Photography Tips · Brussels

Employer Branding Photography: Is It Worth It Before You're Hiring?

By Dmytro Derkach · Brussels-based commercial photographer

Yes, and specifically before you're hiring: employer branding content takes a day to produce and months to pay off, so commissioning it once a vacancy is already open means the job advert goes out with whatever exists — usually nothing.

Candidates research you like a buyer researches a supplier

Candidates look before they contact anyone. A careers page illustrated with stock photography tells them one of two things: either the company has nothing real to show, or it didn't think that mattered. Neither reading helps you compete for the candidate you actually want, and both are avoidable with a single day of proper documentation.

Not a portrait session — a documentary one

This is different from a standard corporate photography session in a specific way: it's a half or full day documenting real working situations rather than a lighting setup in a meeting room. A meeting that was going to happen anyway, the space people actually sit in, the informal moments that make an office recognisable as an office, not a set. Staged enthusiasm is visible instantly on camera, and it works against you rather than for you.

A library, not a single image

The output is deliberately built as a library: enough frames to run a careers page, a series of job adverts and several months of recruitment content without repeating the same photograph. That volume is usually what separates a company that shoots once a year from one that shoots a single set and then reuses it until it looks stale. A precise number of final images is agreed in the brief, because it's what determines the retouching workload.

Consent has to be handled before the day

Employees photographed for recruitment material need to agree to appear, and this is your responsibility as the employer under GDPR — not something that gets sorted out afterwards. A short consent note circulated before the session solves this cleanly. It's far easier to handle in advance than to remove someone from a campaign that's already published, which is the situation this step exists to prevent.

"Our office isn't photogenic" is usually the wrong worry

Candidates aren't comparing your office to an architecture magazine — they're checking whether it looks like a real place with real people in it. A polished, over-designed space is often less convincing than an ordinary one that clearly gets used every day. This concern stops more employer branding sessions than any actual limitation of the space does.

Why the timing matters more than the content

Corporate photography answers "who works here." Employer branding answers "what is it like to work here" — and that second question requires time on site rather than a lighting setup, which is why it's priced by the day rather than per person. Sessions are planned around your existing calendar, so nothing has to be invented specifically for the camera.

A realistic market quote for an employer branding session — a half or full day covering real working situations, delivered as a usable image library — typically falls between 800€ and 2,500€, depending on session length and the number of final images needed.