Posts tagged Employer branding
A quick look on the career pages of the largest social media companies such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn shows how they are successfully using their own tools in recruitment and employer branding. It seems to be very simple to create a positive image by giving open and honest information about the employees, their working conditions, atmosphere in the office, benefits, career opportunities etc.. One really gets the feeling that the employees truly like to work for these companies:
PS. What do you think about the new Twitter office?
As soon as you have understood the importance of social revolution, you need to start rethinking your recruitment and employer branding strategies on the web (in case you haven’t done that yet). What would I do in HR if I got the task to build a presence for a company in online networks? I could think of the following steps:
- Create an account for the company in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Start gathering friends and followers. I would start with the existing employees and candidates and, with help of them, start spreading the word to other target groups.
- Link the Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles to the company web page.
- Post and tweet interesting job opportunities, promotions and news about the company regularly.
- Screen potential candidates in social networks.
- Follow what is written about the company on the internet and react to the feedback.
- Observe what the competitors and other companies are doing.
- Stay updated about changes and new social networks in web 2.0.
If you are not familiar with the web 2.0 environment and you don’t have a digital native in your team, why don’t you hire an intern who is more than happy to spend his/her working days in social networks and get paid for that?
When I have been preparing myself for job interviews, I have missed a web page where I can exchange information about interview and assessment centre experiences with other job seekers. Now I found this great web page, Glassdoor.com, where candidates can write interview reviews, and former and current employees can rate their companies and share salary information. This gives candidates helpful insider information such as how is it to work for a certain company, what could I possibly earn and what can I expect from the interview day and hiring process. The company founders asked themselves the following question when the company was founded:
“What would happen if someone left the unedited employee survey for the whole company on the printer and it got posted to the Web?”
The answer is: more transparency and honest insider information for free both for candidates and companies. You can easily find out how is your image on the market and how are your competitors benchmarked. Are you paying worse salaries than your competitors? Are your hiring methods still up-to-date? These kind of internet services also emphasize the need for employers to be present on the web, to be informed what is written about them in online communities (this can be easily done with Google Alerts). A great deal of people form their opinions based on other users’ experiences.
Most of the rated companies on Glassdoor.com are U.S. based but I hope the service will be expanded to Europe soon!
Hello reader! You are reading a blog about HR written by Heli Toivonen. If you are interested in stuff such as recruitment, employer branding, social media and HR technology with focus on Finland, just keep on reading..
