tech-employer-branding skill (samber): plan to attract engineers

Plans how a company attracts software engineers: the EVP, the channels to fund and how to measure whether they worked.

Installs: 12.4K; on skills.sh
Stars: 7; on GitHub
Files: 4; besides SKILL.md
Updated: Nov 2026; last repo commit

tech-employer-branding writes a plan for what a company can honestly claim as an engineering employer, which channels carry the claim to the engineers it wants, and how to tell whether any of it worked. It runs a 13-question interview, then six steps from instrumenting source-of-hire to a section-by-section plan. The plan has an EVP, a verification-surface audit, channel bets matched to company stage and seniority, and a measurement baseline.

It triggers on "engineering employer brand", "why can't we attract engineers" or "should we publish salary bands". SKILL.md says it produces strategy only, never the blog posts, profile rewrites or job-ad copy. It bundles no scripts. It refuses three widely quoted statistics by name and says why.

Good for

Heads of engineering and talent leads whose offer acceptance is dropping
Founders deciding between an engineering blog and referral bonuses
Teams asking whether to publish salary bands

Install tech-employer-branding

Claude Code

Copy this prompt.

Install the tech-employer-branding skill in Claude Code. Run this command:

/plugin marketplace add samber/developer-relations-skills
/plugin install developer-relations-skills@developer-relations-skills

Then check that it loaded and tell me how to use it.

2
Paste it into Claude Code. It shows the change and asks before running it.

The README recommends installing the whole collection because its skills reference each other, and tech-employer-branding names other skills in the collection to hand work to. The whole-collection routes add all 93 skills in the repo (counted from the git tree); the repo holds no hooks, agents, commands or MCP server files, and 14 of its skills bundle a script. Pick one route per agent.

From the project README. Source.

What's in the skill

When it loads

Designs an employer-brand strategy for attracting software engineers - the engineering EVP, the channel plan (engineering blog, OSS presence, referrals, conference talks, compensation-transparency artifacts), a verification-surface audit (employer-review sites, compensation databases, anonymous forums), and the measurement baseline. Use whenever someone raises "engineering employer brand", "why can't we attract engineers", "developer hiring content strategy", "should we publish salary bands", "tech recruiting brand", or engineering offer-acceptance dropping - even if they frame it as a recruiting problem. Covers early-stage through big-company stages, junior through staff-level targeting. Not DevRel program strategy - use samber/developer-relations-skills@devrel-strategy.

Sections in SKILL.md

Interview
Sourced figures, self-set baselines
Step 1: Instrument before spending
Step 2: Build the EVP before touching any channel
Step 3: Audit the verification surfaces
Step 4: Brainstorm channel strategies, then rank the menu
Step 5: Match channels to stage and seniority
Step 6: Write the plan and validate it section by section
Position stage, seniority target, instrumentation baseline, verification-surface findings
EVP five-value summary; the "what we don't offer" list; claims cleared against the mismatch patterns
Channel bets 2-4 bets: channel, seniority tier served, owner, protected hours, one signal, review date
Starved what this plan deliberately does not fund, and the condition that would promote it
Fix-first operational gaps (process, on-call, reviews) that precede any claim touching them
Measurement baseline numbers, the thresholds that trigger a re-plan
Refused tactics this plan will not use (astroturfing, zombie stats, culture claims reality contradicts)
Review what event forces an early re-plan: a rating drop, a leadership change, a funding round

Key facts

Author: Samuel Berthe (named in SKILL.md metadata, LICENSE and the plugin manifest)
License: MIT (LICENSE file, SKILL.md frontmatter, plugin.json and marketplace.json agree)
Skill version: 1.0.2 (SKILL.md metadata)
Installs on skills.sh: 12,438 (Nov 2, 2026)
GitHub stars: 8 for the whole samber/developer-relations-skills repo (Nov 2, 2026)
Last repo commit: Nov 1, 2026
Audits on skills.sh: Gen Agent Trust Hub: pass, Socket: pass, Snyk: warn
What it includes: 5 files in the git tree: SKILL.md, evals/evals.json and 3 files under references/. No scripts.
Needs: SKILL.md lists nothing to install
Part of: The developer-relations-skills plugin: 93 skill folders in the git tree
Works in: The README documents installs for Claude Code, Claude.ai, Codex, Cursor and Gemini CLI, all for the whole set

What it includes

Asks 13 questions; questions 11 to 13 set the order of every channel menu.
Interview
Refuses to rank channels before source-of-hire and offer-acceptance rate are tracked.
Step 1: Instrument before spending
Uses five values as a checklist and lists what the company does not offer.
Uses five values (interest, social, economic, development, application) and a list of what the company does not offer.
Step 2: Build the EVP
Checks review sites, pay databases and anonymous forums, dating each reading.
Checks review sites, compensation databases and anonymous forums, with the date of each reading.
Step 3: Audit verification surfaces
Compares two or three whole strategies, then ranks seven channels by four axes.
Step 4: Brainstorm and rank channels
Splits advice by company stage and by junior versus senior and staff targets.
Step 5: Match stage and seniority
Writes an eight-heading plan and validates each section with you before the next.
Step 6: Write the plan
Names three statistics it refuses to cite, including the 72% blog and GitHub claim.
Statistic refusals

From the official docs

Permissions

Low risk

tech-employer-branding is interview and planning instructions with no scripts, and it may save notes to devrel-context.md.

What it can do

Read your data
Create and change things
Delete things
Read-only mode

Watch out for

Hiring and pay data goes into the conversation
The interview asks about offer-acceptance rates, review ratings and whether you can publish salary bands. Share only what you are comfortable having in your Claude history. github.com
It may save notes to devrel-context.md
SKILL.md tells Claude to keep task and project context in devrel-context.md when memory lives in a file, or in the memory system your tool already uses. Check the file before you commit it. github.com
The whole-set install adds 93 skills, 14 with scripts
The README says to install every skill. The git tree has 93 skill folders, and 14 of them hold .py or .sh files. This skill bundles no scripts, and the tree holds no hooks, agents or MCP config files. github.com

Technical details

Turning on read-only	SKILL.md describes no read-only mode.
Sign-in and keys	SKILL.md names no account, key or token.
Scopes	Claude writes an employer-brand plan in the conversation Hiring metrics, ratings and pay details you share go into the conversation Writes devrel-context.md when memory lives in a file

Questions

What does tech-employer-branding do?

It designs an employer-brand strategy for hiring software engineers. You get an EVP, an audit of what review sites and forums say about you, a short list of channel bets and the numbers to track.

How do I install it?

Use the install box at the top. The README says to install every skill in the repo, because the skills point to each other. The box shows the whole-set route for each app.

Does it write job ads or blog posts?

No. SKILL.md says it produces the strategy, never the artifacts themselves. It hands post writing to samber/developer-relations-skills@engineering-blog-post and profile work to github-profile-optimization.

Which hiring statistics does it refuse to use?

Three: the "72% of developers check a company's engineering blog/GitHub" claim, the Gartner "69%" turnover claim, and the LinkedIn "50% more qualified applicants" claim. SKILL.md says to refuse all three by name, explains where each comes from, and allows the Gartner figure only as Gartner's own, directional number.

Is it safe to install?

The skill bundles no scripts. Hiring numbers, review ratings and compensation details you share go into your conversation. It tells Claude never to estimate a rating, and to pull review pages itself only if it can browse. The whole-set install adds 93 skills, 14 of which bundle scripts.

Is it for DevRel hiring?

No. SKILL.md says DevRel role definitions, postings and interview loops are out of scope and routes them to samber/developer-relations-skills@devrel-hiring.

Information

updated Nov 2, 2026

Repository: samber/developer-relations-skills
Folder: skills/tech-employer-branding

samber/developer-relations-skills skills.sh

Sources

Docs, issue trackers and discussions this page is built from.

Show all 3

README · github.com
tech-employer-branding SKILL.md · github.com
LICENSE · github.com