Your Employees Are Your Most Valuable Recruiting Tools
Monday, February 10th, 2014
The most obvious and glaring trend for recruiting is the use of social media for outreach to active and passive candidates. Most recruiters, staffing firms and other companies will tell you that their job opportunities need to be readily available, easily accessible and mobile friendly.
Building your company’s employment brand and online presence is essential not only in making candidates aware of your company as an employer, but also in giving them the ability to easily apply for a position no matter where they are, or what device they’re using, when they come across your company online.
Given that most companies today understand and undertake these practices, the question becomes, how do you best utilize your company’s online employment brand to attract the best talent? What can you do to set yourself apart from the competition?
Valuable Recruiting Tools: Your Employees
One vital asset that recruiters often overlook are the people sitting right around them in the office. Current employees can provide valuable help in the recruiting process. The most direct way they can impact the process is through candidate referrals. Most businesses have an employee referral program, where current employees receive an incentive (usually in the monetary form) for referring a candidate who gets hired.
If your company does not have this type of program in place, it should be a high priority item to get one set up.
Assuming you do have a system, make sure your employees are aware of it. It’s one thing to mention it in an employee handbook with a dearth of other information that an employee may or may not retain, but it’s better to emphasize it separately – and repeatedly.
Keep It Top of Mind
One tactic that works well is reminding your employees of the program in conjunction with mentioning a new position the company is looking to fill. Whether it’s through a company-wide e-mail, an internal company Facebook group or some other form of mass communication, it’s beneficial to make everyone at the company aware of any new opening.
And while you’re mentioning the opening, it won’t hurt to remind everyone of the employee referral program. Make sure to give enough details about the incentive, and be clear with instructions for how to submit the referrals.
Encourage Use of Social Media
In addition to employee referrals, another way to utilize your employees to help build your brand is to get them going online. Encourage them to use popular social media sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. When you have a link to a job opening or any other recruiting/branding related effort, make it easy for them to share it online to their social media circles. This is especially important for a site like LinkedIn, because most of your employees’ networks and groups are filled with passive candidates.
Sharing updates about your company is a great way to make them aware you’re hiring.
Encourage Company Reviews on Job-Seeker Sites
Another way you can have your employees engage online is by encouraging them to fill out reviews (which can be anonymous) on popular job-seeker sites likeIndeed, Career Bliss and Glassdoor. The more – hopefully positive – reviews your company gets, the better you will look to potential job-seekers.
As a recruiter, you can go on and on bragging about your company to candidates, but ultimately a candidate knows “selling” your company is part of your job. Hearing what employees, not recruiters, have to say about the company gives your organization more transparency and lets candidates receive a first-hand prospective from someone who is currently in a job they’re considering applying for on your team.
Conclusion
Do not be afraid to reach out to your current employees as recruiting ambassadors, because in addition to you, they’re the ones who know best about what it is like to work for your company. Obviously not everyone will be responsive to this kind of outreach, so it could be helpful to identify some “go to” employees whom you can always count on to help out with everything from referring candidates or just sharing updates on LinkedIn.
Asking employees to perform additional tasks outside their usual duties can sometimes be perceived as a nuisance, so be sure to be delicate and tactful when communicating with co-workers. Make sure people understand the reason behind what you’re asking and how it will help the company.
And don’t get discouraged if everyone doesn’t seem like they’re on board. Remember, the ones who are most responsive to the idea will likely be the best ambassadors of your brand.
Courtesy: Small Biz Trends
