Blog Archives
Making “Pinning” Winning – by Kelly Adachi (Intern)
Pinterest is on the rise. The new social media site offers a vast collection of images and video and allows users to create personalized virtual bulletin boards to share with friends. Pinterest has experienced rapid growth, reaching 10 million users faster than any site in history. In February 2012 it earned at average 1.36 million visitors every day, and the numbers continue to climb.
With this influx of activity, one wonders how to best utilize this new social media platform, especially for purposes other than sharing images related to top Pinterest topics like fashion and décor.
Job seekers have now begun using Pinterest to find employment and career tips and to post their resumes and interests. Companies have started to capitalize on this new emergence of career-related content on Pinterest, and have begun recruiting efforts on their company Pinterest pages.
Here are some tips for using Pinterest for recruiting:
- Use pins to promote company culture/values
- Build a pin board for each job
- Pin multimedia – not just images, but also video
- Include boards on relevant topics with material from outside sources, not just company content
- Relate Pinterest trends back to workplace (For example, you can connect professional attire to fashion, office locations to travel, etc.)
- Make sure to include many ways to connect with users – through links, repinning, comments, contests, etc. As with any social media site, it’s all about engagement!
One of my favorite examples of a company Pinterest page is GE. They have an array of boards on topics that would be interesting to both consumers and job seekers, including industry-related images as well as a glimpse into the GE workspace. They also encourage engagement via hashtags and a campaign called #GEInspiredMe, in which Pinterest users upload images that relate to GE and are able to see their images pinned up on the company’s official Pinterest page.
Some other favorites: Whole Foods, which showcases its company culture and lifestyle, and this whimsical job board for The New Traditionalists Furniture Company
Everything is better with Video (and Bacon): The importance of video in a recruitment marketing strategy
During a recent recruitment marketing strategy session with one of our key clients, there was a remark made by the organization’s head of Employment Branding & Marketing that stuck with me:
“Just like everything is better with Bacon, everything is better with VIDEO.”
When a company is trying to bring their employment brand to life, video is an ideal way to showcase the company culture, values, preview a day-in-the-life of an employee, etc.
She made this point to illustrate her goal that we work to incorporate their videos assets wherever possible…on their career site, in job postings, on social media profiles, through video banners, in mobile advertising, etc.
Citing Your Sources – Source of Hire vs. Source of Influence
While attending the ERE Expo last week, I was excited to learn that The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has approved the cost-per-hire standard as the first American national HR standard:
This is a great “first” in an industry lacking in way of “standards.”
However, one of the biggest challenges we continue to face in benchmarking a client’s recruitment advertising performance in comparison to industry norms, is that there is no norm when it comes to the countless ways in which companies are tracking Source of Hire.
Every client has a different methodology for capturing source (i.e., different application processes, career site integrations, applicant tracking systems, media/source tagging conventions, etc.).
And even the exceptional clients, who have implemented the best available resources to track source, know that deep down they’re probably only capturing, at best, 50% of the true source of hires.
Worse yet, is that the Source of Hire is in most cases simply the “last source” the candidate came from prior to applying into the ATS.
So what about all of the other sources that helped “influence” that candidate’s decision to apply? Where did they first learn about the company/opportunity? Did they then go on to research the company on social media platforms (i.e., Facebook and LinkedIn) and employer review sites (i.e., Glassdoor and CareerBliss)? Did they watch a video about the company/culture/position? Did they seek out an employee referral from someone in their network?
Our more sophisticated clients are asking these questions…wanting to look at all of the “Sources of Influence” that led to a hire.
And in an industry where simply capturing the last source is difficult, trying to capture data on all of the touch points along the way is a huge challenge. But there are methods to go about collecting this information (i.e., post-impression media tagging tools, etc.) and as an Agency, this is the hot problem we’re trying to solve for our clients.
And who knows, maybe in another decade or so, ANSI will release their second American national HR standard: tracking Source of Influence.
While Recruitment Marketing Goes Social, Referrals and Job Boards Still Lead the Way.
While it seems like the focus of every client planning meeting these days is on developing an effective social media strategy, it’s imperative that we don’t dismiss the tried and true methods of recruitment marketing that still serve as the foundation of a successful program.
