Disclaimer – An overview of this article. Social Media Recruiting is a simple, fast and affordable way to target top talent and promote your Employer Brand. AL Solutions offers useful guidelines, applicable advice and ten inspiring examples of real-life Employer Branding on the top social media platforms.
Everyone has that magical company they know they’d love to work for. But in most cases, they’ve never stepped foot in one of their offices, or experienced a day in the life of said ‘magical company’. Still, they sit fantasising about working there. But how do they know they’d be better off? The truth is, they don’t. They’ve likely adopted this perspective through one of two avenues. The first is a friend might have mentioned it to them. It’s conventional wisdom that word of mouth (WOM) is the pinnacle of marketing. Two, they observed it online – likely through social media, an advert or website.
Whether a person wants to work for Nike because they’re an avid runner, and feel they share the same values. Or Apple because of their incredible technological facilities and Halo campus. Their belief has been assisted by being exposed to material online. Now, though word of mouth is powerful, it’s not practical (or possible in most cases) to spend all day, every day, trying to convince people to work for your company. That’s where social media lends a hand.
Using social media, we can target top talent in a strategic, fast and affordable way. The other great thing about social media is, if done well, we can create an almost unrealistic account of how wonderful it is to work for our company. Think about it; you probably already do this on social media anyway. Everyone does. When you open up Facebook or Instagram, how likely is it that after a few seconds of scrolling, you see someone who’s had an extravagant trip away?
Typically, when using social media, we tend to prioritise the highlights of our week. If we just got a beautiful, new, puppy, we’ll aim to deliver a cute picture of us hugging it with a filter amplifying its already dazzling blue eyes. On the other hand, we avoid a snap of our bedraggled partner scrubbing its drawl off the carpet. In some ways, we’re all a little deceptive. It’s not dishonest, just very bias.
In the same respect, the best companies will be mirroring this approach. Apple is far more likely to be showing off its spectacular halo campus than its workers assembling a conveyor-belt of iPhones, repeating the same tiny action over and over. So how do we begin to paint the best possible picture of our company in the mind of unsuspecting scrollers? This blog offers guidelines on which social platforms to adopt and how to utilise it with ten remarkable examples of real-life Employer Branding. So you trigger conversation about your company, spark WOM marketing and make it that place people sit there daydreaming about (caution people doing this may have the same effect on your carpet as a new puppy.)
From profitable perks to collective cultures. The way a company flex’s its brand has become more crucial than ever. In a study by CareerArc an alarming trend (displayed below) shows that as time passes, each generation is placing more onus on companies online portrayal.
There are many ways your company can portray its online brand. And if done in a skilful way, you will start attracting new talent. Whether you’re a startup or a global conglomerate, the social platform you choose is vital for success.
When it comes to choosing the best platforms, there are consistent front runners. The Recruitment Employment Confederation found LinkedIn remains recruiters’ preferred social channel. It trumps all others in finding, contacting and keeping track of candidates (94%).
It’s useful to look at how recruiters target and approach potential employees because as their area of expertise, it can tell us where passive candidates are hiding. An intriguing insight is the diversity of platforms recruiters are engaging in. In the graph below, we can see YouTube, Google+ and Snapchat as potential gateways to sourcing fresh talent. An article by Workable also suggests the online forum Reddit as a place to target top property.
To compound this data, a similar report by Harver, found the same three social platforms as most popular for recruiters. Again they are using these to identify, engage and attract new hires.
It’s prudent to empathise with the candidate and put the shoe on the other foot. In the instance of someone actively seeking information about your company, they’ll start always start with your website. According to CareerArc, their next stop is Facebook (47%), and in third place – Employer Review Sites (41%). LinkedIn came next (28%).
A lot of companies are doing whatever they can to impress potential recruits. While recruiters might use one platform to source talent, you should ensure you are using a channel that matches your business model. Which platform is that? I hear you asking. Let’s take a look.
Knowing which platform to use depends on a few factors and varies from business to business. For example, a clothing label is more likely to use a visually stimulating platform like Instagram or Snapchat because it gives an appealing representation of their product. Alternatively an IT software company would do well to channel their efforts into something more professional like LinkedIn or Facebook. For the most part this is common sense. However, there are a few things you can do to ensure your social account is worth the investment.
The most important factor of knowing where to establish your company brand, is understanding where your audience is. Here are a few things that can be useful when trying to gauge where your audience are most active.
Create an audience persona
If you took your entire audience and moulded them into a single person what would that look like? More importantly, what’s the first app they click on when they unlock their smart phone. If you can work this out, you should feel confident in investing time into that medium. To help answer this question and build an accurate profile it’s useful to ask the five ‘W’s:
Any additional data you can gather is beneficial. Here are a few examples of other details you might consider; Gender, location, job title, income, needs, pain points, challenges, personality.
Survey
Surveys are phenomenal tools for collecting, managing and displaying data. Using a free online survey maker like SurveyMonkey can instantly improve your understanding of who you’re trying to target – i.e. refining your audience persona.
What’s more, use them internally! Quarterly surveys work like sniffer dogs, scanning your employees to find problems with culture or possible improvements that will further benefit your brand.
Once you’ve acquired this information, you can cross-reference statistics found online. Pew Research published their finding on social media usage here.
Okay, so you think you know where your audience is active. You begin building your employer brand on a couple of platforms you think will best work for you and your company. Where’s the proof you’ve made the right decision? You might have cross-referenced your findings, but your online brand strategy needs to be bulletproof. How do you know you’re going to get the intended results? It’s simple – start testing!
First things first, you need to make sure you have some goals in place. Goals can be tracked and will clearly show if you are achieving success, or if somethings not working. Social Media & Talent Brand Lead Carmen Collins at Cisco articulates this nicely:
I see a lot of people ask “what is the one way to measure employer branding?” Or “what is the one KPI that you use to show the impact of this benefit program?” If that’s your approach, you’re asking the wrong questions. First, start with your goals. Without clear goals, you’ll never be able to measure success. If your goal is to retain employees by adding a benefit package, your measure of success would be employee retention and feedback on that package. If your goal is to drive awareness, there’s a metric for that. If your goal is to get clicks to job openings, there’s a metric to that. Set clear goals and measure against them.
Once you’ve decided on a few goals you need to begin monitoring, testing and tracking your progress. One scientifically backed way to do this is by using metrics. If you feel like a scientist right now, that’s because you kinda are one. Metrics are a mathematical approach to spotting trends and analysing data. But it’s not too technical, and we’ll run you through 3 examples of goals and possible ways of tracking them.
Candidate Quality
If you’re trying to measure the quality of the applicants coming through, try dividing the number of applicants by the number of interviews. According to the 2019 Recruiting Benchmark Report, the average is 12%. Once you’ve started building, tweaking or reinventing your employer brand you should start to see an increase in candidate quality.
Social Interactions
Arguably the clearest way to distinguish if you’re branding is making an impression is the number of social interactions.
To start, begin recording your followers, subscribers, likes etc. Once you’ve established some core baseline finding – for example, new monthly followers or average likes – you can set goals to increase these.
Top Tip: Most companies will be doing a handful if not all the list of interactions bulleted below:
Cost Per Hire
By maintaining a strong employer brand you’ll find less need to spend money on recruitment costs. Why? For the most part, because candidates will apply directly. In other cases you may find happy employees more likely to refer others (check out our blog here on pro referral schemes to further boost your quality and quantity of referrals).
If you divide the total number of hires by your internal and external costs, you’ll get your cost per hire. It’s every companies dream to cut costs while increasing output. Being aware of how your employer brand is affecting direct applications could mean less spent on recruitment.
Wunderbar! We’re making real progress. By now, you should be starting to grasp your plan of action. You have an idea of your audience, some goals and how you’ll measure them. It’s time to begin conceptualising and planning your content.
When planning content, consider these three things:
1. Does the content match my business brand and approach?
2. Does the social media platform best display my content/product/brand, and how does it prioritise different formats (i.e. blog, video, images)?
3. What tools can I use to assist me (e.g. social media scheduling tools)?
To help answer these questions, here are the key points to consider when looking at a few of the top platforms.
Right, we’ve got all the tools to create an irresistible employer brand that’s going to lure the best passive candidates to your company like a moth to lamplight. Here are 10 examples of killer employer branding that you can use to explode your online presence!
Disclaimer – We’ve taken examples from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but don’t be deterred if you’re planning to use, say Instagram. You can adapt these methods to various media formats/platforms.
Electronic Arts (EA)
As a recruitment firm, AL Solutions has first-hand insight into the experiences of people looking to move company, or who might not be looking but are open to the right opportunity. Understanding the secret motivations of candidates is vital to ensuring a placement is going to be a long term success. One motivation that tends to surface is recognition. In this example EA congratulate their employer, demonstrating gratitude and pride for their employees.
Hiscox USA
In this day and age, inclusion and diversity have not only become more acceptable, but research has shown it as an inherent way of promoting creativity. Hiscox takes this a step further by joining the HRC’s Business Coalition. Efforts like these resulted in Hiscox USA placing 4th in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work UK in 2020.
Softcat PLC
Be thoughtful! Employees are people. Softcat personifies itself as a company who cares with this human touch. It forms the idea that by working for them, you’ll be surrounded by people who want to support you in more ways than just your career.
GSK
As a company AL Solutions are proud to have partnered with in the past, it’s great to see GSK posting high-quality content. In this example, the pharmaceutical firm looks to educate people looking for work. Imagine a talented graduate coming across a post like this and hearing cultivated ideas from an established professional. It might tempt them to get in contact and ask how they can follow a similar path and work for the company.
L’Oréal
Acknowledging political problems and real-world events is a direct way to broadcast your company values. As awareness grows of the planets struggles to keep up with material demand, future generations are beginning to fear the consequential effects. L’Oréal reassures all parties they’re doing their bit to promote sustainability.
L'Oréal is announcing the launch our new #sustainability program #LOrealfortheFuture, which lays down the group's latest set of ambitions for 2030: from respecting the planet's limits, to supporting urgent #social and environmental needs.
— L'Oréal Group (@Loreal) June 25, 2020
Find out more ➡️ https://t.co/cdwk6STMnJ pic.twitter.com/b6yMbCg6UC
Microsoft
Okay, realistically, only a handful of companies have the resources to boast an HQ like Microsoft. That said, people love to see what’s going on behind the scenes. Many spaces have quirky seating arrangements, ping pong tables and green areas where employees can hangout. Creating content which shows off the perks of your office space can help prospect candidates imagine themselves working there!
With love, Microsoft HQ. 💌 #MicrosoftLife pic.twitter.com/NliSdG75By
— Microsoft Life (@MicrosoftLife) September 4, 2020
Mediatonic
What does your company do that excites your employees? I’m not talking cliché perks like dress down Friday. If you promote play, let people know. It doesn’t have to be anything too outlandish. It could be board games, weekly outings for lunch, or beers on a Friday! Whatever it is, by distinguishing your company from others in a playful way, you create comparisons. The more of these you have in your arsenal, the more the scales weigh in your favour.
😶 Become the bean! 😶 https://t.co/ZbShLoZka9
— Mediatonic (Fall Guys is OUT NOW!) (@Mediatonic) September 8, 2020
Abcam
Attending events is a direct route to establishing your company as one positioned on the forefront of progressive work. Employers want to have an impact. Events are incubation tanks for new technology, ideas and networking – things that will affect the future. Passionate people gravitate towards these, by participating in them, you’re exposing yourself to the right people.
Johnson & Johnson
So where did invest your $11 billion? I’m kidding, J&J has some serious financial backing, but you don’t have to be Rockafella to win an award. AL Solutions were runners up for the best agency at the Recruiter Awards. Take the time to see what industry awards apply to your organisation and put yourself forward. If you win, you have a significant bit of content to post. If you lose, you can take inspiration from the winner and look to improve.
Topp Tiles
Charity work is both fulfilling and great for demonstrating your values. Most people would love to help raise funds for a charity. By organising a charity fundraising, you reinforce positivity and instil the belief that your company is selfless and looking out for more than just itself. It’s also a great way to encourage camaraderie between otherwise separate departments.
Amazon
I’ll let the picture do the talking on this one.
You now have a formidable set of tools to kickstart your online presence and company brand. The good news is if you’re here and you’ve read this blog be sure you’re heading in the right direction. I want to leave you with one final statistic, which is testimony to the creation of this article.
Thanks for reading!
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