Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the differences in employer branding between the companies that participate and those that do not participate in employer ranking.

Design/methodology/approach
Quantitative data were collected through a survey from 188 companies operating on the Russian labour market. Descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, correlation analysis and multivariate analysis of variance were used to analyse the collected data.

Findings
The findings revealed specific profiles of the companies that participated and did not participate in employer ranking. Companies differed in their employer branding orientation, internal branding, employer branding strategy, employer branding programmes and employer branding communications tasks. At the same time, brand orientation did not differ between participants and non-participants of employer ranking.

Originality/value
This study integrates the employer brand equity theory and the signalling theory to better explain the differences between participants and non-participants of employer ranking.