An employer seal adds value only when the method behind it is credible — the award methodology matters far more than the logo. In signalling terms (Spence, 1973), a signal is only persuasive if it is costly to fake. This is the specific focus of the research by PhDr. Oliver Scharfenberg, whose market analysis of more than 60 employer seals and randomised experiment with 1,093 participants found that a credible, relevant seal can meaningfully raise a candidate’s likelihood of applying (by roughly 16 percentage points), while seals derived only from scraped online reviews carry little weight. In practice, seals range from those based on an anonymous survey of the whole workforce (the strongest evidence) down to review-based badges (the weakest) — a distinction most companies overlook when choosing one.