Employer branding: digital communication strategy for recruitment

With almost 4.48 billion people using the internet, it is vital for you, as an employer, to be online. Implementing a well-built digital communication strategy will lead to acquiring valuable assets during the recruitment process, which will only increase the potential of your company’s top-talented team. More than that, they might even be those key employees your company has been trying to recruit and retain.

The digital communication strategy for candidates recruitment consists of planning an effective communication strategy by choosing the right online channels, use re-engagement strategies, analytics, and marketing automation, to reach your main goal of engaging prospective employees.

Who should be taking care of branding your company during the recruitment process? The HR or the Marketing team? Not only from our company’s experience but also from other company’s opinions, we noticed that an effective digital communication strategy for candidates recruitment not only requires the involvement of one team but the company as a team. The following will give you an idea about the conclusions we made regarding this strategy.

5 Effective tactics in planning a digital communication strategy for candidates recruitment:

1. Leverage your company through employer branding

This is a crucial process on which your company should constantly work on. On a global scale, 72% of recruiting leaders agree that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring. And it’s no wonder why since this is the first contact a candidate has with the brand.

Even though some strategies that increase your employer branding require significant investments, they will bring great outcomes for your company not only for the recruitment process. Nonetheless, some strategies are money wise and have a strong rate of bringing benefits within your recruiting strategy, such as improving job interviews.

An essential approach in managing a digital communication strategy for candidates recruitment is to improve your job interviews - there are many websites where people will post about their experience during an interview and having a bad experience will be a chance for your candidate to write negative things about your company, leading to a bad reputation in the end. The candidate experience should generate advocacy for your company after he/she’s left the interview, even though they haven’t been hired.

2. Find and organize key candidate touch points

With so much information everywhere around us, it is crucial to understand consumer behavior, find a pattern and seize it before someone else will. This applies to finding the right candidates for your company as well. Finding the right touch points is one of the key steps to reach your prospective employees, which leads to choosing the right tools for the recruitment process.

While many companies use social platforms in their recruiting process, it is also relevant to find a niche that will best align with your digital communication strategy, such as CRM, Applicant Tracking Systems, Pre-employment assessment tools or Mobile recruiting. After running a research about the most popular Applicant Tracking Software, software reviews company Capterra has defined 4 best-recruiting apps to be Indeed Employer, Workable, JobDiva and Breezy HR.

This leads us to the next tactic, specifically targeting social media platforms.

3. Build an effective social media recruiting strategy

According to a 2017 research, 70% of employers were profiling candidates on social media, as part of their candidate recruitment process. Even so, in 2019 the social media landscape has changed considerably, that it takes a big effort and a huge amount of resources to monitor all the factors that should be considered while implementing a social media recruiting strategy. And these statistics will show exactly the improbability the digital landscape is in.

4. Prioritize candidate experience

The first impression of your company’s culture will leave a mark on the potential candidate and depending on how good your company can leverage this factor, it can add great value to your employer branding, or none at all.

Speaking in digital terms, your website should be the window to your company’s culture, no matter if you are an IT or design company. And if you want to emphasize the value of your brand through an innovative web design, here are a few web design trends for 2020. Having a clean, always in trend website, will increase a candidate’s experience during his research process.

5. Post relevant content on career websites

Not only the managing board is expecting for this, but also job seekers - job ads should be proofread, double-checked and accurate, to avoid discouraging prospective employees from applying, and leading your company’s reputation into the laugh of a platform.

According to the Jobvite 2017 Recruiting Funnel Benchmark Report, career websites represent the most used source from where companies hire candidates; out of 100%, career websites scored 27.35%. But with so many companies posting their content on these career websites, your company’s description should capture the job seekers. This is why writing good content in a personalized way should be an asset to your digital communication strategy for candidate recruitment.

Social Media tips to consider in your digital communication strategy as part of the recruitment process

We have chosen the following tips which helped companies to build a great digital communication strategy on social media, for candidates recruitment:

• Connect with the right people and put effort into your communication content.
• Use Live Video Streaming: it will engage the passive candidates, as well as giving them an inside view of the company’s culture. The advantage of Live Video Streaming has great potential because you can experiment with your content, while the audience narrows down. And you can do this based on the Q&A sessions you might want to enable.
• Choosing or creating the right hashtags relevant for your industry, but most importantly, for your brand.
• Have an updated LinkedIn Profile: be active in relevant groups to attract top talents, use specialized tools, such as LinkedIn Pulse, to position your brand as an authority, due to niche content.
• Instagram can be another channel through which your recruitment team can find a good candidate. Not only using Instagram will guide you to the right candidates, but it will also help potential candidates have some insights about your company’s culture, by looking at the photos and content you post about intern activities.
• Involve your employees in the recruitment process. If there is a fulfillment you should be proud of, that is having your employees act as brand ambassadors. In this case, they will increase the reach of your ad or message during the recruitment process. Your company should be aware of planning this campaign, by implementing a social media policy.
• Social Media Ads - your company should consider planning a paid ads campaign when organic efforts won’t seem to work. Planning the campaign should you take into consideration many aspects to reach the right target, such as age, interests, educational background, etc.

According to Aasha Collins, Social Media Manager at The Tylt, companies should consider social media as an extension of their company. This is a clear message that choosing the right social media channels will be a successful tool within your digital communication strategy for candidates recruitment.

Expectations candidates have when it comes to recruitment

Recent statistics send a message for employers to improve their digital communication strategy for candidates recruitment starting now if they want to succeed in the talent hunt. Here are the highlights we considered you should also know about:

• 45% of job seekers search for jobs daily on their mobile device
• 54% of job seekers spend their time on career pages to read employees’ review
• 52% of job seekers look up salary information while being on career pages
• 79% of job seekers most likely will run a job search on social media
• 59% of job seekers will apply for a job on a desktop, later after first saving the job from their mobile device

Entering a world where the online environment is marking more territories seems like a quest for industries to keep up with each new trend. Since emerging technologies make it mandatory to focus on a digital communication strategy, your company should track the accomplishment of these essential expectations candidates have when it comes to recruitment:

1. Visibility and transparency
2. Efficient interviews
3. Clear salary and compensation delivery
4. Upright treatment

Final thoughts

The HR department, along with the marketing and PR departments seem to be inseparable when it comes to implementing a digital communication strategy for candidate recruitment. When considering this, it is no wonder why a recruitment process takes a long time. But using new technologies and tools that come along with it, the burden of long processes should be left in the past. In the landscape of talent hunt, it is primordial to use the tools that best align with your company.

Our team can help you to create and understand the involvement of a digital communication strategy for candidate recruitment. Let’s get in touch at office@nnc-services.com and discuss how you are planning to increase your team with top talents from 2020.