Authenticity Is Crucial for Effective Recruiting on Social Media: 3 Tips to Help You Succeed

Speaking in an authentic voice is critical to social media recruiting success—but here’s the rub: “Authenticity” means different things to different brands.

Knowing what’s genuine for your employer brand and how it differs from your corporate brand is the first step in creating content that’s in line with the story you’re trying to tell. Attracting candidates versus attracting customers is a different ball game with different rules, that requires a new way of showing up. And knowing and playing by these rules is BNO’s sweet spot.

Does digging into your company’s unique employee value proposition provide guidelines, guardrails, and insights into what being consistently authentic means to your employees and potential candidates? Only then should you move forward with what speaks to these people. If it’s not readily apparent, perhaps more research is needed in order to unearth what matters to them. Keeping that in mind, read on.

Once you’ve determined what being genuine looks like for your employer brand, you can put it into action with these tips—just a few among many that we employ with our partners.

1. Resharing is caring

According to Social Media Today, 52% of people trust in-the-trenches employees over higher-ups or brand accounts. Translation: Candidates resonate with down-to-earth, approachable content. One way we’ve helped clients bring this kind of content to their social media channels is by giving their employees the floor through a solid reshare strategy.

For our client Verizon, this began by identifying internal brand advocates who shared their experiences on social media. Verizon then reshared the advocates’ posts on their main channel, offering a true perspective into what life at Verizon could be like.

2. Get by with a little help from your friends

A brand ambassador and influencer program we created for our client Bristol Myers Squibb’s (BMS) social media resulted in a 160% increase in site traffic year over year. Why the major success? Think of it this way, if resharing is like giving employees the floor, ambassador campaigns are like passing them the mic that’s hooked to a powerful sound system. In either case, you are making big strides in humanizing your brand.

For Bristol Myers Squibb, we accomplished this by crafting blogs from interviewing employees intimately associated with open positions that BMS was looking to fill. These informative and passion-filled blogs, in the employees’ own words, could then be repurposed for social posts on the accounts of the featured employees. By making real employees the authentic heroes of these posts, they’re giving their brand a human face.

3. Trend carefully

Viral videos. Hot sound bites. Memes. We’ve all seen them, and we’ve all seen the attention that tapping into popular trends and conversations can garner. Why is this? As HubSpot tells us, 55% of social media users are using search features and hashtags on these platforms. What are they searching for? You guessed it: these trends. That’s why jumping on these trends can be a smart SEO move. The key word is: can.

While this kind of momentum can be tempting, we recommend remembering the premise: staying authentically on brand. For instance, if you’re recruiting employees for a rising star’s clothing brand, a choreographed TikTok dance to a Taylor Swift ditty might be your jam. However, if you’re a pharma brand recruiting scientists to help innovate treatment options for a rare disease, it may be best to hang up the dancing shoes.

When partnering with clients to plan and build their social calendars, we put this into practice by referring to their unique employer value proposition and brand pillars throughout the content creation process.

Get real

Followers and potential candidates are hungry for consistency and honesty. You satisfy this need by deciphering and committing to what’s authentic to your brand—then realizing this on social media channels.

Social media is daunting for the same reasons it’s exciting, including the potentially bottomless pool of candidates looking for a culture to be a part of. Staying authentic can attract the appropriate and desired candidates to your social doorstep. We’re happy to help you find the tone, voice, messaging, and content that best tells your story. Reach out and let’s talk. We’re here to help.