When people browse social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram in their free time, they’re typically not there to look for a job -- but that doesn't mean they're not open to it. If you're not taking advantage of social recruiting, you could be missing a major opportunity to connect with your prime candidates online.
While most major social platforms are geared toward providing users with opportunities for conversation and entertainment, it’s important to remember that there are interactive online platforms out there that are similarly driven by user-generated content, but are specifically intended for audiences focused on business, career growth, and employment.
What some people don’t consider is that employer profiles and professional networking sites -- like Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn -- are also important forms of social media that offer valuable opportunities to showcase your employer brand and connect with prospective talent. This is why you should be managing your employer profiles with a similar approach to your other social media platforms.
Here are a few reasons you should include these platforms in your social recruiting strategy and tips for utilizing them to their full potential.
When sharing your employer brand across your employer profiles and engaging with your audience, you have to make sure you're communicating consistently across all platforms. With anything you put online, your employer brand should look, feel, and carry a consistent message -- regardless of the platform.
The only aspect of your employer brand that should be changing across your online profiles on various platforms is the adjustments you make to your language and messaging to tailor your content to that specific channel and its target audience. For example, you might want to be a bit more professional in what you're communicating on LinkedIn, but more formal language might be too stiff for a platform like Facebook. In general, employer profiles should have a more professional tone and communication style tends to lean more formal on these channels compared to other social platforms, but the overall themes of your messaging and your employer brand should be the same.
Your messaging and employer branding shouldn’t be the only aspects of your employer profiles that are consistent with your other social profiles. You should also be consistent about adding new content to these channels. Any winning social recruiting strategy involves posting consistently to stay top of mind, and your approach to managing your Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn pages should be the same. Don't just try to tell the story of your entire employer brand with the same five or six pictures from 10 years ago and a paragraph about what your company does that’s directly copied and pasted from the “about us” section on your website.
An article by Indeed states that, "over 70% of job seekers willing to change minds if employers respond to a negative review" For many people, your company page on Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Indeed may be their first exposure to your employer brand, and what they see could factor heavily into their decision to continue exploring opportunities with you. If you want to grab and keep your target audience’s attention with your employer profiles, it’s important to ensure that they remain timely and relevant by continually adding new, interesting, and informative content.
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A great way to ensure consistent content is to integrate or use any type of automation between social media platforms and your employer profiles. You can integrate Instagram with your employer profile like Indeed, as an example. This helps because if you update your Instagram, it will automatically update your Indeed profile. This is not only a great way to show lots of pictures of your culture, but it’s an easy way to update your profiles leveraging user generated content and automation.
Sure, effective and strategic management of your employer profiles includes ensuring that they look good and you’re consistently posting valuable content, but when do these platforms become a conversation with your audience rather than a monologue where you’re talking at them?
Hypothetically, if someone walked through the door to your business and asked you a question, would you ignore them or would you answer their question? Of course you would answer their question, and that attitude should carry over into the way you manage both your social media AND your employer profiles.
Whether someone is literally walking through the front door to your business or virtually opening the door for a conversation by engaging with you online, your commitment to responsiveness and the effort you put into providing them with a positive, interactive experience should be the same.
Candidates can go onto your employer profile pages to ask questions about your company, and since these are public profiles, anyone can respond. This includes people that don’t even work at your company. Since these are open social networks, you absolutely need to be involved, paying attention, and managing the conversation -- just as you would any other social network.
Your company should have someone paying attention to engagement on your channels and ensuring you are not neglecting people who are interested enough in your business to virtually engage with you. People will have questions and you will need to respond. Remember, these conversations are taking place in a public forum, so if you don't answer, somebody else might -- and that person could be someone who doesn’t work at your company, a member of the public, or even a competitor.
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It’s your job to respond to everything, and make sure you have a strategy for how to respond to negative feedback as well. You don't want to get combative with people, so you need to make sure there is a communication plan in place for how you will respond to negative feedback. Discuss what tone you’d like to use, what messaging or wording works best, and make sure anyone managing your social channels has clear instructions for responding to common questions or scenarios.
Set alerts or scheduled reminders to go and check for questions that are being asked. You don't have to stare at your employer profiles every day waiting for someone to ask a question. Set aside time in your schedule to respond to alerts or to answer people's questions, and you’ll be able to pay closer attention to what people are saying.
Employer profiles are public review sites where people can talk about you as an employer, evaluating you on topics like what your interview experience is like, what it's like to work at your company, and whether or not they feel your compensation is fair. People are going to talk about you, and you don't get to decide what they say.
The article from Indeed also shares that, "45% of workers named online company reviews as one of the most important factors in the job offer decision." Many people rely on employee reviews to judge whether or not they want to move forward in pursuing a career opportunity with a specific company. This is a natural thing to want, and it stems from the consumer side in all of us. When you buy a product on Amazon, you read the reviews and make decisions on whether or not to buy something based on what people say about it.
As people and consumers, we have different levels of trust with regards to people who post reviews. When someone posts a review about your company, people are trusting what they read, just like when a consumer goes to buy a product. Reviews help people decide whether or not they’re “buying what you’re selling.” In this case, what you're selling is yourself as an employer and specific career opportunities with your company, and people are going to make a decision on whether or not they want to buy what you're selling based on what others are saying about you.
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It’s not only beneficial to respond and engage with candidates on these profiles, but most of these platforms also offer you an opportunity to highlight a few reviews that are authentic to who you are. These reviews shouldn’t just be the ones with the best ratings saying that it’s a “great place to work.” The reviews you feature on your employer profile should be those that offer more context and a fair balance of opinions when possible, because people can tell when a review is too forced or inauthentic.
Employer profiles are a great method of social engagement and social recruiting because there is a conversation taking place there that is open. It is crucial for your business to be a part of the conversation.
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It takes more than luck to design an effective social recruiting strategy. Interested in learning more about social? We are happy to help, or you can check out our social recruiting resources hub!
