In the world of social recruiting, some words just don’t cut it. Remember comedian George Carlin’s iconic “7 Words You Can’t Say on TV”? Well, at Rally, we have our own list of 11 words that don’t belong in your social media strategy. You won’t be arrested or fined like Carlin, but you could be turning off your talent audience and getting penalized by the social platforms’ algorithms.
Since 2021, we’ve been tracking and analyzing the type of content that candidates engage with most on social media and digital marketing channels, based on data from the 2,000+ practitioners using our Rally® Inside™ Recruitment Marketing & Analytics platform. This insight has become invaluable to our community for creating an effective social recruiting and Recruitment Marketing content plan that can break through the digital noise, capture a candidate’s attention and build their interest in new career opportunities with your company.
In the past 18 months, we’ve dug deeper into the data to understand social recruiting trends and made a remarkable discovery: using certain keywords can make your social recruiting strategy a success or failure. We call this as The Language of Recruiting™ – a list of high-value and low-value keywords that Rally Inside data shows can significantly impact your ability to reach talent on social platforms.
For example, certain keywords will keep candidates scrolling past your post, signaling to social algorithms that your content is low-value. This causes the platforms to show your post to fewer of your followers and people like them. On the flip side, high-value keywords are associated with posts that get more impressions, making more candidates aware of your employer brand and bringing more candidates back to your careers site to learn about your jobs and employee experience, yay.
We recently summarized our key findings in a new report, “2024 Social Recruiting Strategy Benchmarks,” which you can download for free. It’s packed with 65 pages of charts, graphs, insights, analysis and recommendations that will help you build a data-driven and highly effective social media strategy.
In this blog post, I’ll share 11 specific keywords that we highlight in the report that you should avoid including in your posts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram when aiming to increase your impressions and reach. Some words are the same across platforms, while others are specific to that platform, affirming that your social media content really needs to be tailored to the platform and its unique audience.
LinkedIn:
- Apply
- Job
- Hiring
- Opportunity
- Join
- Role
Facebook:
- Apply
- Hiring
- Work
- Benefit
- Role
- Recruit
- Grow
Instagram:
- Apply
- Hiring
- Career
- Benefit
Now that I’ve got you curious, let’s dive in!
LinkedIn: Focus on Value and Growth
One of the biggest mistakes I see practitioners making on social media is treating their organic social platform like it’s a job board. The data shows it’s a sure-fire way to get your content flagged as low-value by both candidates and the social algorithms.
The charts below show data from our Rally Inside tool for January through May 2024. They depict common keywords used in recruiting to promote a job or working at our company, and measure whether those keywords are included in company posts that get above-average or below-average impressions or reach.
The first chart is for LinkedIn. Rally Inside data shows that the words Apply, Job, Hiring, Opportunity, Join and Role are associated with below-average impressions, indicating that using these terms isn’t effective when trying to get your posts in front of your existing followers and people like them. This is consistent with what we’ve seen for years, which is that “we’re hiring” type posts are not effective.
Instead, words such as Benefit and Grow are associated with above-average impressions, highlighting the importance of focusing on the values and growth prospects your organization offers. This approach can create a more engaging narrative that resonates with passive talent and active job seekers alike, ultimately boosting your Recruitment Marketing efforts on LinkedIn.
Impressions of LinkedIn recruiting words show significant variation compared to the average, with terms like “Grow” and “Benefit” performing above average, while words such as “Hiring” and “Apply” see lower engagement. Source: Rally Inside.
Facebook: Emphasize Career Growth
The next chart analyzes the reach on Facebook of recruiting posts that include recruiting keywords. It’s evident that certain words significantly impact reach, either positively or negatively. Keywords like Apply, Hiring, Recruit and Work have a notably negative impact, leading to a reach that is significantly below average. The words Hiring and Recruit are used in posts with 50-65% less reach than average.
Conversely, words like Job, Career, Opportunity and Grow are neutral or slightly positive. This pattern suggests that job seekers are more responsive to posts about jobs and careers that emphasize career growth rather than just promoting that an open job is available. By strategically choosing your language, you can significantly impact your ability to reach and engage talent on Facebook.
The reach of Facebook posts with recruiting words shows significant variations, with “Hiring” and “Recruit” experiencing the lowest reach compared to the average post on a company’s Facebook channel. Source: Rally Inside.
Instagram: Boost Employee Engagement
The final chart highlights the impact of recruiting keywords on Instagram post impressions. The results are mixed. Words such as Apply, Hiring, Career and Benefit are linked to below-average impressions, as much as 70% lower than average. But look at the word Work! It’s used in posts that get more than 80% above-average impressions.
Digging into this further, we found that the word Employee is used in Instagram posts with more than double the average impressions. Therefore, we believe the performance of the word Work is related to many Rally Inside users using Instagram as a careers channel more than a corporate social channel, with a lot of content geared at employee engagement.
Based on this analysis, our recommendation is to grow your employee engagement first, which will then help you expand your audience reach from there.
The word “Work” is used in posts on Instagram that get significantly higher impressions compared to other recruiting words. Source: Rally Inside.
The Importance of The Language of Recruiting
Social media posts that directly promote a job, tell the world that you’re hiring and ask people to apply are not effective content for a company’s organic social platforms. Across social platforms, candidates generally don’t engage with posts that use the words Apply or Hiring. No wonder many practitioners get pushback from their marcom team regarding job promotion posts — marcom doesn’t want to use that real estate to promote jobs. They know the algorithms learn if your company is consistently publishing low-value content, making it harder for all content on the channel to reach your followers.
Therefore, knowing The Language of Recruiting is crucial to the effectiveness of your social recruiting strategy. The Rally Inside data underscores the importance of tailoring your social media content and keywords to the platform and focusing on what truly resonates with your audience.
The insights we’ve shared are just the tip of the iceberg. Our new benchmark report, “2024 Social Recruiting Strategy Benchmarks,” offers a comprehensive analysis of the latest trends in social recruiting. This 65-page report is packed with charts, graphs, insights and recommendations drawn from over 18,000 social posts, 6.8 million impressions and 3.8 million clicks across 6 social channels.
Be sure to download your copy of the “2024 Social Recruiting Strategy Benchmarks Report” today to equip yourself with the data-driven insights you need to attract and engage top talent effectively. And sign up for a free Rally Inside account to access even more resources and tools designed to help you succeed in Recruitment Marketing and employer branding.
What’s working for you in social recruiting? Connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know!
