In this year’s Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Report, 33% of candidates said they get their information about a company’s culture through the employer’s social media accounts. But what does that mean for your Recruitment Marketing strategy? Simple: enhance your social media presence.
But that can be easier said than done. An effective social recruiting strategy needs to be thoughtful and intentional. It’s not enough to post corporate party pictures or a “we’re hiring” graphic with a stock photo. You need to ensure that you’re posting the right content in front of the right candidates.
One company that’s doing an exceptional job at this is ADP, the winner of the Best Social Careers Channel in the 2021 Rally Awards! ADP spent the past year thoughtfully crafting their @ADPCareers presence on social media to earn them a whopping 12% increase in click applies from organic social posts alone!
To help you out on your own journey to elevating your employer brand on social media, we’re sharing an inside look at how ADP developed an award-winning social media presence. Now, on to the details!
1. Prioritizing employee-centric content
ADP shared a total 1,188 video, image and audio posts in 2020 across their various @ADPCareers channels, all of which promoted their primary employee value proposition (EVP) themes of driving change, being yourself and doing meaningful work.
To promote these themes, ADP’s posts highlighted:
- ADP’s associates and their stories
- ADP’s inclusive culture of belonging
- How associates have been supported by ADP during the global pandemic and how associates have helped their communities, and
- How ADP stands up against racial injustice and their many diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives
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An Instagram post showing how ADP supports their LGBTQIA+ employees.
Beyond just ADP’s results, the 2021 CareerArc Future of Recruitment Study proves that these content topics work best, as the study found that the top 5 types of content motivating job seekers to apply to a job are:
- Jobs
- Employee stories and spotlights
- Diversity, equity and inclusion messages
- Links to hiring events or webinars for prospective employees
- Employee day-in-the-life videos
While their associates were undoubtedly the stars of most of their content, ADP also featured external recognition highlighting the company as one of the best places to work. This plays to more data from CareerArc, which found that a “more recognized employer brand and/or positive reputation” was the number 1 reason why active job seekers would choose to apply to one job over another.
View this post on Instagram
A post recognizing ADP as one of Fairygodboss’ Best Companies for Women in 2020.
2. Sourcing content from a variety of channels
ADP relied on a combination of creating and sourcing their content, beginning with developing a network of ADP-affiliated social media accounts, LinkedIn profiles, global partners and other sources from which to pull content.
Beyond creating a network, ADP also created a Brand Advocacy Program called Life @ADP to generate and source impactful employee stories, testimonials and other employee-centric content. Managed by their Global Employer Brand & Marketing team, ADP selected engaging images and videos created by their associates to share on the company’s social media channels.
When it came to creating video content, the company had to take a much different approach than in previous years. With nearly all of their associates working from home during the pandemic and unable to record in-studio, ADP relied on a 3rd party user-generated video content platform to help associates capture and share their stories remotely.
ADP also leveraged internal partners and resources at ADP in talent acquisition, internal communications, the diversity & inclusion office and their 9 employee resource groups (ERGs) to find, source or repurpose stories for their careers social channels.
3. Posting content where candidates hangout online
After establishing where their target talent audiences were hanging out online, and where they preferred to engage with companies, ADP settled on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter as their primary @ADPCareers channels.
To maximize their reach, ADP’s employer brand team also filled a monthly calendar with content their team was creating and sourcing and shared it with ADP’s corporate marketing team, which ran the company’s LinkedIn.
This was an easy way to extend their efforts into channels they didn’t own and collaborate with other departments, as there was little to no work required on their corporate marketing team’s part — the content was already created and slotted a month ahead of time. All they had to do was hit “post.”
Rally note: for insights on where to engage your early career talent audiences online, be sure to read 5 Channels You Need to Recruit Gen Z Talent.
4. Having the right CTAs to convert candidates
After luring in their talent audience with content they wanted to see, ADP made sure to capitalize on their attraction efforts by accompanying their posts with clear CTAs. What candidates were directed to do depended largely on the specific post they were watching — and the intent they were showing — but CTAs included:
- “Learn more”
- “Watch more”
- “Subscribe to our talent community or blog”
- “Sign up for our recruitment event”
- “Visit our careers website to apply”
ADP then tracked the performance of their posts by attaching tracking parameters to their CTAs, establishing click applies as their main form of conversion.
The results
The @ADPCareers strategy proved to be a major success, as ADP saw a 42% increase in engagements and a 45% increase in post link clicks in 2020 compared to the previous year. Better yet, their Recruitment Marketing content was the best-performing content across all content shared company-wide at ADP!
Their work also landed them an average engagement rate of 4%, which, as you likely know, is far greater than the industry average. To give you some perspective, the industry average engagement rates are .045% on Twitter, .09% on Facebook and 1.22% on Instagram.
Most impressive, however, was their boost in organic click applies. Through just the content created across the various @ADPCareers channels, ADP saw nearly 2,000 click applies — a 12% increase compared to the previous year.
Ultimately, these stats illustrate the profound effect that a well-orchestrated careers social media presence can have on your hiring goals. We hope that these insights from an award-winning company can help you improve your efforts when creating a careers social media strategy and building your employer brand to drive more applications and hires at your organization.
