Snag Influence with ‘Sticky’ Recruitment Marketing

It’s About Amplification & Influence

When people talk about amplification in social media, they’re talking about “reach” – how far a message can travel from it’s original broadcaster.  Your own network includes your circle of co-workers, former co-workers, friends, industry associates, customers and other people you’ve come into contact with over the years.

You’re one employee – add the total number of employees in your company and that will give you a combined “first-level” reach.  Of course, all of those people know people and have their own ‘first-level’ connections – and so on and so on.

Obviously, the bigger an individual’s network, or company’s by extension, the larger the potential for reach/amplification… and that’s the most obvious angle where ‘influencers’ come into play with recruitment marketing.  Sharing your opportunities with “influencers” – professionals within your space that are active on social media – with whom your company has a connection is a clear avenue… but there’s other roads worth pursing.

When Chris Hoyt joined PepsiCo back in 2010, he made the statement in his blog announcement that PepsiCo “Gets it.”  So, no surprise he tweeted about his on-boarding experience under the same hashtag:

“In 2nd Town Hall. EVERY leader I’ve heard speak today (~6) have talked about the importance of attracting top talent. #onboarding #GetsIt”  

How fantastic is that?!   Through a series of commonly hashtagged tweets over a month’s time, Hoyt shared part of Pepsi’s cultural ‘DNA’ with the Social Media world-at-large. This recruitment marketing tactic was sticky & it was relevant … not just to PepsiCo talent, either.

Through the concerted effort of connecting PepsiCo with an #onboarding hashtag; Hoyt helped draw in a wider audience through attracting interest of human resource industry and recruiting professionals. They, in turn, amplified his messages through sharing those positive examples of on-boarding experiences with their networks and thanks to the power of Google you can still see remnants of it today, two years later. When asked about the outcomes of the experiment, Hoyt said:

“I had a lot of feedback from people who said had I not done that; they wouldn’t have thought of PepsiCo as a next place of employment for them. And that was great, because it was the proof that with proper exposure we could be included in the answer to the question that we hadn’t even asked:

‘If I asked you where are you going now, where are you going next… what Companies, what brands, make that ‘top 3′ list?'”

So when you start talking about Social Recruiting, it’s not about filling a job as much as it’s about that question.

In Social Recruiting/Recruitment Marketing; our job is getting the Companies we serve into that ‘who’s who’ list of the top three. It’s not about the postings, the number of people who applied via twitter, or vomiting your job postings on Twitter – it’s about positioning your Company/brand to be on the ‘list’ of places people want to go next.

Why?  Because when a recruiter from those top three companies call/send an inmail? People don’t need to be sold; they’re automatically listening – their messages resonates more strongly than those that weren’t top contenders.”

Well said. Let’s review, shall we?  Through this tact, Hoyt:

1. Garnered interest of HR Influencers / Recruiting Influencers through hashtagging topics likely to be searched on twitter:  #Onboarding

2. Through sharing exciting experiences he had; Hoyt tied his Company and Brand to examples of successful culture – leaving a “PepsiCo DNA” imprinted on the web for other candidates to find.

3. With the tag #GetsIt, Hoyt had a little “hashtag fun” that started a fun trend that other people wanted to share and be part of this.

4.By creating fun, exciting, interesting content, Hoyt’s tweets personified PepsiCo as the popular kid everyone wants to be friends with:  positive, smart, understanding, caring. Fun.

5. The best part is that you can use this roadmap as a guide to do similar things for your organization, too.

But What’s the Immediate ROI???

Often when I’m working with clients and suggest these kind of measures, the immediate response is, “But I need hires NOW.”  Totally understand… but here’s the thing: successful social recruiting programs aren’t built at the snap of your fingers. Career Crossroad’s 2012 “Channels of Influence” survey showed that as a Social Media as a direct-sourcing channel yielded less than 4% of over 200k participant hires made in 2011.  That doesn’t mean Social Media is ineffective in recruiting; quite the contrary – Social Media shines as an indirect hiring channel, serving as a the 2nd largest source for influencing candidates’ decision to join a company (or not).

Yes, people still look first to your company website for information; but just as recruiting professionals turn to social media to find candidates?  They turn to the same channel to find info about the companies they’re looking to join – so getting influencers respected in the industry talking about things they like about your organization, things you’re doing right, etc. has a huge ability to yield returns that last long after any one job opening you’d want an ‘Influencer’ to share…. Just like Hoyt did with PepsiCo.

Crystal Miller creates great Talent Marketing and Social Recruitment Programs at M3 Talent Consulting in Dallas. As an advocate for proactive social media in recruiting, she works as the Co-Host of #TalentNet weekly Radio Chat on Twitter/Focus w/ Talent Net Live. Crystal believes, “Candidate first.”  Photo Credit Pepsi Twitter.