When you first think about getting employees involved in recruiting, you probably consider an employee referral program. Or, perhaps you think about sending some team members to a networking event, wearing a company T-shirt. These are certainly worthwhile endeavors to help you fill your talent pipeline, but employee ambassadors are capable of so much more. We have three ways to get your team involved with employer branding through employee advocacy, so they can help you attract, nurture, and hire great candidates.
1. Feature employees throughout your career site
When candidates research your organization, they’re looking for more than job descriptions. Three-fourths of candidates want details on what makes your company an attractive place to work. They want to learn what it might be like to work at your organization, and why they should choose your role over a similar role elsewhere.
Provide candidates with an authentic view into your workplace by featuring employees’ first-hand perspectives on your careers site. For instance, you could create a video of employees sharing what they like most about working at your organization. You could even take this a step further by creating an employer blog series with stories from many different departments and seniority levels. Doing so will put a spotlight on the people that make your organization unique, while helping your candidates get to know the people they’d be working alongside.
2. Enable employees to share content on social media
You can expand your reach and widen your talent pool by encouraging employees to share relevant content through their social networks. For example, you could share photos from an employee event, or a news article that names your organization as one of the best places to work in your city. Then encourage employees to retweet and share your social posts. That way, your employees are helping to build your employer brand, which may make candidates more receptive to your jobs as they become available.
To get started with a social employee advocacy program, it’s a good idea to share some social media guidelines with your team. Some organizations even offer a training program to help employees utilize social media for personal branding, as well as for marketing and recruiting efforts. Then, nudge employees to promote recruiting-related content by sending reminder emails and encouraging them to share the content through their social networks. Once you’ve seen some initial engagement, you may want to look into employee advocacy tools, like Dynamic Signal and SocialChorus, to build a more efficient process.
Many organizations are also utilizing an employee experience hashtag, such as #LifeAtX or #WeAreX, to make these posts more easily discoverable. This helps candidates find this valuable content, while also allowing your team to curate and share employee content on your brand’s social channels.
3. Proactively seek out employer reviews
Nearly one in three U.S. candidates visit employer review sites before accepting a job offer. Put your best foot forward—and potentially improve your candidate close rates—by proactively asking employees to leave reviews. If you wait for them to come in organically, reviews may be few and far between or, worse, skewed by disenchanted former employees. Encouraging current employees to write reviews will more accurately depict the current atmosphere at your organization. As an added bonus, you can learn why employees think your organization is great, and what employees don’t like. This can help you more effectively market your organization to great candidates, while being upfront about the challenges they may experience.
Make it a policy to ask for reviews at an employee’s 90-day check-in, and during annual reviews. Also, be sure to monitor reviews regularly to thank people for feedback, and to address concerns. If you find that a single employer review site has more recent negative feedback than positive, you may want to reach out company-wide to try to balance the feedback.
Final thoughts
Employee advocacy can be a powerful element of your Recruitment Marketing strategy—especially when it’s being fully utilized. By encouraging employees to share their experiences through your career site, their social channels, and review sites, you’re also helping them to feel enabled and responsible for recruiting. In doing so, you create an army of recruiters who can help you attract and hire great talent.