Everyone is spending a lot more time online these days—including job applicants. Job seekers (especially younger ones) are increasingly using social media in their job searches, and organizations are capitalizing on this trend to widen their applicant pools. Companies worldwide are leveraging their social media platforms to build their employer brands and create fun, laid-back content that attracts potential candidates. With the following strategies, organizations can drive interest in their next hiring campaigns.
Use TikTok for Employer Branding
TikTok isn’t just for teens anymore! With 689 million users (and counting), it’s one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world. Its ease of use and accessibility make it an ideal place for organizations to connect with new audiences and showcase the lighter side of work. For example, The Washington Post created its own TikTok channel in May 2019 to showcase silly day-in-the-life videos of its staff in order “to build trust with TikTok's young viewers and help them become familiar with the Post's newsroom.” Walmart’s TikTok channel hosts hashtag challenges and spotlights its team members, and even encourages its employees to show off their talents in branded accounts (such as @cameronfromwalmart1_, whose dancing skills at his workplace have earned him millions of followers).
Tap into Employee Referrals
With referrals bringing in “more than 30 percent of all hires overall in 2016 and 45 percent of internal hires,” employees can be a company’s best source for future talent. To get their employees invested in the recruitment process, companies can take a cue from Salesforce’s successful referral program. During company-organized recruitment-oriented happy hours, employees can invite their potential candidate friends to meet recruiters in a relaxed setting. And of course, incentives can make referral campaigns even more effective: Fiverr, for example, turned employee referrals into a game by giving points (which could be redeemed for gifs) to employees to made candidate referrals.
Create Recruitment Videos
Videos posted to a company’s website and social media pages can help boost its recruitment efforts. (For example, Zappos uses videos to highlight its friendly vibes and family-oriented atmosphere by showing employees dancing, dressing up, and working in an open-plan environment.) Companies that lack a large budget for video production can still attract applicants by shooting their own smartphone videos that offer engaging, unfiltered looks at their workplaces.
Host Virtual Job Fairs
As a result of the pandemic, many organizations have pivoted from their usual recruitment events to virtual career fairs or online Q&A sessions. (In April 2020, a survey conducted by one recruitment marking company found that just over 83 percent of in-person events were “canceled, postponed, and/or made virtual” because of the pandemic.) Recruiters can use virtual job fairs to connect with potential applicants either before or immediately after they’ve applied to answer questions about the hiring process and give an insider’s look into the workplace culture. Their ability to reach offsite or geographically dispersed candidates make virtual job fairs an appealing creative recruitment strategy for healthcare networks, educational institutions, retailers, technology companies, and many other types of organizations.
Gamify Recruitment
Adding game elements to recruitment efforts can help companies attract the attention and interest of top talent. In 2004, for example, Google (which was already well known for its innovative hiring practices) paid for billboards in Silicon Valley and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that had no logos or company names on them and simply said, “{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e}.com.” Anyone who solved the puzzle was then directed to apply to Google for an engineering position.
Companies that don’t want to go as big as renting billboards can try posting games on their social media pages. Riddles, puzzles, and problems for potential job applicants to solve could help organizations find curious problem solvers who might have been overlooked in the typical job application process.
Create Candidate-Friendly Pages
It’s important for organizations to engage in open dialogue with potential job seekers. For example, Intel created its own “fan site” on Facebook to give candidates a view of the company’s culture and employees, and help them to get a sense of what it’s like to work there. Candidates are invited “to ask us questions on the recruiting process, or how we balance life and work, or maybe just what’s cooking in the café today,” and Intel’s recruiters respond personally to each comment or question.
Help Candidates See a Potential Fit
Invite short-listed candidates to enjoy pizza and drinks after work with current employees. This type of casual social event gives candidates a chance to meet their potential future coworkers and relax a bit during what can be a stressful recruitment process. It also gives them insight into the company culture and helps them see how how those candidates might fit into the organization.
The job market has been extremely competitive for years, and that shows no signs of changing any time soon. Companies that want to attract top talent need to think outside the box and add new strategies to their recruitment toolboxes.
