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Attracting top talent to your company can be hard. There are so many ways to attract the right employees to your company, from personal referrals to attending careers fairs. These days, an online talent search is the fastest and cheapest way to go.
However, convincing someone you have never met in person to join your small business requires a bit of strategizing. From managing your presence on review sites to shooting professional recruitment videos, here are our top 10 strategies to attract top talent to your small business.
Active brand management on review sites
Brand reputation is not only important for customers but for attracting prospective employees as well. When someone gets a job offer from you, or when they consider applying for an open post, they are going to enquire about your company, most often on specialized review sites.
Your employees may leave reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed. If your employees are happy, they will leave positive reviews that will help you attract that top talent.
Negative reviews have the potential to hurt your brand’s reputation, so you should address all negative reviews and complaints internally, and hope that the employee retracts the negative review when they have something more positive to say.
An impeccable organic social media profile
Future employees may struggle to form an accurate opinion of your brand from your website alone. Social media accounts are more suitable for this purpose, as they are more interactive and can show many sides of your business.
Furthermore, Instagram stories and tweets are often user-generated, that is, your employees get to share snippets from the office. This offers candidates a unique insight into your organization and office culture. In this sense, interaction with top talents become organic as possible on social media
Direct messages on Facebook Messenger, Twitter or Instagram can be quicker than e-mail correspondence.
Take full advantage of Facebook advertising
An extra benefit of social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram is the existence of Facebook Ads. Recruitment marketing can target new audiences that haven’t heard of your organization before.
The biggest perk of Facebook Ads is the ability to target users based on a series of factors, such as their present job title, sex, age, education level, geolocation, and interests. Having collected all this data, you can show open job positions to people who are more likely to be interested in them.
Email marketing for the 21st century
Email was a hit back in the 90s but millennials and Gen Z find this form of communication somewhat boring and slow. However, you can play emails’ tediousness to your advantage. Why not create a mailing list to populate with prospective employees?
Instead of boring them with calls or tagging them in social media posts (we all hate this), send them a monthly newsletter with interesting attachments. From pandemic updates to the challenges of remote work, folks would get a chance to experience the day-to-day of working for your small business.
Offline amenities
Once the COVID-19 pandemic is finally over, workers will probably return to the office full-time. This is especially true for new hires who may not have had a chance to integrate. For this reason, offline amenities mustn’t be side-lined. They should become an active segment of the digital campaign to attract talent.
When shooting videos of office life, make sure amenities like a full fridge or a massage chair are clearly visible in the background. This strategy allows you to demonstrate all the office amenities without the need for direct marketing which some people may find obtrusive.
Live chat as opposed to in-person interviews
Online chatting has become more popular since the start of the pandemic. Employees often resort to online recruiting strategies because future employees live far away or they may be unable to attend a job interview in person.
So why not conduct virtual interviews? In order for live chats to be effective, you have to make it clear right from the start of the application process that candidates are expected to attend a live chat as part of application requirements.
The worst thing you could do is tell them that they have a live chat tomorrow and to prepare within 24 hours. This might cause them to panic and pull out of the interview.
Job boards have a purpose
Promoting your company on job boards is another way to strengthen brand awareness among future employees. Most job boards are free to post on and even those that include a fee charge only a percentage of the outreach they provide you.
Job board advertising is great for all sorts of job opening as it makes your hiring policy more transparent and it gives prospective employees an insight into your hiring history.
For instance, if you keep advertising the same exact job post, then they might suspect you are dishonest. On the other hand, if they notice that you hire only from time to time, they are more likely to apply for a job, as they’ll see the current opportunity as a real opportunity.
A careers page on your website is a must
Once you get a person interested in your small business, they will visit the company website to find out more about your company and its employment opportunities.
A careers page that shows current job offerings is a great idea. The page could contain a short description of your company and include links to social media accounts where your employees share stories about office life.
Is advertising jobs on YouTube possible?
We have mentioned that advertising on Facebook helps you reach your target audience but what about other, social media platforms? Why not consider publishing short YouTube ads?
These promo videos will act as teasers that will get people interested in your brand. The videos you post on YouTube should be searchable, so do your SEO homework. Since billions of people watch YouTube videos, reaching a new audience is guaranteed!
How to create engaging video content
As already mentioned, the video content you post online should feature your employees and humanize your company. Videos are the best way to engage both shoppers and future employees, so consider entering a partnership with a production studio early on.
Paired with excellent web design, professional videos will attract plenty of viewers including both customers and potential employees. Who wouldn’t want to work for a company that has successfully created a buzz online?
Our top ten strategies to attract talent are subtle. They don’t openly invite people to join your small business but rather make job postings reach as many candidates as possible and they do so indirectly. Who wouldn’t want to work for a company that offers massage chairs in the office!
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
