Organizations that communicate their values, ​​and culture in a simple and specific way can attract and create an applicant pool that will allow them to hire talent that suits their work environment, and the vacancies they wish to cover. The concept of identifying an employee with the brand of an organization (employer brand identification) is relatively new in the scientific field of management. It is already stated in the scientific literature that job seekers are attracted by the “organizational image” that a company promotes. It can be claimed therefore that employer branding creates and establishes the identity of the organization as an employer. Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson in their 2001 book “Hero and the Outlaw” developed archetypal employer brands and argued that they can guide organizations to both identify their own organizational identity/personality and capture their organizational identities/personalities of their competitors.

The theory of archetypes has its roots in the famous founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, who defined archetypes as “forms or images of a collective nature that appear almost everywhere on earth as components of myths and at the same time as indigenous individual products of unconscious origin.” Using the theory of archetypal employer brands, we can see the identification of job seekers with an employer brand and identify the characteristics that are attractive to specific job seekers profiles. The organizations and their respective employer brands are divided into 12 main categories: Caregiver, Creator, Explorer, Hero, Innocent, Jester, Lover, Magician, Outlaw, Regular Guy/Gal, Ruler and Sage, depending on the mode of operation and the values ​​they represent.

A doctoral research conducted at the Athens University of Economics and Business showed that participating job seekers identified representative archetypal employer brands in the real labor market. Archetypal employer brands could be useful in this way.
The 12 categories are summarized below.

• The motto of the Caregiver is “Love your neighbor as yourself” and the mission of the organizations of this archetype is to serve the customers perfectly and to fully satisfy all their needs.
• The Creator’s motto is “If it can be imagined, it can be created” and emphasizes multifaceted thinking, freedom of expression, elegance, and harmony.
• The Explorer’s motto is “Don’t fence me in” and represents the values ​​of self-determination, broad consensus, and flexibility.
• The Hero argues that “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” and the policies he pursues are characterized by ambition, an emphasis on high performance and high-quality standards at all costs.
• The Innocent is characterized by the phrase “Free to be you and me” and represents the classic family values ​​of stability and consistency.
• The Jester’s motto is “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” and represents the values ​​of joy, happiness and participatory democracy in decision making.
• The Lover’s motto is “I only have eyes for you” and represents the values ​​of freedom and respect for the individual, while emphasizing the importance of the aesthetic dimension of work.
• The Magician’s motto is “It can happen!” and is characterized by the self-organization of work, while emphasizing the adoption and dissemination of the vision of the organization by and to all employees.
• The motto of the Outlaw is “Rules are meant to be broken” and represents the values ​​of individual freedom and innovation.
• The Regular Guy/Gal is expressed by the saying “All men and women are created equal” and represents the values of stability, hard work, humility, and meritocracy.
• The Ruler’s motto is “Power isn’t everything.It’s the only thing”, and its basic principles are security and sovereignty, while emphasizing prestige and success.
• Finally, the Sage claims that “The truth will set you free” and emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning, job specialization and scientific research.