Council Post: Why Employee-Generated Content Can Be A Top Recruiting Channel

Vitalii Dodonov is the Co-Founder of Stan, where he leads the company’s technical vision and product innovation.

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​In 2026, I won’t be hiring anyone who applies. Why? My best employees don’t come from job boards or recruiters. They come exclusively from our network and employee referrals.

Most companies are missing the overlooked tool to recruit the top 1% talent: employee-generated content (EGC). When a company implements a culture of employees posting authentically of their own will, it can do wonders in attracting the next best team member. Personally, I receive daily messages on LinkedIn asking to join our team at Stan.

Employee-generated content is an overlooked recruiting tool.

In my experience, top talent is not actively looking at job openings. They’re watching for who is out there building interesting things.

When employees share what they are building, learning, solving and caring about in public, they generate excitement and exposure around the team, the culture, the pace. They also raise the curtain, so to speak. In a hiring market where strong candidates aren’t paying attention to a job board, that added layer of visibility can make a fundamental difference.

At its core, employee-generated content is the posts, reflections, updates, behind-the-scenes thoughts or opinions shared by employees. Most often, it happens on LinkedIn, but it could also apply elsewhere. Employee content shows the company through real people.

Your most talented employees attract the most talented candidates. When you showcase employee content, it pulls back the curtain powerfully and makes the company feel more real.

People trust people more than they trust brands.

When you see official recruiting posts, they often sound polished, and they also sound generic. On the other hand, when we see employee posts, they feel more credible because they are specific and personal.

For instance, when an engineer posts about a technical problem they solved, that reaches other engineers. A designer writing honestly about how they navigated decisions within their environment reaches other designers.

These posts help build trust in a way that traditional employer branding often can’t.

The benefit of EGC is not only that it attracts more candidates, but that it attracts the right ones. Good recruiting depends on alignment. Employee content gives candidates a clearer read on pace, ownership, standards, communication style and team personality. When you have this, it can attract better-fit applicants and naturally filter out weaker fits.

EGC also expands recruiting reach beyond the company page. A company page only has one voice. Employees have their own audiences, networks and credibility. Different employees reach different talent pools. For companies, the main benefit of EGC here is that it creates distributed visibility, something that is unparalleled in value when it comes to recruiting.

This works especially well over time. Employee posts build familiarity long before a role opens. By the time a candidate sees an opening, they may already feel connected to the team or interested in the company. This turns content into long-tail recruiting infrastructure.​

So what can companies do to encourage EGC?

Many employees are hesitant to post. Sometimes, they do not know what to say. Other times, they are unsure what is appropriate to share, or perhaps no one has explicitly encouraged it.​

In my experience, you don't force people to post. You show what it looks like in practice by providing examples of what works. The key for my company is that we never ask people to post, but we offer a Slack channel to celebrate the posts and wins. The goal is support, not scripting or requiring.

EGC should not be fake or overly managed. If every employee sounds the same, the value disappears. Overly polished content feels corporate and unconvincing. The best employee content feels natural and rooted in actual work. Authenticity is what makes it useful as a recruiting signal. It’s crucial to keep the tone authentic.

When you spend time encouraging employee-generated content, it can be a game changer for your company. The average cost to hire a new employee was $4,700 in 2022, according to research by the Society for Human Resource Management, a cost that can balloon when factoring in the time your team spends on the hiring process.

Ultimately, the network you’ve built is your best source for finding your best talent. Companies that figure this out will have a structural advantage. It's not complicated. It's just underused.​

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