Social & professional networks have become crucial for recruitment. In fact, 84% of companies use social & professional networks to recruit (SHRM), so if you aren’t utilising social media to recruit you are definitely missing out on top talent.
However social recruiting is not just about posting a job, the most important consideration when utilising these platforms to recruit is promoting your employer brand. By using social & professional networks to demonstrate your employer brand, you will be able to compete with bigger organisations for active candidates and standout to passive candidates. Social and professional networks are the perfect platform to promote your company culture, your diversity and inclusion mission and your perks & benefits, all of which are key to attracting top talent in today’s competitive job market.
Below are some quick and easy ways to improve your social and professional networks.
Commonly, there is a lack of distinction between the term employer brand and employer branding. An employer brand is different from employer branding, but they are both used to attract and retain top talent.
When considering your brand and company, potential candidates will first look at how you treat your employees and what it is like to work in your company day-to-day. Social & professional networks give you a platform to demonstrate this easily. Simple pictures of a team lunch or promoting the achievement of a colleague can be the deciding factor for an individual currently working in a company that does not celebrate the small wins of employees or focuses on team activities. Emphasise visual content, such as videos from company events and behind-the-scenes photos of your team carrying out their daily activities. In the world of social media video is king, then imagery then text posts.
Salesforce is a great example of a brand that focuses on their employee’s interaction. They have created an Instagram account that solely posts on employee engagement. Called Salesforce Jobs, they post on the everyday activities of their employees but also promote their mission and values through their employees, for example, promoting their corporate social responsibility activities through an image of their employees at a march. This page has over 29,000 followers and links to their careers page.
65% of people would consider a new job opportunity if they heard about it through a personal connection in their network (Monster) and 92% of people will trust recommendations that they get from friends and family over any other kind of marketing, promotion or advertising (Nielsen). Therefore, your employees are your biggest advocates and promoters.
Invite your employees to connect with you on their personal social & professional networks and encourage them to actively engage with your brand on a regular basis. Ask them to share, like and comment on your posts and highlight the aspects of your culture that they love most. Personalisation is important when it comes to sharing content, therefore encourage employees to add personal commentary when sharing.
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Following on from the previous point, consider allowing an employee to take over your company account for a day-in-the-life campaign, this personalised perspective will give an authentic look into how people feel working for you. With Coronavirus and many individuals working from home, remote employee engagement and wellness have become two focus areas, creating a day-in-the-life campaign is a great opportunity to promote your remote employee engagement and wellness strategies through employees themselves.
Another initiative that has worked excellently for Starbucks is unique career-focused hashtags that gives you a unique way to be recognisable. Starbucks use the hashtag #tobeapartner, reinventing the word ‘employee’ and changing this to partner instead. By doing this, they convey the importance of their employees being crucial to the company and acknowledging their work is valued.
The digital world is constantly changing, and you want your social media strategy to evolve to keep up with these changes and be present where your ideal candidates are, whether that means focusing on LinkedIn blogs or Instagram stories.
Start by establishing the audience you want to target, if you are looking for higher-level executive roles, LinkedIn would likely by the best avenue to use. Whereas, if you are looking for younger part-time workers for example, Snapchat or TikTok would be great platforms to carry out a recruitment marketing campaign.
Though it may seem overwhelming and that you will require completely unique content for each platform, as mentioned previously, video is the most valuable asset to promote content and is popular on all platforms. Create short videos and link to other content like a blog or your careers page. Tools like Promo let you easily create video content for various platforms.
Consistency is key when it comes to promoting your employer brand and becoming recognisable to both active and passive candidates. The goal is to become a source of interest, information and delight to both current and potential employees. If you create a blog for example, pick a day that you always post this to establish consistency for your visitors. From our research, business-related content should be posted Monday’s and Wednesday’s whilst more light-hearted content receives better traction later in the week.
You should be posting on various platforms a few times a week, and you want your posts to be recognisable to your brand i.e. creating a tone of voice and messaging. Work with your marketing team to establish this and ensure that your tone of voice and messaging aligns with your consumer brand and your employer brand as often your top talent are also your customers.
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Social recruiting is not just about posting a job, the most important consideration when utilising these platforms to recruit is promoting your employer brand. By using social & professional networks to demonstrate your employer brand, you will be able to compete with bigger organisations for active candidates and stand out to passive candidates. Here's how to improve your company page: