Using Social Media for Employer Brand Promotion and Talent Attraction

Until a few years ago, most talent acquisition experts had declared social media as not-so useful for promoting their employer brand and attracting talent. They continued to deploy more traditional channels to create and widen the talent pool for their organizations. And they also kept whining about the increasing talent gap. While social media has been around for couple of years now, they wouldn’t tap into its capacity and utilize to look for talent.

Social Media is an Excellent Recruitment Tool

The interesting dichotomy was that social media was primarily seen as a channel to connect with and engage customers. And most wouldn’t consider it as a recruiting tool. But over time, brand advocates and talent professionals have realized that social media not only works faster but also better in creating a strong brand affinity. It’s a tool to build awareness, promote company culture, and strengthen reputation and source potential employees.

Though the company website is one of the most important online assets, but it comes as the second highest-scoring digital channel and social media is considered the top performer. Universum’s latest study tracked the social media activities of the 400 largest American companies and revealed the top channels for promoting employer brand:

The above graph clearly shows that the recruitment has become much more social in all these years. Another recent study conducted by Jobvite showed that around 93% of hiring and HR professionals already use or plan to use social media to boost their hiring efforts.

Why Social Channels Score So Low Despite Being the Most Useful ?

The crux of the matter is that employers understand the importance of social media; however, they are more concerned about the competence required to use social channels for employer branding and recruiting. The same report (Jobvite’s) also shows that recruiters are not very confident of their skills in using social media extensively. And probably, this is one of the reasons as to why they still have a lukewarm response towards using social media for attracting talent.

But this shouldn’t come as a surprise. To be fair,

• Recruiters have recently started considering social media as a useful recruiting tool. Therefore, it is obvious for them to feel less competent about how to showcase the employer brand online.

• Branding on social channels requires a certain level of digital marketing expertise and in-depth industry knowledge – to target passive candidates, showcase employer brand, decide and create content to engage potential talent and scan their digital activities.

• Also, there are dozens of social platforms; each would require different strategies and types of content to engage talent. What works on Facebook may not work on LinkedIn. So, they also need to be platform specific.

• Another barrier is not being able to measure the effectiveness of content on social media. The Universum study shows that only 52% of the companies measure their efforts on social channels. Being effective requires a close and vigilant testing, measuring and tweaking of the strategy.

Using Social Media Effectively for Employer Brand Promotion and Talent Attraction

Using social media effectively for employer branding and talent attraction comes as a cross-functional strategy, where you’re trying to achieve two objectives simultaneously. There are a number of ways in which these can be achieved; however, to attain best results, recruiters need to have strategies that can be implemented concurrently.

However, it must be noted that there won’t be any clearly-defined guidelines or set of activities with comprehensible responsibilities. Rather, this would be a team effort, requiring active contribution from all team members.

Here are few things that you, as a business, get begin with:

• Commit to Social Recruiting

  It’s time that companies stop keeping ‘social recruiting’ at the back burner and experimenting with it when all other means and tools of recruitment fail. It’s time to move beyond this thinking and make ‘social recruiting’ as a core competency and an integral part of the hiring strategy.

  And for ‘social recruiting’ to work for you, your employer brand becomes a strategic asset that gets more candidates willing to work with you.

• Identify the Right Recruiting Platform

  Not all social platforms work in a similar manner. Plus, not all channels will work for you. It’s important to identify the social platforms where your target audience exists. Typically, LinkedIn comes to mind when it comes to hiring. However, this is not the only platform. There are many others that you should explore. Having said this, you also need not be on every single platform. Conduct an in-depth research and use relevant keywords to find which platforms are popular in your industry and with your target audience.

• Curate and Create Relevant Content

  Once you’ve identified social media platforms relevant to your industry and hiring objectives, the next step is to engage with the potential talent through content. It can be textual, visual, audible or graphical. No matter what type of content you choose, it has to be interesting, relevant, timely and engaging. Don’t bombard them with irrelevant and boring content. Also, it’s not necessary to produce content all the time. In fact, you can curate the content and re-package it and present it to your audience. However, don’t forget to give the credit where it’s due.

• Be Comfortable in Bringing Behind the Scenes into the Limelight

  There are a lot of reasons why it has become necessary for organizations to bring the inside of them outside. The potential talent is interested in knowing about the work environment and what your employees think about you. However, there is a fine line between what to share and what not to share. Set the guidelines for content producers and publishers and make sure that only the right message goes out to the public.

• Identify Your Selling Points

  While what has worked for others may not work for you. Therefore, you will need to identify your unique selling points that can be promoted on social media. It will not only help you have a better understanding of your business but in also demonstrating your employer brand in a more effective manner.

• Measure Your Efforts

  The biggest mistake organizations make is that they do not track their initiatives and measure their efforts. This is why they fail to make a positive impact on their audience or get the maximum return from their investment.

  At times, there are things that do not work in your favor. And then there are initiatives that bring you unexpected results. What works and what doesn’t can be found only when you analyze your actions and measure your performance.

Using social media for employer branding and talent attraction is an art. And you perfect it with time by putting in consistent efforts. There will be crest and trough. You may face a plateau. But it’s worth putting the effort. In fact, let’s put it this way – you can’t afford not to use social media for creating your employer brand identity and connecting with the potential target.