Organizations of all sizes are finding more success with social media recruiting. I’ve sifted through the latest social recruiting data and found some of the most popular posts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Here’s how brands engaged job-seekers with social media content and how you can use similar tactics to find top talent.
Publix Serves the Public on Facebook
One of my favorite posts this week comes from Publix. The company held its first annual “Publix Serves Day,” in which employees from 125 stores in six states volunteered in their communities. The company explained the philosophy behind the event in its Facebook post on April 17: Since the chain’s founder believed in the importance of giving, the company wanted to honor his memory with its own charity work. The services ranged from “painting and landscaping to cooking and educating and everything in-between.” The post itself was a Facebook album of 22 photos from the various events.
The result was 187 likes and 16 comments — 10 of which were photos posted by employees, each of which got their own additional likes. Other results include enormous community goodwill, improved employee morale, and priceless company PR. The Facebook photo album itself — merely announced through the post — has more than 1,000 likes.
How you can be like Publix: Volunteering events are win-win-win for everyone involved. Does your organization hold them? How do you publicize them after the fact? Don’t wait for the monthly company newsletter or relegate them to the intranet. Put photos (and videos!) on social media and thank your employees for participating. They’ll like, comment, share, and tag themselves and their colleagues. Publix even created a hashtag for employees to use in their own posts on Facebook and elsewhere.
The Home Depot Builds a Simple Tweet
As much as I like videos and QR codes and interactivity, I admire the simplicity of one of The Home Depot’s tweets this week — and I can’t argue with the results. The tweet reads, “Opportunity: Now is the time. This is the place,” along with a trackable link to its careers site and a hashtag, #THDhire.
There’s also a cute image of an employee, which includes three reasons to work for The Home Depot: “Learn with training from the best,” “Share your skills with customers,” and “Earn rewards & bonus for performances.” The company’s current hiring initiative is called “Jobs in Bloom,” a reference to the season and to The Home Depot’s gardening products.
This tweet is both pure and simple. There’s no pop-culture gif or sly copy. The hashtag isn’t a clever pun. The image is old-fashioned and sweet, when the company could have easily paid for a giant, impressive infographic. But the sincerity paid off, with 21 retweets and 31 favorites.
How you can be like The Home Depot: Tweets are small, ephemeral things, but we sometimes get hung up on trying to craft them into massive masterpieces. A tweet like this got across a good deal of info: A call to action, a link, a hashtag, and some employer branding. There was no need for any bells and whistles. Your organization could create an image like The Home Depot’s using a free service like Canva or Pablo by Buffer. If you’re running a social recruiting channel, your followers expect basic hiring information and an employer value proposition. Sometimes your posts need to be just that.
Prudential Tells Candidates How to Interview
Though it was posted months ago, Prudential’s YouTube “Earn It!: Your Guide to Acing the Interview” received a new surge of views this past week. The four-minute video presents two job candidates interviewing at an unnamed company. One gives great interview answers and the other …doesn’t. The piece is breezy and funny, both showing and telling job-seekers what recruiters expect of them. “Earn It!” is captioned for the hearing impaired and features a diverse cast.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this video is that it doesn’t mention Prudential at all. The setting is a nondescript office and the interview questions are generic. That means Prudential put significant time, money, and effort into an instructional resource for all job-seekers, for virtually any position at any organization. There’s no overt employer branding, but I like what’s implied: Prudential wants to help everyone get a job, even at its competitors. That’s very admirable. “Earn It!’ now has almost 10,000 views.
How you can be like Prudential: While The Home Depot’s tweet above is great, your social recruiting platform can’t be nothing but job listings and catchy sayings. How can your organization be a resource for job-seekers? How can you help them with résumés, cover letters, interviews, and other aspects of the job search? Your advice can be general or can speak to your organization’s unique needs. From there, you can introduce job-seekers to your culture, mission, and values, and show them what life at your company is really like. This will open you up to followers who may not want to work for you, but will follow you for your guidance and useful content. You may attract followers interested in your field but who are leaning toward your competitor — social recruiting could be your chance to steal them away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCDA2Xd9I9w