In the first two parts of our Employer Branding and AI Search series, we looked at how the candidate journey is changing and why HR teams need to understand what AI is already saying about their organisation as an employer.
Now it is time to look at what you can actually do about it.
That brings us to AEO and GEO — two terms that are becoming increasingly important as candidates use AI tools to research companies, compare employers and explore their next career move.
So what do AEO and GEO actually mean? And, more importantly, what do they mean for HR and Employer Branding teams?
These are terms you are likely to hear increasingly often:
You do not need to become an SEO, AEO, or GEO specialist to be responsible for Employer Branding. But you should understand the principles.
AEO focuses on making information clear, structured and useful enough to answer specific questions. GEO extends this into generative AI environments: helping your organisation and its expertise become understandable, credible and visible when AI systems generate answers.
The boundaries between SEO, AEO and GEO are not always neat — and the terminology is still evolving. For HR and Employer Branding teams, the practical question is much simpler:
Can AI find, understand and trust enough information about your organisation to accurately represent you as an employer?
For Employer Branding, that means making information about your culture, employee experience, career opportunities, leadership, values, and workplace clearer, more useful, and more authoritative.
It is not about writing content for robots. In many respects, the opposite is true. Useful, specific, credible content that genuinely answers the questions candidates have -becomes increasingly valuable.
If career development is a major part of your EVP, for example, do not simply say: We offer fantastic opportunities to grow. Show it.
Explain how career development works. Answer candidates’ questions. Show examples. Let employees describe their journeys. Publish evidence. Make the information clear and accessible.
In other words: turn Employer Brand claims into useful, credible information.
Think about the questions candidates might ask before they know your company exists.
For example:
What are good employers for finance professionals in Stockholm?
Which technology companies in Sweden offer strong career development?
Which employers offer flexible working in [industry]?
Do you appear?
Ask several AI platforms what your company is like as an employer. Look at the attributes that repeatedly appear. Are they aligned with your EVP?
Are the things you invest heavily in as an employer actually visible in the answers?
Look for outdated, incomplete, or potentially misleading information. Perhaps you have significantly changed your hybrid working policy, career model, or employee benefits. Has the external information environment caught up?
Where the AI service provides citations or sources, investigate them. Are answers being influenced by:
This is particularly useful because it starts to show you which parts of your Employer Brand information ecosystem are actually influencing AI-generated answers.
Employer Branding does not happen in isolation. If candidates are choosing between you and three other employers, those are the brands worth benchmarking.
What do AI systems associate with each employer?
Which organisations are repeatedly surfaced for the attributes you want to own?
And what information appears to support those associations?
Choose your preferred AI model, ideally a business or work version (consider your company information security policy) rather than a free one, and ask these questions:
Do not just read the answers - document them! Look for patterns.
Do not treat a single AI response as definitive. Results can vary between platforms, prompts and over time. The value comes from systematic testing and identifying recurring patterns.
Employer Branding teams already measure metrics such as careers-site traffic, applications, cost per application, engagement, employer awareness and candidate perception.
AI creates a potential new layer of measurement.
Over time, Employer Branding teams may increasingly track measures such as:
These are still emerging measures rather than universally established Employer Branding KPIs. But measured consistently over time, they could give Employer Branding teams another way to understand whether their employer narrative is becoming visible beyond the channels they directly control.
And importantly, visibility alone is not the objective.
The goal is to become visible for the right reasons, to the right candidate audiences, with information that accurately reflects the employer you really are.
This is not a reason for HR teams to panic about AI, it is a reason to start learning. Candidates no longer need to visit your careers site to begin forming an opinion about you - they can ask AI. For Employer Branding leaders, that means the job is gradually expanding.
It is no longer only:
What do candidates find when they search for us?
You also need to ask:
What happens when they ask AI about us?
And ultimately:
Are we part of the answer - and is it the answer we want candidates to find?
Download our 20-Minute AI Employer Brand Audit Checklist and establish a baseline for how your organisation currently appears across AI platforms.
If you want to go further, Marketing House can help you measure and improve your Employer Brand visibility across AI search.
We can help you understand:
From a one-off AI Employer Brand visibility review to workshops and ongoing AEO/GEO optimisation, the aim is simple:
Help make sure that when candidates ask AI about their next employer, your organisation has a better chance of being part of the answer.
Read more about our AI Search Visibility Services here