Eight checks for an employer branding quality checklist

What to take away

Why do teams leave the quality checklist until last?

Quality is treated as a final gate rather than part of production. The ad is drafted, approved in a hurry and published.

Nobody owns the claim about pay, progression or flexibility. When a candidate asks for evidence, no one has it.

A checklist fixes this by making each claim traceable to a source. It also slows the process in a useful way: the reviewer has to look at the evidence, not just the wording.

Start by listing the claims your campaigns make. Pay ranges, benefits, working patterns and development promises are the usual candidates.

Which checks belong in the sequence?

Run these in order. Each one has a named owner and a stored record.

Step three, which applies the ASA CAP Code, deserves particular care. The ASA Copy Advice service lets advertisers seek pre-clearance on non-broadcast copy, which is useful when a claim about earnings or conditions sits close to the line.

Step four is where recruitment campaigns most often go wrong. The ICO direct marketing checklist sets out the consent, notice and opt-out points under UK GDPR that apply when you contact candidates directly.

Who owns each check?

Ownership is the part that decays fastest. A checklist without names becomes a document nobody opens.

The recruitment marketing lead usually owns claims and tone. A data protection contact owns lawful basis and retention. The hiring manager owns the role facts.

Where an agency produces the copy, the client still owns the check. Outsourcing the writing does not outsource the risk.

Record sign-off in your applicant tracking system or a shared register. If a claim is challenged, you need to show who approved it and when.

How often should the checklist be reviewed?

Review the list itself every quarter, and after any complaint or regulatory contact.

Individual adverts need a review date. Six months is a workable default for a live campaign, or sooner if pay or conditions change.

Re-check anything that references a scheme, a policy or a benefit. These change without warning and the advert will not.

If your organisation recruits across the UK, remember that some rules differ in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Check the position for each nation before you reuse copy.

What does a completed record look like?

A finished record is short. It carries the advert version, the claims and their sources, the reviewer, the date and the next review date.

Keep it alongside the advert, not in a separate folder. The employer branding operations and delivery guide for 2027 shows how the record fits into the wider delivery calendar, which matters when several campaigns run at once.

Small employers often use a paid hiring seat to manage postings and applicant data. If that is your route, check the platform's own terms on data retention. For example LinkedIn Hiring Pro for SME hiring software, and record the retention setting in your checklist, because retention settings vary by platform.

Store one example of a completed record so new starters can see the standard. For example, a team running forty adverts a year might keep a single register with forty rows and one owner column.

Common questions

Does a small team need a written checklist?

Yes, but keep it to one page. A written list is what makes the checks repeatable when the person who wrote it leaves.

Who should sign off an employer branding advert?

The hiring manager owns the role facts and the recruitment marketing lead owns the wording. One of them should hold final sign-off.

How long should we keep the evidence?

Keep it for as long as the advert runs plus your retention period, and check that period against your own data protection policy.

What happens if a claim turns out to be wrong?

Correct or withdraw the advert, tell the hiring manager and record what changed. Add a check that would have caught it.