During the last five years, social media has been one of the most influential drivers of change within the world of employer branding. Social media is now an integral part of any employer branding strategy; however, you need to actively maintain and improve it in order to present yourself as an attractive and desirable company. 

Hosco has teamed up with various hospitality brands to create their employer branding material and push it on social media. These companies are then able to take this customized content and share it with their global networks, informing and enticing candidates.

Just before we jump into the six social media tips to use for your employer branding, we want to look at the definition and briefly state why, if used correctly, social media can give you a competitive edge. 

What’s Employer Branding?

“An employer brand is an important part of the employee value proposition and is essentially what the organization communicates as its identity to both potential and current employees. It encompasses an organization’s mission, values, culture and personality.” 

(Definition provided by The Society for Human Resource Management.)

 

Compared to your company’s website or career pages, social media’s ever-changing nature allows you to frequently craft and broadcast more types of creative content. In turn, you can display your organization in innovative ways and stand out to candidates. Now, we’re going to let the numbers speak for themselves as we dig deeper into the importance of social media for employer branding. Here are five quick facts:

 

5 Facts That Show How Social Media Boosts Employer Branding

 

1. Social Media Decreases Time-to-hire:

71% of recruiters said that social media recruiting was effective in decreasing time-to-fill for non-management, salaried positions. (The Society for Human Resource Management)

 

2. Social Media Strengthens Your Relationship with Employees and Candidates  

93% of employees/job seekers say it’s vital to keep in mind and stay informed about a company’s culture, values, mission, business model, future plans, pros and cons, before accepting a job offer. (Glassdoor).

 

3. Social Media Helps You Reach a Much Wider Audience

79% of job applicants utilize social media during their job hunt. (Glassdoor)

 

➡️ Bonus Fact: The future of the workforce is finding their jobs on social sites: 73% of millennials found their most recent job thanks to social media. (Aberdeen Group).

 

4. Social Media Showcases Your Jobs to Passive Job Seekers

73% of candidates are passive job seekers. (HR Cloud)

 

5. Social Media Instills Trust

75% of American employees reported that C-Suite engagement on social media makes a brand more honest and trustworthy. (Brand Fog)   

Now that we’ve refreshed our memories, we’re going to dive into our six fundamental tips to help you maintain and enhance your employer branding efforts via social media.

 

Employer Branding on Social Media: 6 Effective Tips

 

1. Always Keep It Real: Consistency Is Key

As you begin to create and implement your strategy, be sure to have your style guide that applies to your hotel or restaurant’s website at hand. This tool will allow you to maintain the same tone of voice, color scheme, logo, and values across all communications. Why is it so essential? Your social media channels may be the first interaction that a future employee has with your brand, so it needs to be impressive and in line with the rest of your online presence. 

One example of consistency that we like to highlight is of hotel giant, ACCOR. Check out ACCOR’s Hosco profile; everything from their latest company updates to interviews with high-level employees are perfectly shaped around the ACCOR style. 

 

2. Clarity Is Crucial: Get to Know Your Personas

Where better to look for the description of your dream candidate than within your own company? Your potential candidates should mirror a lot of the professional qualities of your top-level performers. That’s why we advise you to gather data, do employee surveys, and study your recruitment process to create strong personas. Use them as reference points during your content creation and ask yourself: “Is this relevant and enticing for this specific persona?”

Imagine that you’re the recruiter of a 4* hotel in Barcelona, a cosmopolitan city that welcomes tourists from all over the world, one clear target for you would be multilingual candidates. In this case, you could post engaging social content that shows how much you value your multilingual employees and the beauty of speaking different languages. 

 

🌍 Did you know that Hosco’s hospitality talent speaks 180 languages? Discover our community of candidates today!

 

3. Be Picky With Your Platforms: Where Should You Post?

Most companies wouldn’t post a serious update on Snapchat, right? It would be more appropriate to upload an image of a dog that’s just visited your hotel. That’s why you need to be selective when it comes to where you’re publishing each piece of content. The key is to refer to where your personas spend their time on social, and then hone in on those platforms to find new talent. Here are a few ideas of where and what you can post:

  • Twitter - C-level insights, company updates, and articles.
  • Hosco - Promote open positions, company updates, and employees’ stories. 
  • Facebook - Articles, videos, stories, and links to your career pages.
  • Instagram - Stylish and snappy videos, images, and fun stories. 
  • YouTube - Longer videos that transmit your story, values, and mission.

We recently worked with The Carlton Tower Jumeirah to document the incredible renovation of their iconic London property. See the video below to find out why this is such an exciting time to work at The Carlton Tower Jumeirah and how the reopening will pave the way for new luxury hospitality.

 

 

 

4. Give VIP Insights: Show How the Company Functions

As social media has progressed, so have your opportunities to present content that makes people stop scrolling and see what you’ve got to say. Take full advantage of the 24 hour stories and live interaction features to add new and more creative layers to your employer branding. Do an impromptu tour of your hotel, go live with a team building or show clips of how you celebrate a team members’ birthday. 

These examples are well and good, but nowadays, people want to go further and discover insights from the top minds at your company. Here at Hosco, we took on a similar task for our employer branding partnership with world-renowned wholesaler, METRO/Makro Wholesale. We sat down with Olaf Koch, the CEO of METRO AG, to discover the company’s mission, its special commitment to its employees, and the benefits of working for this global brand. 

 

5. Honesty Is the Best Policy: Be Transparent

Showing off your company online brings us to our next point, you need to be upfront with your audience. You may get more social interactions by presenting your company’s amazing benefits or after-work events; however, you also need to show the daily grind of a 9-5 and talk about your mission and values. By being honest, you’ll create a more realistic image of what it’s like to work at your company, which will display you as a decent employer and better prepare your employee.

 

6. Resharing Is Caring: Go for Employee-Generated Content

Even though the employee testimonials on your career page are authentic, people can be skeptical of them. Did you know that candidates trust employees 3x more than the company when it comes to explaining what it’s like to work there? (LinkedIn) 

In a way, you can use this to your advantage by keeping track of what your employees are shouting about on social media. Be sure to create unique hashtags and share them with your teams. You can then reshare, retweet, re-everything to show that your employees have spoken about how successful your recent launch was or how incredible the views are from their working environment - your property.  

There we have it, the six social media tips that you can use for your employer branding.  If implemented correctly, these tips should help you stand out as a quality employer and help you attract the passive and active candidates you desire. 

 

Want to see how Hosco could customize and empower your employer branding? Schedule a 15-min call with a Hosco recruitment specialist at a time that’s right for you.

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