Career websites used to be a shop window of your employer brand. The journey used to be: build awareness, drive candidates to your site, tell them who you are, and encourage them to apply. But AI and large language models (LLMs) have changed that journey. Now candidates can increasingly research employers without visiting their careers website until the final point of conversion.
Chris Woods, Global Employer Reputation Technology Lead at Mars, has spent eight years within the business, moving from sourcing and employer reputation into recruitment marketing before creating his latest role focused on employer brand technology. Right now, his biggest priority is overhauling Mars’ global careers website and understanding how AI is changing how candidates discover, research, and choose employers.
We spoke to Chris about the changing role of careers websites, what LLMs mean for employer brand visibility and why the future of recruitment marketing needs to focus increasingly on conversion rather than simply awareness.
Chris joined Mars in a sourcing role, where he began spotting a disconnect between building employer reputation and converting that awareness into hires. Employer brand content was going out into the world, but Chris became increasingly interested in what happened afterwards. How did awareness connect with hiring? Were job adverts working? Were campaigns actually converting people into candidates?
After moving into employer reputation, he eventually pitched creating a dedicated recruitment marketing team, which allowed him to build campaigns, improve data, and optimise recruitment processes. As AI, LLMs, and careers technology evolved, he spotted another gap and moved into his current role as Global Employer Reputation Tech Lead, with transforming Mars’ careers website as one of his biggest priorities.
AI is changing how candidates discover employers
In the last three years the candidate journey has changed. You no longer need to visit a careers website to learn about companies. Historically, someone might search for the best employers in their industry, find a few organisations and visit each careers website individually. Now, they can ask an LLM to find organisations offering career development, purpose, flexible working or a particular culture and receive a summarised answer immediately.
That changes the role of the careers website. Candidates may arrive already knowing about your culture, benefits or reputation through social media, employee content, search results, reviews and LLMs. Instead of being primarily a discovery tool, the careers website increasingly needs to help candidates validate what they’ve learnt and decide whether to apply.
It also means employer brands now exist far beyond the channels organisations control. Careers content, employee posts, Glassdoor reviews, articles, awards, PR and third-party references can all contribute to the picture AI builds of an employer.
Careers websites need to focus on conversion
If discovery is happening elsewhere, careers websites need to work harder further down the funnel. Rather than measuring success primarily through traffic, employer brand teams need to understand who is visiting, where they came from, what they’re looking at, where they leave and whether the right people ultimately convert.
Any careers website transformation should start with a problem. If you have a high bounce rate, understand why. If candidates aren't converting, identify where they're dropping out. Speak to recent hires and ask what information they needed when they were applying, what worked and what was missing.
This becomes particularly important at global organisations. Mars’ careers ecosystem spans around 20 languages, with different market-specific information around areas such as benefits and policies. That localisation is essential for candidates, but it also creates a new challenge: making information clear and consistent enough for LLMs to understand which sources they can trust.
What does AI actually know about your employer brand?
For employer brand teams unsure where to begin with LLM optimisation, Chris recommends a surprisingly simple exercise: ask AI what it knows about you.
“Go on to ChatGPT, Gemini, whatever, and just say: ‘What’s it like to work at Mars?’ or ‘Is Mars a good organisation to work for?’”
Chris created a list of around 100 potential candidate prompts and used them to understand what information appeared, what was missing, and, importantly, which sources were being referenced. It gives teams a baseline before they start investing in tools or changing content.
It also exposes a bigger challenge for employer branding: organisations are no longer the only authority on their own employee experience.
“You can say on your careers website, ‘We’re the best place to work’, but if that’s not cited anywhere else, it’s not being picked up by LLMs.”
AI can bring together careers website content, employee experiences, review platforms, social content and external articles. If the story an organisation tells doesn't match what employees and third parties are saying, candidates can more easily uncover those inconsistencies.
The rise of ‘accidental employer brand’
That makes genuine employee voices increasingly valuable. Chris points to brands such as Currys and M&S, where employees have become highly visible parts of their social presence. They're participating in trends, talking about products and showing personality, without necessarily telling audiences to come and work for them.
This as “accidental employer brand”. Someone might watch a video because they're interested in a product but come away thinking the organisation looks like a great place to work, subconsciously making an employer brand visible.
As feeds continue to be populated by AI-generated content, this kind of human storytelling becomes more valuable. The strongest employee advocacy doesn't always need to involve someone telling audiences how brilliant their workplace is. Sometimes simply showing people enjoying their jobs is more convincing.
Better employer branding might mean fewer applications
Transparency has another side that organisations sometimes overlook: your company shouldn't appeal to everyone.
That becomes particularly important as AI makes it easier for candidates to create tailored CVs and applications. At the same time, employers are using AI to create job adverts and automate parts of recruitment. Chris describes it as a “cat-and-mouse game”, where attracting more applicants can actually create more work rather than better hiring outcomes.
Careers websites therefore need to help candidates self-select and convert. Being honest about culture, expectations and ways of working helps people understand whether the organisation genuinely suits them before they apply. The goal should be the right applications, rather than the number.
Where should employer brand teams start?
With countless AI platforms and careers technologies appearing, knowing where to begin can feel overwhelming. Chris’ advice is to start with the problem rather than the technology.
Review your careers website data, understand your conversion rate, and speak to people who joined the organisation recently. Ask what they thought of your careers website, what information they needed and what didn't work. Then look outside your organisation and learn from what others are doing.
“Step back and just look at what other organisations are doing. Go to conferences, speak to organisations like Wiser, and really try and understand what’s out there.”
Employer brand professionals don't need to become AI experts overnight. They need to understand where candidate behaviour is changing, identify the problems worth solving and then find the technology that can genuinely improve the experience.
Key takeaways for employer brand professionals
The careers website is becoming more important. As discovery increasingly happens through search, social media, employee content and LLMs, careers websites need to focus more heavily on validation and conversion.
Employer brand teams should start auditing how their organisation appears in AI, including what information surfaces and which sources influence the answers. At the same time, employee voices and third-party proof will become increasingly important as candidates gain faster access to information beyond corporate channels.
Most importantly, don't start with the newest piece of AI technology. Start with your candidate problem, look at your data, speak to recent hires and understand what's already being said about you.
As AI increasingly sits between candidates and employers, the organisations that adapt won't necessarily be those investing in the most technology. They'll be the ones that understand where candidates are getting their information and build an employer brand experience that turns the right interest into the right hires.
