With the fast development of social media over the last few years, we are now more ready than ever to participate in online discussions and make our voices heard. Whether that’s engaging with a brand for customer service purposes or participating in discussion about a favourite TV show, recruitment is no different.
Candidates are driving to be participants through a variety of online activity including posting online reviews, engaging in live chats and live video streaming, commenting on blogs and LinkedIn articles and sharing what is important to them to drive conversation within their own networks.
By sticking with the same old online recruitment methods, companies risk getting left behind by merely ‘pushing’ out their jobs and content. Generating engagement as candidates interact with a recruitment brand and careers website will not only improve a candidate’s experience but also provide vital information on their preferences with regards to positions and the demographics looking at various roles.
What can we learn from companies outside of recruitment?
BMW Snowchat campaign
BMW are engaging younger consumers with a unique festive Snapchat-inspired campaign that sends festive five second greetings. On Snowchat, a dedicated microsite, users can wipe the snow off the windscreen of a red BMW X4 and write their own message to share across social channels. Once opened the windscreen wipers come alive and it disappears after 5 seconds, ideal for the average social media user attention span of 2.8-8 seconds.
Here’s what the project designers have to say:
“We are trying to open our arms wider than just car enthusiasts and BMW fans,” said Paul Renner, executive creative director at Kirshenbaum Bond Seneca, the agency that created the campaign for BMW. “We’re trying to invite people into the brand and let us be a part of their daily lives for the holidays.”
Coca Cola
Coca Cola’s ‘share a coke’ campaign created personalised Coke bottles emblazoned with customers’ names and nicknames and encouraged customers to share a coke with someone (each bottle included the hashtag #shareacoke). This was a simple campaign but encouraged social media sharing of the personalised bottles and customers getting involved in a virtual way.
T Mobile
T Mobile’s ‘The Break Up Letter’ campaign ran on Facebook and gave potential customers the option to switch their services to them by sending a break up letter to their existing supplier. Users were incentivised to switch with T Mobile making the process quick and easy, as well as offering to pay the termination fees of the previous provider. The result? 80,000 letters posted!
What can we do to involve our candidates online?
Candidate video
Encourage successful candidates to post videos on your social media channels giving tips on preparing for an interview or assessment centre. These tips will be more personal and relevant to other candidates going through the same process. Encourage the candidate to share the videos they star in on their own social media to draw in potential new candidates.
Twitter Chat
Host a weekly Twitter chat by inviting your contributors to include your effective and catchy hashtag in their answers to your questions. Be sure to prepare enough questions to fill your allocated chat time, and build anticipation throughout the week by clearly signaling the scheduled topics for your weekly chats in regular tweets as you build anticipation up to the discussion. Topics could include: making your CV stand out, getting your application form right, marketing yourself as a candidate, interview technique and how to perform at assessment centres.
Live feedback
What is better than having someone there to answer a question instantly, without having to pick up the phone? Schedule each of your recruiters to cover part of the working day on a live chat platform so that candidates will be able to get instant answers to their questions. Consistent availability and responsiveness will create a larger and more engaged userbase, and different recruitment specialists could be brought in for “takeover events”, to invite questions on areas of expertise such as a lunchtime CV writing seminar.
Conduct polls and surveys
People love giving their opinion. It drives candidate engagement, and enables you to gain valuable information on their preferences, enabling interaction with candidates on a more personalised basis. You could include survey questions on their communication preferences, for example, whether they’d prefer to be communicated to via email, phone call, SMS or social media.
Conclusion
It’s clear that candidates no longer want to sit back and just spectate online, they want to actively contribute and interact with you as a business. Feedback and information on your candidate is so valuable, it enables you to act in a more strategic way and place the right candidates for specific roles.
If a candidate is enjoying interacting then they will not only do so more often but provide more quality information. It is clear from the BMW, Coca Cola and T Mobile campaigns that user generated content marketing works and is on the rise. Don’t let your company get left behind at incorporating more candidate interaction into your online platforms.