Your next great hire isn't looking at job boards. They are looking for a 'Flock'.

A few weeks ago, a small green-cheeked conure nearly died on a busy traffic intersection. My brother-in-law spotted her just in time, stepping in as a bike and a rickshaw were about to end what was probably an already disorienting journey for a bird that had clearly flown far from wherever she belonged.

My niece took her in. And what happened next is what I keep thinking about.

Within days, this bird, who I assumed would be quiet and cautious, had decided my niece was her flock. She rides on her shoulder. She follows her from room to room. And when I visited and accidentally dropped a glass, she landed on my head and scolded me at full volume, completely unashamed (I never knew a bird's vocal cords could reach that level of sound decibels!).

She had found her people. And once she did, she was all in.

There is something deeply instinctive about that. Belonging is not a passive state. For this little bird, it was a decision, almost an act of survival. Find your flock. Commit to it. Defend it loudly if you have to.

As Brené Brown puts it: "A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all men, women, and children."

We talk about belonging a lot in HR. But I wonder if we truly understand what it demands of us as employer branding practitioners.

Because something has been quietly shifting in the world around us, and I think it carries a significant implication for how we think about talent.

Why people are turning toward communities

Run clubs are full. Supper clubs are booked weeks out. Creative workshops, wellness circles, founder communities, and curated gatherings of every kind have become a defining part of how people structure their social lives. And the numbers back this up: global run club membership surged 59% in 2024, according to Strava's Year in Sport report. The number of clubs on the platform increased 3.5 times in 2025. Culinary experiences like intimate supper clubs grew 35% in the same period. 

This is not a fitness trend. This is a belonging trend.

Start with what the data is telling us about loneliness. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a national epidemic, noting that about one in two adults reported experiencing it. Globally, nearly one in four adults reported feeling lonely regularly as of 2024. Among young adults aged 18 to 34, those rates climb even higher. 

We spent years optimising for convenience: remote work, food delivery, streaming, and digital friendships. And convenience solved effort. It did not solve the connection. VML's Future 100: 2026 report found that 87% of global consumers now agree that the best experiences leave them feeling changed. People are no longer looking for transactions. They are looking for transformation. 

Strava's data shows that 72% of Gen Z join run clubs primarily to meet people, not to improve their fitness. 37% of respondents see run clubs as a great way to make new connections. Eventbrite's research found that 84% of attendees at interest-based events developed close friendships through those gatherings. 

The pattern is consistent. People increasingly want structured belonging, not just activities.

And here is where I think employer branding needs to pause and pay attention.

Where the talent world still lags

Most talent strategies still operate with a campaign mindset. We attract. We recruit. We hire. And when we are not actively hiring, we often go quiet.

The ATS era gave us databases. CRM gave us newsletters and warmer communication. But if we are honest, many of our talent communications are still broadcasting with better technology. Periodic emails. Webinar invites. Occasional updates. Communication, not connection.

The challenge with niche talent makes this gap more urgent. In technology, cybersecurity, AI, and architecture, everyone is fishing in the same relatively small pond. Five hires can shift delivery capability. Ten hires can change a team's trajectory. Yet despite the scarcity, we continue to invest most heavily at the point of need rather than building relationships long before that need exists.

Universum's Employer Branding NOW 2024 report found that 54% of talent leaders anticipate a more challenging hiring environment, particularly in IT and engineering. And yet the dominant model remains reactive: attract when there's a vacancy, go quiet when there isn't one. 

Meanwhile, the Randstad Workmonitor 2025 found that over half of employees are willing to quit if they don't feel they belong. 

Belonging has moved from a nice-to-have to a retention risk and, I'd argue, an attraction one too. 

What community-led employer branding looks like

This is the shift I think we need to be having.

Candidates increasingly behave like community members, not audiences. They want signals before the job post goes live. They want to feel something before they apply. The strongest employer brands ahead may not simply say "we are hiring". They may increasingly say, "We have a place for you before you even apply."

Think about what that could look like in practice: cybersecurity learning circles that run monthly, regardless of open roles; communities for women in engineering with mentorship woven in; early-career AI forums where students share ideas with practitioners; architecture roundtables that bring industry voices together.

None of this is recruitment in the traditional sense. It is about building genuine value for people who might matter to your organisation one day. Communities work when participants receive something real: learning, connection, identity, belonging. People can feel the difference between a database with branding attached and a space that actually gives them something.

The brands winning in the consumer world already understand this. They have moved from building audiences to building ecosystems, from campaigns to communities. Employer branding can make the same move.

The question worth sitting with

I have been an employer branding practitioner long enough to know that what we measure shapes what we build. And we have historically measured applications, conversion rates, and time-to-fill. These are not wrong metrics. But they are point-in-time metrics. They measure the transaction, not the relationship.

Community-led employer branding asks us to think differently. It asks us to measure reach before the role, relationships before the requisition, and trust before the offer.

That is a different kind of investment, and it requires making a case internally for something whose returns are slower and harder to quantify. I know that conversation is not easy.

But here is what I keep coming back to: the world outside our organisations has already made this shift. People are reorganising their social lives around belonging. They are choosing run clubs over bars, supper clubs over networking events, and curated circles over passive scrolling. 

They are voting with their time for spaces that give them identity, connection, and meaning.

My niece's little conure did not audition for a flock. She found safety, felt something real, and committed completely. She did not need a job posting. She needed a place that felt like hers.

If that is how people are wired, and the data suggests they are, it will shape how they evaluate where they work and who they consider working for.

Employer branding that recognises this early will not just be ahead of the curve. It will be where the talent already is.