a lot of TA teams. An RPO can really help with that because all of the recruiting they're doing is truly proprietary to that company.

All applicants are proprietary, they're all managed by companies like mine, but the customer still owns them. And so all of the recruiting that an RPO does really becomes a unique talent pool. So when that is layered with an existing unique talent pool, like military and veteran candidates, or like the military and veteran candidate pool that Orion Talent has access to, that has been built over years and years and kept engaged and kept warm, that's where the real powerhouse of recruiting is going to start to take shape.

And so being able to market to and build this proprietary, RPO-driven employer talent pool coupled with other unique talent pools like military or like higher education, if companies are looking for candidates with MBAs or companies are looking for a very unique skill—that's where an RPO can really, really shine. Because they're building that employer brand specifically for their clients, they have a fresh set of eyes on it. It really does become, I think, just a more advanced effort to go to market than any TA team would be able to do on their own, truly just because it's such a lift of the administrative burden that building or really changing an employer brand can have on a TA team.

Demonstrating Employer Branding Impact

Lamees: 15:07

I want to broaden this conversation even further, Diana, and look into—there is a current push for employer branding to move beyond HR and support broader business goals. How can TA leaders demonstrate the impact of employer branding on metrics like quality of hire, retention, or even customer experience?

Diana: That's such a great question. And I think in the past, because employer brand has been something that was considered like a nice-to-have or something that it was thought only very large organizations needed to consider, there hasn't been much focus on whether or not this is a driver for business performance, because many TA teams, I think, weren't able to provide relevant metrics to whether they were or were not having success. It was like a feeling. Lots of people say culture is a feeling, right? Culture is how you feel when you work here.

That is absolutely no longer the case. And I think that in a tough talent market, TA leaders are feeling more pressure to prove that their employer brand is working, but they need to be able to measure that work to show other areas of the business that this is something that is valuable and worth their time and budget, right?

So if you have a hiring manager satisfaction survey and it's being influenced by candidate touchpoints and how many times hiring managers have to talk to candidates before they are able to make an offer—that might be a measure of a poor employer brand in the marketplace if it takes many periods of convincing candidates to move forward just as an example.

So a strong employer brand is going to shorten time to fill because it's going to reduce the amount of sales pitches—and recruiting is a sales pitch—to get that candidate to join. And shorter time to fill impacts vacancy costs. And these are two very measurable and attainable goals for TA teams to deliver on by doing an overhaul of their employer brand or by consulting with an outside company like Orion Talent or another for how they can improve their employer brand to a specific market of candidates that they might be missing, even if generally, that market of candidates is just quality candidates.

I'll tell you that the biggest discussion I'm having right now with clients is that they struggle with the top of funnel. Candidates that are applying are not the quality that they're looking for. And that I think goes back to what we were discussing before in that candidates applying is starting to actually go away. And so when you say is my talent brand enough to drive the quality candidates that I need to the top of the funnel, there's another measure of that brand ROI.

So once candidates move through the funnel and have accepted an offer and start work, there is that second half of measure that I think TA teams maybe are not tying to whether or not they have a strong employer brand—like first-year retention. And measuring that along a candidate's first year, even including how quickly did they ramp, can be a good measure of whether or not the candidate brand that they experienced during the apply process matched being an employee.

So there are definitely ways that business performance can be pulled out of the employer branding experience. And I think that it's important to talk about them with hiring managers and with other areas of the business so that everybody is satisfied with the end result.

Rebuilding Trust After Restructuring

Lamees: 19:01

We've covered a lot of ground. We looked at and expanded, I would say, the definition of employer branding today. We also talked about employer branding for different candidate pools, including the military and veteran, college graduates, and the importance of having metrics and tying the employer brand into business goals as well.

We're recording this interview in August of 2025 and you can look at the news and see how the market is doing. There are a lot of layoffs as we all know in the market. There's downsizing and restructuring and this is just part of cyclical trends. I would say it's not unique for this time. But for periods of downsizing or restructuring, what would be your advice to leaders who are trying to rebuild trust and reputation after these difficult organizational changes?

Diana: It's such a timely question and relevant because this has been a difficult year for restructuring. Even in my industry, I personally have in my career been impacted by reductions in force. And it's very difficult not to have a negative opinion of the company you're at when that happens. But I can say with sincerity that being a part of those reductions in no instance meant I would not rejoin one of the companies that I was at while I was impacted.

And my perspective there is because the companies that I was with when that happened made such an effort to reaffirm with the employees that were being impacted the long-term vision of stability for that company and really an open-door policy that there was always an opportunity to return when the market got rebuilt.

This relates also to our discussion on transparency. So leaders that know that this is coming or are the ones delivering the news, in my opinion, really need to focus on transparency and second, empathy in their messaging and in their actions. Some of the negative press that companies have gotten for their downsizing, I think, is because of the impersonal way that their layoffs are going to market.

Companies need to be reaffirming in the steps being taken to signal to employees that their well-being is a concern. Employees are people and employer branding after a layoff needs to reflect this. Ignoring it is a huge mistake. Pretending like reductions haven't happened in my opinion is a huge mistake.

Employers have a real opportunity post-reorganizations to highlight authentic employee stories that demonstrate their resilience and collaboration through tough times. And that is something that I think a lot of employees who are looking to join an organization post-restructure are going to be able to connect with. There's a real opportunity for employers to create open dialogue that actually can be used in employer branding messaging later on.

That could be a number of different ways. If employers are hosting town halls while this is happening, or open up anonymous feedback channels—nobody likes to check in. I get a lot of eye rolls when I say that the team is going through a check-in, but it really is a great way to build that consistency in open dialogue and feedback so that an employer can rebuild the feeling of safety that employees need. And that can translate into a way to go to market about your company that employees are definitely going to relate to and give them a renewed sense that the company has a purpose that they want to participate in.

Building Cohesive Employer Brand Across Remote Teams

Lamees: 23:23

Again, wonderful response and a lot to digest. I'll finish up with one also timely question. As we know, the remote workforce is not unique to COVID, but obviously COVID increased the adoption of dispersed workforce and decentralized workforce. So for companies with such teams and multiple business units or hybrid and remote work models, what strategies would work best in your opinion to build a cohesive employer brand that resonates across varied employee experiences?

Diana: That's a great question. And I myself am remote. I've been working remote for 15 years, and Orion Talent is a completely remote company. So I work with a lot of colleagues on a daily basis that I've never met in person, but my company has done well to build a culture where that's okay. Because when you join, you know that all of us are remote. The expectation isn't that we're going to meet in person, but the expectation is more that we're going to focus on our core values and our purpose to allow for the adaptation of that work environment.

So leaders have an opportunity to kind of activate an employer value proposition that is focused on a remote environment, I think, through real-world examples of how this collaboration that all companies hope for has worked, right? So using employee voices to say, even like mine, I just said I've been remote for 15 years, I could absolutely have this conversation with a potential candidate or potential new employee about why the brand and goals of our company is accurately reflected and not hindered by us being remote.

So companies need to tap into voices like mine and provide real-world examples so that there is a feeling of unification across new hires. Being a new hire at a remote organization is challenging even if you've done it for a long time. I don't think that that ever goes away. But if companies are really investing in fostering the connection between their employees, like through a mentorship program, that is something that absolutely can be taken to market during the interview process to help employees feel like they have that safety, reinforce a sense of belonging, even though the opportunities are remote.

And when this is done well, I think that whether an employee is going to go in office sometimes or especially work on a field site, which is a type of hire that we do a lot since we focus on military and veteran candidates, they're going to see themselves as being a part of the overall mission of the company. And so if being remote is a positive for your organization, talk about it from the very beginning. Let it be something that you really stake a flag to as you're going to market for these candidates. Why it's such a benefit, but also make it feel like a living, breathing thing. Use employees that are remote to help you tell that story so that the story is consistent.

Lamees: Right. I would think also be transparent about the remote, whether it's remote or on-site work and meet the candidates where they are, right? Each is right for one type of candidate and it might not be right for another type of candidate, so that transparency, I think, is a big part and authenticity is a big part of that employer brand and make that come up front.

Additional Insights

Lamees: 27:38

A lot of great insights, Diana. Have we missed anything in this conversation that you would like to add?

Diana: I would love to piggyback on what you just said about being transparent with employees about what is a fit for them. And I'd like to add that that should be an ongoing conversation because what is a fit for someone when they are hired might change and I can give you a great example.

In the summer, my entire family is home. I'm married to a teacher and I have two school-aged children and being able to remove myself from my house in the summer into a professional setting has been very helpful for me. Now, I do that with a remote office that isn't owned by my company, but my work from home or my remoteness changes in the way that it looks and feels in the summer. And I think that that kind of flexibility, being able to feel comfortable with my employer to say, "this is what I need about my remoteness to do my job well" has made a big difference for me in the past few years in being able to change the look and feel as necessary.

Lamees: I love that. That's a great point, very spot on. And it reminds me of conversations I'm having with candidates and friends who are in the workforce right now. And it's very situational.

Diana: Yeah. I would say too, what I'd love to add is that employer brand is something that is becoming more important every single day. The talent marketplace is very difficult right now for employers. Candidates are not filling the top of the funnel the way that they used to. And one thing that I'll add about some success that Orion Talent has had in being able to combat not getting as much engagement in the top of funnel is through our referral network.

Companies, I think, have often looked at their current employees as their referral network and not truly gone beyond that. When the fact is, if a candidate goes through the interview process and decides that that opportunity is not for them, it doesn't mean that they don't know somebody who is a fit. And that doesn't have to be a candidate that went through the process this week. That could be a candidate who went through your process last year. And if you have a way to reengage them, that is my number one recommendation for ways to drive more candidates to the top of the funnel.

In fact, 13% of our company hires come through our referral network, where there is someone in our military and veteran talent pool who is not looking but knows someone who is or who isn't a fit but knows someone who is and they're comfortable sharing that with us because of the trust we've built with them, the transparency that we've shown through interviews in the past and they are confident to share that because they know that they can trust our employer brand.

If other companies can accomplish the same thing, they'll have the same type of result that we do. And there really isn't anyone better to help companies get their employer brand where it needs to be than a company who is experiencing the type of success that RPO companies experience. Our entire business is built around reducing time to fill and reducing vacancy costs. And we do that through employer branding. And so if you're at a company that needs that, an RPO partner is definitely someone that you should have a conversation with.

Closing

Lamees: 31:21

I love that. Well, thank you so much. I would say commitment marketing is not new, employer brand is not new in the TA space. The association has been covering the topic, I would say, since around 2015, so almost like 10 years. But I've been having conversations with our members recently and I'm always learning something new from every conversation I have and I learned a lot from you today. I enjoyed it tremendously. Thank you so much for all your insights.

Diana: I enjoyed this too. Thank you again for having me.

Lamees: 31:58

Absolutely. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Talk2Hire podcast from the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association. Give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and always stay connected, stay engaged and stay informed of what's happening in the talent and recruiting world by tuning into the RPOA, the place to go for RPO.