Give Future Employees a Peek at Your Company Culture through Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube
Social media is a cost-effective way to promote your company culture and recruit top quality candidates, with free platforms designed to appeal to different demographics and psychographics. In fact, social networking is no longer a niche component of recruiting; it’s now an integral part.
Most companies are successfully engaging future employees on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. According to the 2015 Jobvite Recruiter Nation Survey, 92% of recruiters leverage social media as part of their jobs, and the Big 3 represent the majority of that dialogue. You would be hard-pressed to find a recruiter who doesn’t use social networks.
As for the preferred platforms, we may be soon arriving at a tipping point. The ubiquity of recruiting messages on these platforms diminishes their impact while the features of each platform limit how we can communicate, and to whom. While the Big 3 platforms for business are text-oriented, below are a few tips for how to start recruiting with the more visually-oriented platforms. Keep in mind that the user bases of the Big 3 are aging, while the visual platforms are reaching a younger, more tech and mobile-savvy base of candidates.
1. Determine Which Sites Your Audience Uses
Survey your current employees to find out what social media platforms your future employees are using. Find out how they prefer to engage with businesses they are interested in on these sites. Then set up an account on each of the most widely-used platforms.
2. Promote Your New Social Platforms on Your Current Platforms
You can be fairly confident that the majority of your target candidates who use the new visual platforms also use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So promote your new social platforms on your current platforms to establish new user bases.
3.Start with Fun Photos and Videos
Post a series of photos and videos on these platforms in a short span of time. Drive engagement by enticing your current Big 3 followers to view, like, and share your new visual content. You can even incentivize employees or hold contests to encourage more sharing. We recommend that your first series of photos and/or videos show employees having fun as a group on a corporate outing or during a community service project.
4.Ask Your Employees to Share Personal Stories
The most credible voices for communicating with future employees are your current employees. Let them share their stories about onboarding, mentoring, professional development, and taking on greater challenges through these social media platforms. Incentivize video and and photo sharing, and then promote your employees’ posts within the organization to perpetuate social sharing.
5.Monitor Your Competitors
Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing through each of the social channels, and stay on top of any emerging trends. Unlike other forms of marketing or advertising, social media provides visibility into what’s working and what isn’t. Be responsive to what drives engagement, and make sure your platforms are developing meaningful relationships with future employees.
6.Test and Experiment
Categorize and keep track of every type of social media promotion you run, and monitor performance in terms of online engagement, conversion to phone calls to HR, and any other metrics each platform provides.
7.Track All New Hires Back to Social Media
Every time a new employee is hired, learn about his or her prior engagement with your company via your social media channels. Ask them which communications they remember, which communications made a difference, and which channels they used most actively. Then incorporate this feedback on what ultimately produced the desired result into your social recruiting program.
If you’re as passionate about promoting your company culture through social media as we are, start engaging with us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter today. Let us know which social platforms have worked best in your recruiting program.