How to Create a Candidate Persona for Employer Branding (with Free Template)

What is a Candidate Persona?

A candidate persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal job candidate based on data, research, and insights from your existing workforce and target audience.

It includes details like:

• Demographics (age, education, location)

• Career history

• Skills and experience

• Motivations and goals

• Preferred communication channels

• Pain points and job-search behavior

This tool, borrowed from consumer marketing, helps talent teams humanize their target audience and refine everything from job descriptions to EVP messaging.

Example

Meet Anna, a data-driven marketing manager in Berlin. She values flexibility, career growth, and a collaborative team culture. Anna spends time on LinkedIn and industry blogs, prefers transparent communication, and is motivated by opportunities to lead projects.

Why Are Candidate Personas Crucial for Employer Branding?

Your Employer Brand communication is complex. It should reflect your strategy, interact with current and future talent and be engaging enough to attract candidates. It goes beyond choosing the right office candid photo to post on Facebook.

Candidate personas are the foundation of a targeted, authentic employer branding strategy. By defining your ideal candidates in detail, you can:

• Tailor your Employer Value Proposition (EVP): Ensure your messaging highlights what matters most to your target audience.

• Choose the right communication channels: Invest in the platforms and formats your candidates actually use.

• Craft compelling content: Speak directly to candidates’ motivations, concerns, and aspirations.

• Improve recruitment marketing ROI: Reduce wasted spend and increase conversion rates by focusing efforts where they matter most.

Personas also help you prepare for emerging trends. Universum’s Talent Outlook 2025 reveals shifts in career expectations, leadership interest, and flexibility demands — especially among Gen Z and Millennial talent. Understanding these changes is critical for attraction and retention.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Candidate Persona

These 3 steps will help you identify, understand and reach your target candidates to develop an Employer Branding strategy that resonates with them.

1. Look within your organization

Similar to other situations and context, to attract the right talent you must understand your corporate culture, strategy, and vision. Your business goals should be present on your Employer Brand development in order to connect and find the right talent.

Take a look internally and briefly define your internal strategy for:

• Business: For instance, is your organization planning to develop a new product or expand to another geographical location?

• Workforce: Think of the near future. Will there be a significant organizational or industrial change in the coming years?

• Talent: What type of talent are you hoping to attract? Are you willing to train young professionals, or do you prefer to hire experienced talent?

Don't forget to gather data from internal sources:

• Employee interviews and surveys

• Exit interviews and onboarding feedback

• Performance reviews and talent analytics

This exercise will help you connect the dots of the big picture. Once you are clear in the major need and goal for the right talent, you can define priorities for the new or recent hires.

This planning is beneficial to several parts of your Employer Brand. It’s not only relevant internally to align objectives, but also helps to keep a coherent external communication and relationship development.

You will be capable of giving your potential employees a detailed idea of what their future with you might entail.

2. Audience segmentation

Your different audiences have unique needs and preferences. In the era of personalization, you should address each of them with the individualized attention they deserve.

Start your strategy development by differentiating and categorizing your audiences. Take into consideration the goals and priorities you previously defined to complement it with:

•   Experience Level (newly graduated, entry-level, management or executive.)

•   Department (sales, finance, people management/HR, technical, etc.)

•   Location (by city, country, region, remote.)

•   Main Field of Studies (STEM, Business, Humanities.)

•   Industry Experience: combined industries, transversal fields.

•   Source: Referrals, internal, job boards, social media.

The insights you get from this analysis will help to have a clearer idea of your top candidate’s expectations and priorities, allowing you to craft a compelling messaging.

If the results show something different to your organization’s values or goals, this shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to deceive talent by communicating features or values you don’t share. Authenticity is at the core of an Employer Brand. Candidates value highly a company that is genuine and honest.

It is possible that sometimes a high-qualified applicant ends up not being the right fit. The above categories are basics and not an exclusive list to follow rigidly. When segmenting your audiences, keep in mind the ideal person who is very likely to suit your work and values, who should be at the center of your Employer Brand strategy and messaging efforts.

After the segmentation is done, it's time to prioritize talent goals. Take into consideration:

• Immediate hiring needs.

• Roles always open.

• Gaps in leadership or expertise.

• Revenue production.

When a list of priorities is in place, it’s easier to allocate a budget for recruitment marketing as well as to define a strategy for payroll. You might realize some of your openings can be filled by less-experienced talent, leaving more budget for roles that require highly-qualified professionals.

Prioritization helps your Employer Brand too by properly directing your approach to the best messaging and channels. Do you hope to engage with Millennial entry-level talent first and foremost? That goal should impact everything from a career site layout to the job description copy and placement.

3. Create Candidate Personas

Among the tactics from consumer marketing, developing a candidate persona is one of the best ways to reach and engage your target audience. This exercise requires a deep understanding of the Talent Acquisition team of the ideal candidate as an individual.

Some of the features to consider when creating a candidate persona include:

• Background /Demographics (Age, education level, area of study, hometown, etc.)

• Current Role/Experience

• Skills

• Professional Goals

• Personal Attributes (Goals, hobbies, interest, favorite brands)

• Channels (Frequented Websites and Social Media)

• Challenges (Frustrations, reasons to change jobs, dislikes)

• Social life (Who influences their decision?)

Although this exercise is based on fiction, the point is to be as specific as possible in order to picture clearly the person who is your ideal fit. While creating a candidate persona you might realize potential weaknesses in your candidate experience that is affecting your Employer Brand and organization goals in general. 

Brainstorming with different areas of your company such as Talent Acquisition, HR, Communications and Marketing is a great way to encourage collaborative work and creativity. You can even think of running a focus group made up of current employees who hold the job or match the target candidate.

Once your candidate persona is brought to life and you have a well-defined target audience to focus on, you can move on into creating a strategic Employer Value Proposition (EVP) that grabs their attention while remaining true to your organization.

At Universum, we help you in every step of the process. Whether you are looking for insights to get to know your target audience or you are crafting an employer brand strategy, our global data and a dedicated advisory team can help you attract the talent your company deserves.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Building candidate personas is a proven way to make your employer brand more relevant, authentic, and effective. By understanding who you want to attract-and how to reach them-you’ll optimize your recruitment marketing, EVP, and overall talent strategy.