The current hiring climate is intense, to say the least. Companies are going to great lengths to recruit and hire talent to meet their staffing needs. Many hiring managers are even increasing their recruiting budgets to pay for sponsored recruiting ads or hire outside recruiting services.
There’s nothing wrong with these strategies. The problem is that businesses often take these steps while failing to maximize the potential of their organic reach. Specifically, they aren’t taking advantage of their employee networks to boost their employer brand.
What Are the Benefits of Using Employees in Recruiting?
Who is more qualified to speak positively about your company to potential candidates than your best workers? Endorsements offer even more credibility because they are based on actual experience, not simply the company line.
Additionally, your employee advocates’ social networks probably run wider and deeper than your company’s own networks. Tap into their networks, and you could expand your reach exponentially.
Best Practices for Tapping into Employee Networks
Your employees can offer you access to quality candidates through their personal and professional networks. That can be pretty lucrative for your company in that it can help you save money on recruiting costs and significantly aid in your recruitment marketing efforts.
Select the Most Engaged Employees
The workers who have the best networks will be the ones who are excited about your brand, have achieved success within your organization, and feel willing to use their social networks to help you increase your reach.
You’ll get the most enthusiastic participation and the best advocacy from these team members.
Encourage Employees to Connect with Your Company Online
While you can expand your networks by encouraging your team members to reach out through their networks, you’ll make even more progress if you can access those networks yourself. To do that, you have to connect with as many employees as possible on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other channels. This will give you access to a wider range of prospective candidates.
Be Transparent and Offer Incentives
It’s best to approach all of this with transparency as a key priority. You are asking your team members to connect with your brand so that you can reach into their networks to recruit candidates.
Any worker who agrees to this should completely understand your objectives. It’s even more important to be clear and straightforward if you plan on using platforms that mix the professional and personal, like Facebook.
Additionally, you won’t just have access to your employee networks when you’re direct. You’ll have access to your team member’s insights into the people you are interested in recruiting.
One of the perks of increasing your organic reach is that you save money you would have spent on sponsored job posts or accessing the services of paid recruiters. That’s great, but it doesn’t mean you should expect your employees to provide you with access to their networks for free.
Offer an attractive referral incentive program. You’ll still save money, and your team members will have even more reason to open up their connections to you.
Engage Team Members in Targeting Campaigns
There are two ways to take advantage of your extended organic reach. The first is through brand marketing and advocacy. This is simply getting your employees to share your branded content, video testimonials, and other posts to help you increase your reach and boost your reputation.
The second is through direct targeting. This practice involves “mining” employee networks in search of specific candidates who have the skills and experience you are looking for.
Both methods are valid, but direct targeting is more effective if your goal is to find highly-qualified candidates to fill positions. You can get even better results if you get your team members involved.
They can give you deeper insights into the people in their networks and guide you towards the best candidates.
Provide Team Members with Tools to Boost Your Brand on Social Media
Employees who are happy with your work culture and feel that they have received professional development opportunities and fair compensation will usually be glad to promote your brand on their social media channels. However, you’re asking them for a lot if you expect them to compose and share posts without any help.
Instead, give them tools and resources that make communicating your message across their networks a little easier. For example, you can partner with your marketing team to create shareable social media posts that team members can easily share across their social networks.
Follow Up on Outreach Efforts
Organic outreach campaigns tend to start with a lot of energy and participation. Unfortunately, things tend to hit a bit of a wall over time. It takes follow-up to keep employees engaged in these campaigns and involve new employees.
Reach out to participants with reminders to keep sharing content and help them identify potential candidates in their networks. This will create excitement about referral incentives for your newest hires. Incorporate these programs into your onboarding process as well.
Implement Quality Control Measures
You can save money on organic reach campaigns and connect with prospective employees. However, these efforts still require time and resources to execute. You still want to ensure you get a good ROI.
You’ll need to have some quality control in place to do that. That should include verifying candidates thoroughly, asking employees for their insights on the people you find in their networks, and tracking candidates after they’ve been hired.
