Representations of the Ideal Workplace in Multimodal Texts: Employer Branding on the Career Pages of Corporate Websites

Corporate websites are sophisticated tools targeting multiple addressees through different channels. Among the addressees, prospective and current employees are key to the success of companies: employer branding is thus crucial to the conveying of a positive image of the company as an employer. This study analyses how multimodal texts available on the Careers section of corporate websites use presentation and involvement strategies to attract and inform the viewers and to communicate corporate values. The research was carried out on the Employer Branding Multimodal Corpus, which comprises both texts in which the companies describe themselves and state their values, and employee testimonials. The broad framework for the analysis of websites devised by Pauwels (2012) was applied and a corpus-assisted discourse studies approach (Partington et al. 2013) was used to analyse the corpus. The study also considered the visual component of the webpages, focusing on the ideational function realized by the images (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Results shed light on the involvement devices used by the companies on their websites, and reveal that values such as positive interpersonal relationships, learning opportunities, creativity, innovation and inclusiveness are emphasised both through linguistic and visual elements.