01 · The challenge
The offers were going out. Senior candidates kept walking away.
By Q3 2023, the client's TA team had run three different recruiters at the same Director-level pharma R&D problem. Two of the three had closed roles elsewhere — neither had closed one here. The compensation bands were market. The shortlists were strong. The interview process wasn't unusually slow. And the decline rate at Director level had crossed 60% for the second quarter running.
The CHRO's read in the first conversation was honest: "We think it's a compensation problem, but every benchmark we run says it isn't. We just can't see what it is."
"Recruise was the third firm we briefed on this. The first two told us what we wanted to hear. They told us the brief was wrong."
— Head of Talent Acquisition, Fortune 500 Pharma GCC
The pattern we saw, in the initial scoping conversation: a careers page making claims the candidate experience didn't back up, leadership content that hadn't been touched in eighteen months, and a Glassdoor narrative built around three years of a single ex-employee's review cycle. None of it was visible to the inside of the company.
02 · The approach
Three phases. Sequenced. Diagnostic first.
Most employer brand engagements start with a creative brief and end with a careers page. We started with twelve interviews — recent hires, declined offers, and senior R&D talent in the sector who would not have considered the client at all.
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01
Listen — 12 candidate interviews, on background
Weeks 1–3. We ran one-hour conversations with four recent hires, four declined offers (one of them a senior offer the client had been chasing for nine months), and four senior candidates in the sector who had never been in the funnel. All on background. The CHRO read the unredacted transcripts.
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02
Audit — EVP, careers site, content channels
Weeks 4–6. We benchmarked the client's careers site, LinkedIn presence, and leadership publishing against three direct comparators in the same sector. Four claims on the careers page were directly contradicted by what candidates told us in interviews. The audit went to the leadership team in week six.
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03
Rebuild — EVP, messaging, careers site, content engine
Weeks 7–18. New EVP signed off by the GCC head. Careers site rebuilt around the three things candidates actually cared about (and one thing the client had been quietly excellent at without saying so). Leadership publishing programme stood up for the GCC head and two functional leaders, with the first wave of content live by week 14.
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04
Measure — quarterly read-out, ongoing
Weeks 19+. Quarterly review with the CHRO and Head of TA: inbound application volume at Director-and-above level, offer acceptance velocity, and decline rate at the senior end. First measured signal at month three; first material movement at month six.
Director-level offer decline rate — pre and post engagement
Pre-engagement
Post-activation
70%
50%
30%
10%
Q1 '23
Q2 '23
Q3 '23
Q1 '24
Q2 '24
Q3 '24
"
The diagnostic was the part nobody expected. We were braced for a creative pitch. We got twelve transcripts instead.
— GCC Head, Fortune 500 Pharma GCC
What changed, specifically
- Careers page narrative. Three of the four headline claims were dropped and replaced with claims candidates could verify.
- Leadership voice. The GCC head moved from posting twice a quarter to a fortnightly cadence on LinkedIn, with editorial support but no ghostwriting.
- Two pieces of long-form content. One on the client's R&D thesis, one on the GCC's role in the global pipeline — both still the most-trafficked content on the careers domain a year later.
- Recruiter brief. The brief recruiters were working from was rewritten end-to-end, with three pages on what the candidate should expect to hear from internal stakeholders.
The work, in four moments
Twelve interviews. On background.
Four recent hires, four declined offers, four senior candidates who'd never been in the funnel. The CHRO read the unredacted transcripts.
Four claims that didn't survive the audit.
Of seven headline claims on the careers page, four were directly contradicted by what candidates told us. Three got dropped. One got rewritten.
Careers site, rebuilt around three things.
The R&D thesis, the GCC's role in the global pipeline, and one thing the client had been quietly excellent at without saying so.
04
Twice / quarter
→
Fortnightly
The GCC head, on the record.
Moved from two posts a quarter to a fortnightly cadence on LinkedIn. Editorial support, no ghostwriting. Two long-form pieces still top the careers domain a year later.
03 · The outcome
The decline rate halved. The first hire closed in month four.
The first material signal landed in month three: inbound applications at Director-and-above level were running 1.6× the trailing six-month average, and the Head of TA could name three of them by background. By month four, the senior offer the client had been chasing for nine months closed — at the original comp band, with a 60-day notice.
Nine months after activation, the Director-level decline rate had halved from 62% to 31%. The client's TA team was operating the content engine in-house. Two further Director-level hires had closed without external recruiter involvement.
Before & nine months later
Before
Q3 2023
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Director decline rate
62%
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Director+ inbound (mo avg)
11
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Senior search, in flight
9 mo open
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Leadership content cadence
2 / quarter
After
Q3 2024
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Director decline rate
31%
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Director+ inbound (mo avg)
26
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Senior hires closed
3
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Leadership content cadence
Fortnightly
What we didn't claim: the work was the only thing that moved the numbers. Market conditions shifted in the same window. A new comp framework rolled out in March 2024. The client's TA team got stronger as the engagement progressed. The engagement worked because the leadership team was willing to hear what candidates were saying — and willing to act on it. Most of them aren't.