Building a Global Talent Brand System
KnowBe4 • Talent Brand Manager & Brand Designer • 2021–2026
Designing scalable creative systems that unified a global employer brand across digital, editorial, web, events, and recruiting.
Designing scalable creative systems that unified a global employer brand across digital, editorial, web, events, and recruiting.
The Opportunity
When I joined KnowBe4, employer brand creative existed, but it didn’t yet exist as a system.
Different teams created recruiting materials in different ways. Graphics varied in quality, messaging shifted depending on the author, and there was no shared framework connecting careers websites, social media, recruiting events, editorial content, or print collateral.
As the company expanded globally, maintaining a consistent employer brand became less about designing individual assets and more about designing the infrastructure behind them.
My role evolved from producing creative to building the systems that allowed great creative to happen consistently.
My Role
Over nearly five years, I became responsible for the candidate-facing experience of the KnowBe4 employer brand.
That responsibility extended beyond visual design.
I developed the systems, documentation, creative operations, and governance that connected every candidate touchpoint into one cohesive experience.
Responsibilities:
- Brand Design
- Creative Direction
- Employer Branding
- Campaign Design
- Editorial Standards
- Careers Website Strategy
- Creative Operations
- Analytics & Reporting
- Environmental Graphics
- Print Design
- Event Design
- Social Media Strategy
My Design Philosophy
Early in my career, I believed a brand system ended with a style guide. Today, I believe that’s where it begins. The strongest brand systems aren’t documents that sit untouched in a shared drive.
They’re living frameworks that help ordinary contributors produce extraordinary work consistently.
Good systems reduce friction. They eliminate uncertainty. They make good design easier to create.
That philosophy shaped everything I built at KnowBe4.
Building the System—One Source of Truth
One of my largest initiatives was creating a comprehensive Talent Brand Style Guide.
Rather than documenting only logos and colors, the guide became the operational handbook for employer brand work across the organization.
It included:
- Logo standards
- Typography
- Color systems
- Editorial voice
- Social media guidelines
- Glassdoor response standards
- Blog writing guidance
- Photography direction
- Canva templates
- Global office messaging
- Employer Value Proposition
- Recruiting platform recommendations
The guide became the onboarding resource for Talent Brand, HR leaders across global offices, and external creative vendors.
Instead of relying on tribal knowledge, teams now had one shared system for creating work.
55+ Pages: A living operational guide used across global HR and Talent Brand teams.
Designing for Scale
As recruiting demand increased, I deliberately shifted away from solving the same problems repeatedly.
Instead, I designed reusable systems. That included:
- Canva template libraries
- Design intake workflows
- Documentation
- Operational playbooks
- Creative naming conventions
- Editorial processes
- Quarterly content audits
- Creative production schedules
Rather than making individual assets faster, these systems made the entire team more effective.
Evolving the Employer Brand
One of the clearest examples of systems thinking was social media.
Originally, content solved immediate communication needs but lacked consistency across campaigns.
Over time, I developed repeatable content frameworks that balanced recruiting, employee stories, awards, blogs, events, educational content, and company culture while maintaining one recognizable visual language.
The goal wasn’t to make every post look the same.
It was to make every post unmistakably feel like KnowBe4.
Global Career Experiences
I maintained and evolved more than thirty career pages supporting offices around the world. Each review cycle combined stakeholder collaboration with structured governance.
Rather than making isolated content updates, I partnered with subject matter experts across the organization to ensure every page remained accurate while preserving one consistent employer brand.
DEI initiatives were reviewed alongside Diversity leadership.
Sustainability content was reviewed with Sustainability leadership.
Regional office pages were reviewed with local HR leaders.
Every update balanced local authenticity with global consistency.
Extending the Brand
A successful design system proves itself through consistency.
The employer brand expanded across:
- Careers websites
- Organic social
- Recruiting campaigns
- Print advertising
- Enterprise Village installation
- Utrecht Pride
- Environmental graphics
- Newsletters
- Recruiting collateral
- Swag
- Presentations
- Internal communications
Although each deliverable served a different purpose, every experience felt like it belonged to the same employer brand.
Results: The success of this work wasn’t measured by individual deliverables.
It was measured by whether the organization became more capable of producing consistent, high-quality employer brand work.
Highlights:
- 30+ global career pages maintained
- 55+ page Talent Brand Style Guide
- Thousands of creative assets produced
- Global onboarding resource adopted by HR teams
- Standardized editorial voice
- Reusable creative systems implemented
- Improved production efficiency through documentation
- Supported recruiting across multiple countries
- Talent Brand Team of the Year (2022)