According to Pew Research, about seven in ten American adults use social media every day, making it a powerful channel to recruit, build your employer brand, provide insight into the employee experience, promote programs and perks, and more. Having a defined strategy or purpose, posting frequently and highlighting your employer brand are just some of the ways you can up your social recruiting game, even if you’re tight on time.
Learn what social media recruiting can do for your organization by looking at what three very different employers accomplished in January with their social media posts.
Case study #1: Waste Management (WM) Careers on Twitter
Waste Management is a Fortune 250 company with more than 40,000 team members, providing comprehensive waste and environmental solutions in North America to residential, commercial, industrial and municipal customers through its subsidiaries. Based in Houston, Texas, WM provides collection, transfer, disposal services, and recycling and resource recovery. It is also a leading developer, operator and owner of landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States.
While Waste Management may not be the first to come to mind when you think of big brands, this company knows how to communicate its values, culture and work environment in just 280 characters a day. A quick scan of its recent career posts on Twitter highlights what’s important to Waste Management:
- Waste Management puts people first. The company is committed to diversity, safety, education and training, and actively recruits customer service center staff, mechanics, salespeople, management and veterans.
- Deeper insights about Waste Management as an employer via links to other content pages and short videos featuring employees talking about the employment experience.
- Clear calls-to-action engage candidates to join Waste Management’s talent community, attend a recruiting event, or enter a contest.
- Close-ups and group photos in facilities and around Waste Management equipment show diverse, happy employees with a down-to-earth feel that reinforces a “people first” mentality, and shows off real work environments.
Waste Management also uses other social media channels to promote its business and values, cross-promoting Twitter content on other platforms to meet candidates where they are.
Case study #2: Hirewell on LinkedIn
Hirewell, a national 50+ person staffing and recruiting agency based out of Chicago, specializes in technology, sales, HR, executive leadership, digital experience and marketing, and finance and accounting placements for Fortune 500 companies, start-ups and everything in between.
So, what’s the genius behind their social media strategy? Hirewell targets their messages to specific audiences that are relevant to their brand — current employees, companies looking to hire, or job seekers. A post may appeal primarily to:
- Current employees:
For example, there are short videos celebrating work anniversaries and promotions. This also lets clients and job seekers know that Hirewell has experienced people on staff, and shows prospective new hires that Hirewell celebrates its employees.
- Clients:
Hirewell consistently shares HR best practices that help their clients be stronger employers. A post may cover employee retention and engagement tips, information on what new HR laws may mean to them, and how to handle tough situations (like when a candidate is right for the company but wrong for the job).
- Job seekers:
Hirewell attracts job seekers by highlighting clients and offering best practices for the search. For example, podcasts feature advice from industry leaders on marketable skills and weekly job updates.
Taking it one step further, Hirewell leverages content across multiple social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook), so they get a lot of mileage and value out of every post. Brilliant! Did we also mention Hirewell’s posts are creative and entertaining?
A weekly video podcast is used to announce company news, share insights from special guests, feature one open job from each line of business, and help you get to know Hirewell’s staff. Set in a makeshift radio station with cutout images of their own employees in the background, the format is laid back, authentic and fun, but also manages to convey the knowledge, expertise and professionalism Hirewell’s staff brings to the table.
Case study #3: Marriott Careers on Twitter
Marriott is a well-known brand. The name conjures up welcoming, comfortable, modern, and clean places to stay when you’re away from home. What more is there to say about this employer? Go to Marriott Careers on Twitter to find out.
Marriott markets themselves as an employer where you can “Explore New Opportunities.” One of the first things you learn after arriving to their Twitter profile is that Marriott has 7,300 hotels and 30 hotel brands, spanning 134 countries and territories worldwide. The opportunities are endless for employees to experience new places and move around if they’d like.
Marriott’s Twitter doesn’t stop there. They highlight the breadth of positions available to job seekers, sharing that they signed on 800 new hotels last year, translating to 70,000 jobs. They hire chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, hospitality staff, housekeepers, guest services, loss prevention and safety leaders, and more.
Paulina Hernandez recently celebrated 19 years with the company! What keeps her working at the @MHEastSideNYC? The opportunity to interact with guests and learn about other cultures along the way. Broaden your horizons when you join our growing team: https://t.co/vQb2ptZk5D pic.twitter.com/yZDYN6wm2a
— Marriott Careers (@MarriottCareers) December 30, 2019
Each role makes a difference. Chefs are encouraged to be creative, participate in training opportunities, and top chefs are recognized quarterly by sharing their expertise with other staff. Employees are valued for going the extra mile, like leaving handwritten notes for guests. Marriott develops their leaders and encourages their employees to bring their whole self to work.
Employees are also offered unique perks, like discounts at Marriott locations. People matter (there’s a video of the HRO talking about inspiring and empowering employees). They want to help you succeed and even provide resume tips for applicants. They care about the environment and wellness.
While there’s the periodic recruiting post, Marriott does a stellar job conveying its brand and employment experience via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Even if you’re not actively looking for work, after reviewing Marriott’s posts, no doubt you’ll remember its positive, empowering and professional employment experience.
How to invest in social media recruiting without adding to your workload
When you’re ready to do more than post job openings on social media, you don’t have to start from scratch or go it alone. Educate colleagues about social media recruiting goals so they can feed your content pipeline and create a win-win situation. Employ a few time-saving social media best practices, and repurpose content from other areas of the business. For example, let’s say:
- Your sustainability director just found out your company won a prestigious zero waste award and is planning to promote it via a press release. With just a few more clicks, this content can be repurposed to build your brand as an environmentally responsible employer via a social media post.
- Your benefits department just launched a truly unique perk. Take content from the perk’s marketing materials or get a video clip of an employee talking about the perk to share on your social recruiting channel.
- A training and development team is creating a video to promote a new leadership development program to employees. Can they capture a clip that will also work on your social recruiting channel?
- Your customer service department has its own employee recognition program and develops content to announce the monthly winner internally. Can they give their employee added recognition by repurposing content and photos for use in social media recruiting?
Social media recruiting doesn’t have to be a time-consuming chore. By collaborating with other departments and repurposing existing content, it’s easy to communicate your employer brand online. Take a few pages out of these leading brands’ books to up your social media recruiting game.
