This week Peter is joined by Bryan Adams — CEO and founder of Happy Dance, best-selling author, TEDx speaker (1.4M+ views), and one of the leading voices in employer branding and candidate experience. Over two decades, Bryan has helped nearly 200 global organisations — including Apple, Canva, Salesforce and Johnson & Johnson — rethink how they attract talent.
In this conversation, Bryan and Peter dig into why the best employer brands are built on honesty, not hype — and why "selling the truth" beats selling the perfect story every time.
The origin story — how a workshop moment that "gave Bryan goosebumps" set him on the path from marketing to employer branding, before the term even existed
Sell the truth, not the perfect story — why leading with the real challenges of a role (not just the perks) attracts the right candidates and repels the wrong ones
The imposter syndrome fix — how radical clarity about what a job actually demands removes the guesswork for new hires
Why career sites still fall short — page speed, legacy tech, and the risk-aversion of large organisations
AI and conversational candidate experience — how career sites are moving from static job boards to systems that "listen before they speak," cutting a 1,200-job firehose down to the 3 roles that actually fit
Good friction vs. bad friction — why re-typing your CV into an ATS is needless friction, and what good candidate experience removes
The three layers of story every organisation needs — reputation (what you're known for), expectation (the deal you're offering), and experience (the stories only your employees can tell)
Leadership advocacy — why employer brand only works when it's championed from the C-suite down, not run as an HR side project
Bryan's own story — nearly going out of business from a fear of public speaking, and the standup comedy course that changed everything
Five years out — Bryan's prediction that transparency, not perfection, will become the ultimate measure of emplyer brand
About Bryan Adams
Bryan is CEO and founder of Happy Dance, and author of Give and Get Employer Branding. His new book, Sell the Truth — a storytelling playbook for leaders who want to build cultures that win — is out 17 September in all good bookstores and on Amazon.
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