Is Your Employer Brand Social Recruiting Ready?

By Kirsten Smith

So, you have a Facebook page and a Twitter network. You’ve established a LinkedIn profile, and you’re ready to go. But is your social recruiting strategy as good as you think it is? 

There’s more to social recruiting than creating an account and blasting updates at your network. Do you know how to make the most of your social platforms for reaching the right candidates? 
 

Hop on the “Brand” Wagon

Before you do anything else on social media, your first job is to a) establish a presence (if you build it) and then b) differentiate yourself in a visually attractive and engaging way (they will come).

If you’re not using social media to promote your employment brand, then you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to reach and engage your potential candidates, build a talent community, and increase the number of your high-quality applicants.

Now, when I refer to employment brand, I’m not simply talking about your company’s slogan or recognizable advertising (although that certainly can play a part in attracting interested eyes to your page), I’m talking about the tipping point that takes your brand from “selling point” to “hiring point:” employment. 

When you set up shop on social media, you can certainly use your main brand page to talk about your jobs, but if you really want to reach the people who you’d like to work for you, then it is in your best interest to create a branded career page on at least one of the three major social networks. 
 

We’re On the Same (Career) Page

On Facebook, you have the greatest opportunity to engage your employees, their friends and connections, and potential candidates in a dynamic conversation about your jobs by creating a dedicated Facebook Career Page. Using branded banners, photos taken from around the office, videos of your employees talking about their experiences at work, polls, questions, quotes, job posts, and more, you can create a constant stream of content about which you, your employees, and your talent community can converse, comment, and share. (Bonus points if you use your talent community as an opportunity to increase referrals: encourage your employees to not only participate in the conversation, but to also invite their friends and connections to check out your page and stay up to date with your jobs). 

Twitter, if you can believe it, is not simply a place to tweet a one-way stream about your brand or jobs. With a careers account on Twitter, you can still converse. In 140 characters, you can share job posts, quotes from your employees, facts about your company and careers and more, while still adding “retweetable” employment-brand-related photos and videos. You can respond to candidate questions and make your jobs discoverable by adding relevant hashtags (#) to indicate keywords related to your jobs. You can even hold “Twitter chats” in which you and a few selected employees or recruiters use a branded hashtag at a specified date and time to answer questions from your candidates on Twitter. You also have a great referral opportunity with Twitter, because any one of your employees can retweet a job post to their entire network, greatly expanding the reach of your jobs and increasing the chance that someone with the right skills or an interest in your careers will see your tweet. 

With LinkedIn, you can establish a company profile and make sure to post relevant updates that showcase your company culture, available jobs, and relevant information about the people and processes that contribute to the creation of your products or services. You can also use the network to publicize any “thought leadership” your company is doing, in order to appeal to professionals who are doing research about your company in order to find out if you are an expert in the industry. Your employees can also alert their professional connections to your open jobs by posting updates on their own LinkedIn accounts with links back to your LinkedIn company page and jobs list. 
 

Concluding Remarks

Remember, your candidates are going to do a search to find out as much as they can about your careers before they apply. They are also going to want to see that your company is more than just your product and services--they are going to want to see that it’s also run by real people with a passion for what they do. By designating a careers-specific home on any (or all!) of the major social networks, you’ll not only be giving them plenty of ways to learn about what it’s like to work for you, but you’ll also be showing them that you care about interacting with them even before they become a part of your company. 

To find out if your employment brand is reaching the right people (or if a little social “re-branding” is in order), you can check your Social Recruiting Score on Work4 and get tips and tricks to make your brand shine.  

 

Kirsten 

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