2. Why this topic is so important
69%
Agree employer brand
is a top priority for
their organization
83%
< 500 Employees 67%
501-1,000 Employees 70%
Agree that employer
brand has significant
impact on ability to 1,000-10,000 Employees 67%
hire great talent
> 10,000 Employees 78%
Prioritization of employer brand
(by company size)
Source: The State of Employer Branding, 2012
lnkd.in/stateofeb talent.linkedin.com
3. 3 reasons to invest in your talent brand
Lower cost per hire by
up to 50%.
Reduce employee
91%
of companies increased
turnover by up to 28%.
or maintained their talent
brand spend in 2012.
Influence the conversation
with candidates. If you
don’t, someone else will.
Source: What’s the Value of your Employment Brand?
lnkd.in/valueofEB talent.linkedin.com
4. Employer brand ownership
Who owns employer brand?
39% 22% 15% 14% 10%
TA shares TA has primary TA has no TA is a Company doesn’t
ownership ownership ownership contributor think about EB
Most common departments that own employer
brand outside of talent acquisition
1.Marketing
2.Corporate Communications
Source: The State of Employer Branding, 2012
lnkd.in/stateofeb talent.linkedin.com
5. Five steps to a strong talent brand
STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5
Get buy-in Listen and Craft your Promote Measure
learn approach and engage and adjust
• Start at the top
• Share compelling
data
• Bring partners to
the table
talent.linkedin.com
6. Step 1: get executive buy-in
Start at the top Arm yourself with data Bring partners to the
table
• Get your CEO and • Universal facts on the
exec team to support business impact of your •Examples: HR,
and contribute to your talent brand. Communications,
talent brand efforts • LinkedIn insights on your Marketing, IT.
company’s social presence, •Create a cross-
e.g. - functional talent brand
• Number of task force.
employees with
profiles.
• Aggregate number of
connections,
• Recruiting metrics on
where you’re losing talent
or struggling to hire.
talent.linkedin.com
7. Persistence and small wins pay off
SAIC turns to data to
ease concerns
Challenge: Leadership feared that competitors
might poach employees more easily if they joined “I probably delivered the same
LinkedIn. deck 40 times, sometimes to the
same audience. You will feel like
Approach: Presented the unchanged pre- and a broken record but it doesn’t
post-attrition rates to leadership. sound like that on the other end.”
Result: Leadership bought in to the network, built Kara Yarnot
SAIC
their own profiles, and even became active
themselves.
talent.linkedin.com
8. Five steps to a strong talent brand
STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5
Get buy-in Listen and Craft your Promote Measure
learn approach and engage and adjust
• Start at the top • Audit existing
materials
• Share compelling
data • Do your research:
who, what, when,
• Bring partners to where & how
the table
talent.linkedin.com
9. Step 2: Listen and learn
Perform an audit from the shoes of candidates and employees
Who What When Where &
how
• Internal and external • What attracts talent? • Regular cadence • Focus groups
• Include real-world • What keeps them • Change in strategy • 1-on-1 interviews
views (e.g., there? or leadership
candidates who • Surveys
• What to improve? • Decline in hiring
declined offer) • Suggestion boxes
results
Where are the inconsistencies between what you say and what they think?
How does the feedback vary by audience?
What are the biggest issues you need to address?
talent.linkedin.com
10. Listening can make all the difference
Strategic annual survey use
Challenge: Keeping employees engaged
in a connected world.
Ellie Approach: Through annual survey,
JPMorgan asked what employees need/
Shephard want in order to stay. Top answers:
Global Recruiting
mobility and development opportunities.
Program Manager,
Vice President
Result: Launched extensive internal
mobility program.
• In 10 months, internal hire rate rose by
5% (they fill 75K positions/yr)
• Ranked #1 in Europe and #2 in the US
in Vault’s 2013 Best Places to Work for
Internal Mobility rankings.
talent.linkedin.com
11. Five steps to a strong talent brand
STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5
Get buy-in Listen and Craft your Promote Measure
learn approach and engage and adjust
• Start at the top • Audit existing • Be real
materials
• Share compelling • Be personal
data • Do your research:
who, what, when,
• Be brave
• Bring partners to where & how
the table
• Be consistent
• Set your goals
talent.linkedin.com
12. Step 3: craft your approach – right brand, right
success metrics
REAL Promise what you can deliver
CONSISTENT Danielle Bond, CMO
PERSONAL
Challenge: Talking about work-life balance at a
professional services firm.
Approach: Shifted focus from work-life balance to
“flexibility” - just as valuable to employees but much
more realistic.
BRAVE Result: Believable talent brand, internally and externally.
talent.linkedin.com
13. Begin with the end in mind
Sample goals for your talent brand program
• Increase offer acceptance rate by X%
• Reduce attrition by X%
• Improve employee survey ratings by X%
• Increase baseline familiarity with your talent brand in external surveys by X%
• Double the number of employees with an optimized social presence
• Increase Talent Brand Index score by X% relative to key talent competitors or
for high-priority functions/regions
talent.linkedin.com
14. Five steps to a strong talent brand
STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5
Get buy-in Listen and Craft your Promote Measure
learn approach and engage and adjust
• Start at the top • Audit existing • Be real • Upgrade profiles
materials (yours/team’s)
• Share compelling • Be personal
• Leverage your
data • Do your research:
who, what, when, employees’
• Be brave presence via
• Bring partners to where & how
Work with Us
the table
• Be consistent
• Brand via Jobs
• Set your goals • Build out your
hub – Company
and Career
Pages
• Use targeted
status updates
and APIs to
engage
talent.linkedin.com
15. Step 4: promote and engage, following these rules
8 golden rules to promote and protect your talent brand
Look in the mirror. Make your culture shine.
01 Make sure that what you do (and don’t do) is 05 It’s never just about jobs. Focus on your people –
what you’d like employees to emulate. their stories and emotions.
Empower your employees. Go viral.
02 Lay out the goals and show them a clear, easy 06 For amplified results, find creative ways to get more
path to action. people talking about your company’s great culture.
Inform your leadership. Be visual.
03 Use data to gain support, ease concerns, and 07 Bold and colorful images, graphics, charts, and
help explain your choice of platforms. videos can bring your brand to life.
Target your messages. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
04 The more relevant your message is to a particular 08 Show that your efforts are scalable and sustainable
audience, the greater its impact will be. on one platform before moving on to another.
talent.linkedin.com
16. Consider your candidate’s experience
across LinkedIn and beyond
On the LinkedIn
In their Inbox
Homepage
Erica Robertson When they
Software Engineer
When they network with your
search for jobs ACME Systems employees
When they
Via Mobile research your
LinkedIn App company
talent.linkedin.com
17. Start with your own profile
Engaging, friendly
Descriptive
picture headline
Who wouldn’t want to that goes beyond
work with Brendan? the title
Links Other features
to branded we like:
destinations
•Core skills,
endorsed by your
network
•Volunteer
Killer summary experiences
Written in the first •Just enough on
person, oozing with prior positions to
passion build credibility
talent.linkedin.com
18. Leverage your employees’ presence on
LinkedIn
HELP THEM SHINE BENEFIT FROM PROFILE TRAFFIC
with Work With Us ads
Dell trains global employees at scale
• “SMaC University”
(Social Media and Communication)
• Global certification program with
structured classes
• Strong exec support
• 5,000 trained since mid-2010
UTI takes a brown bag approach
• Took a low-budget, grassroots approach
• Got exec buy-in to host brown bag
lunches for hiring managers
• Helped employees overcome anxieties
about what to say on profiles
Clickthrough rates 20x
industry average
talent.linkedin.com
19. Craft job posts for passive AND active
candidates
SCIENCE
Avoid overly-creative job titles.
Tie the job to your LinkedIn Company Page.
Give high-priority positions extra oomph
with Sponsored Jobs
50%
of job applications on
LinkedIn are via paths
other than search ART
Use your job post as a talent brand vehicle.
Showcase the position’s impact.
Try a conversational tone.
talent.linkedin.com
20. Create a strong hub via Company and Career
Pages
Think visually.
Use bold images to give a real-world
glimpse into your organization.
Think digitally.
Whatever you say, keep it brief. online,
where attention spans are shorter.
Think video.
You’ll be able to engage candidates
more deeply if they hear real people tell
their own stories,.
Think customized.
Adapt your content to viewers based on
their LinkedIn profiles. Target based on
job function, industry, geography, etc.
Make sure your Career Page has a clear owner!
talent.linkedin.com
21. Spark the conversation, on and off LinkedIn
Leverage targeted status updates Use APIs to make your career
site more social
71%
of company followers on
LinkedIn are interested in
career opportunities at
companies they follow.
Mix it up
Share jobs, relevant news about your company, employee interviews etc.
Have a plan
Sketch out what you’ll say in advance and build a dialogue with your followers.
Stay on brand
Remember the messaging you’re trying to get across and incorporate it.
talent.linkedin.com
22. Five steps to a strong talent brand
STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5
Get buy-in Listen and Craft your Promote Measure
learn approach and engage and adjust
• Start at the top • Audit existing • Be real • Upgrade profiles • Use Talent Brand
materials (yours/team’s) Index to prioritize
• Share compelling • Be personal
• Leverage your
data • Do your research:
who, what, when, employees’
• Be brave presence via
• Bring partners to where & how
Work with Us
the table
• Be consistent
• Brand via Jobs
• Set your goals • Build out your
hub – Company
and Career
Pages
• Use targeted
status updates
and APIs to
engage
talent.linkedin.com
23. How Talent Brand Index works
Talent that is interested in you as an employer
Researching company and
career pages
Talent Brand
Engagement Following your company
264,362 members Viewing jobs and applying
Talent Brand Talent that’s familiar with you as an employer
Reach
Viewing employee profiles
1,873,354 members
Connecting with your employees
talent.linkedin.com
24. How Talent Brand Index works
What percent of people who know about you show an interest?
Talent Brand Talent
Engagement
Talent Brand
= Brand
Reach Index
264,362 members
Benchmark your score, e.g. v.s key competitors
1,873,354 members
talent.linkedin.com
25. For advanced tips, see the playbook
lnkd.in/gettheplaybook
talent.linkedin.com
Editor's Notes
“ We recently launched an employer brand playbook to help our clients think through the steps they need to take to build a strong, highly social talent brand that really helps drive better stronger talent attraction and retention results. Today I’d like to share the highlights of that work with you.” NOTE: the full playbook is in salesforce and can be shared with clients and prospects individually. Please see the following link: https://na4.salesforce.com/069600000019e8p Please do NOT post the playbook or this document publicly. If you want to post something publicly, please download and use the ‘sneak preview’ document from our SlideShare account so we can generate leads with the full playbook: http://www.slideshare.net/linkedin-talent-solutions/employer-brand-playbook-sneak-preview
So first, it’s worth focusing on why this issue is so important. We conducted research in 2012 among over 3,000 talent acquisition leaders in 15 countries. Our survey showed that 83% of recruiting leaders believe employer brand has significant impact on their ability to hire top talent. And employer branding is not just a matter for large companies; far from it. The same research shows that 2/3 of companies with under 500 employees describe employer brand as a top priority for their organizations. If you’re interested in reading additional trends and attitudes toward employer branding from your peers, I can send you our free report on The State of Employer Branding (published Oct 2012, has specific data for US, Canada, Brazil, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Nordics, Spain, Italy, India, Australia)[NOTE: report available in SFDC at https://na4.salesforce.com/sfc/#version/06960000000qdpq ]
Additionally, our Insights team did some research to measure the impact of talent brand. Their work showed that a strong employer brand can reduce your cost per hire by as much as 50%, while also boosting your employee retention rates by as much as 28% - which really drives home the bottom line impact of investing time and resources into your employer brand. [ note: see lnkd.in/valueofEB for more details on that research ] And if you choose NOT to invest, you run the risk of letting others influence your candidates’ perceptions of your firm. Whether you like it or not, the talent universe has an impression of your company as a place of work, and social platforms are only making others’ opinions of your firm more visible. Lastly, even in the challenging economic climate of recent years, talent acquisition leaders are doubling down on employer brand. An incredible 91% of those we surveyed last year were either increasing or maintaining their focus on employer brand. And 51% globally were actually increasing their spend. So if you feel like you already battle for top talent today, you definitely want to build a strong, resonant employer brand to keep up with and outpace your talent competitors.
So before we talk about how to go about building your employer brand, it’s helpful to think about who owns it at your organization and who the key players are. The research we did last year suggests that talent acquisition either owns or co-owns employer brand at 61% of companies and contributes at 14%... But that means that at 25% of companies, talent acquisition has no ownership over talent brand at all – either because the company doesn’t think about employer brand yet, or someone else owns it. What’s the case at your organization? [ note: if you go into the meeting with an understanding of that, great; if not, you can use this slide to listen and understand their starting point ]
Since this issue is so top-of-mind for customers, we talked to a few companies that are best in class at employer branding, as well as several internal subject matter experts with deep employer brand experience, and came up with this five step process for building a strong talent brand. I can walk you through each of the five steps at a high level, and I can send you the full playbook after this meeting if it’s useful.
As a first step, it’s absolutely critical to get buy-in at the very highest levels of your company on the value of building a strong talent brand. And it’s not just enough for them to give you their blessing; ideally you want them to be active contributors as well, leading by example. In order to accomplish that, turning to data is often a good strategy, since data is the way to any senior executive’s heart. We think about three types of data that you can leverage Universal facts. If they knew that a strong employer brand can halve your cost per hire and increase retention by 28%, they might be more inclined to get excited about it. Tying talent brand to business results will certainly help your case. Then there are LinkedIn insights We can provide facts about your company’s LinkedIn presence (such as number of employees with profiles, aggregate number of connections, and more). Explain to your executives that each profile and interaction on LinkedIn can reinforce your talent brand. Last but not least, you can share your own recruiting metrics If there are geographies or functions in which you’re struggling to attract strong candidates or you’re losing talent to competitors, use that data to illustrate the need for talent brand focus. In addition to approaching the C-suite and using data to win them over, you’ll also want to bring partners to the table. There’s absolutely no need for you to be the hero and go it alone. Your talent brand might be part HR, part Marketing, part Communications for instance. Rather than having to learn everything about website analytics, creative design or market segmentation yourself, leverage your coworkers’ expertise. Even better than just asking for your colleagues’ input, include them in a cross-functional talent brand task force. If you convince them to put some skin in the game, they’re likelier to help you succeed.
We do a lot of work with SAIC, a defense contractor based in the DC area. Kara Yarnot is their head of global talent acquisition and branding. SAIC is a pretty conservative company. When Kara and team first suggested that they explore platforms like LinkedIn for employer branding, they met with stern resistance. There was paranoia about talent being poached. Kara talked till she was blue in the face in an effort to make her leadership understand what they wanted to do and why from a branding perspective. They ultimately overcame the objections by proving, with data, that there wasn’t the downside they feared. On the plus side, their recruiting efforts were showing significant improvement when they opened up to a socially driven employer brand strategy that involved their employees. One successful strategy for Kara was meeting 1:1 with the executives that were most bought into her ideas, setting up pilots and when those were successful, using those wins to convince other executives to move forward. Ultimately, the leaders themselves started to get more active socially as part of the broader talent brand strategy which has helped Kara’s team even more. NOTE: Please also see the Talent Solutions blog post featuring Kara Yarnot on 3/5/13 which covers this topic of getting buy-in (talent.linkedin.com/blog)
The next step is listening to and learning from your target audiences.
[NOTE: this slide BUILDS.] Before you talk to your talent, walk in their shoes to experience your employer brand as they do. Audit your existing presence by going through the recruitment process step by step to see how your talent brand looks from the shoes of your candidates and employees. Review all materials a candidate can access across print, online, social media, and events. Put on your employee hat and do the same with new hire materials, the intranet, and company events. Start with traditional print and digital assets, and your official presence on social media platforms. Then review the unofficial conversations taking place online, in places where others drive the discussion. In the full playbook there’s a checklist which lays out the official channels (like your career site) and unofficial channels (like employee ratings on Glassdoor) that you might want to take a look at. Even if you don’t control the unofficial channels, you still need to take a look at them and understand what your target audience is seeing. [CLICK] Then you should think about WHO you want to get input from. Start with current employees – they know your brand best and are easiest to reach. Think about who you’re trying to hire and which sub-groups are therefore most important to you. For instance, if one of your talent brand goals is to increase your hiring success among software engineers, or new graduates, make sure you have a way to isolate those populations in any research you’re doing so you can look at their answers alongside the masses. Next, tap people outside your company. Your current employees live the reality today, but external talent may have a different opinion. And this is where you need to think broadly and get feedback from people who aren’t candidates today, or who applied and lost out. Don’t deliberately limit yourself to favorable audiences only. In the playbook you’ll find a comprehensive list of the types of audience you might want to consider listening to. Next, there’s WHAT you want to find out. The types of things you might want to understand are what they’re looking for in their career, why they stay, and where they thinking your talent brand is most lacking today. Again, see the playbook for some sample questions. Since employee stories can be such a powerful input to employer brand, while you’re doing an internal survey it can be helpful to include one or two open-ended questions, asking employees what they like best about the company and to tell their favorite story about working there. That can be turned into great material for use down the road. (click) Then there’s the question of WHEN to listen, There is no hard and fast rule. Employer brand pros listen continually, monitoring alignment with their corporate and consumer brands on an ongoing basis. If your business strategy changes – say you enter a new country or need to ramp up hiring in a function that you’re not known for - your talent brand should be re-assessed. [CLICK] Lastly, there’s where and how. There are all sorts of ways you can get a read on your talent brand. Focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and surveys are the most common research techniques. Hire a consultant if you can afford it, as people are usually more candid with someone from outside of your organization. For internal audiences, regular employee surveys (semi-annual or annual) are a great way to go. They don’t cost much and you’ll be able to segment your audience easily. For external audiences, Your best bet may be partners who conduct custom research, such as Universum for college students, or more general research firms like TNS or Gallup for broader audiences. Whatever you do, do NOT let lack of budget scare you off the idea of listening and learning. If you do nothing else, corner a few employees in the cafeteria and get their input. Call back candidates who didn’t make it through the process, or use a surveymonkey account to set up DIY surveys. (CLICK) so now you’ve done your listening, you need to pull it all together and think about - Where are the inconsistencies? Do your materials today match what your research says? - Secondly, How does the feedback vary by audience? Are there any patterns that emerge? What themes bubble to the top? Are there any major anomalies? And third, what are your biggest issues to resolve? It’s important that if you learn something unfavorable, you address it. You need to understand the root cause of the issue and figure out how to tackle the reality.
This is a story that Ellie Shephard shared at our Talent Connect conference in Las Vegas last year, and it’s a great example of how listening and acting based on what you learn can drive retention and talent brand at the same time. JPMorgan’s challenge was keeping employees engaged. That can be hard in a super-social, connect world in which career opportunities and temptations abound. They decided to use their annual survey to ask what employees needed and wanted in order to stay with the company. Mobility and development opportunities topped the list. As a result, they launched an extensive internal mobility program. In 10 months the internal hire rate increased by 5%, which is pretty significant given they fill an average of 75,000 positions a year. This year’s annual survey will measure the program’s impact directly, but the company ranked #1 in Europe and #2 in the US in Vault’s 2013 Best Places to Work for Internal Mobility rankings.
Our third step is about taking what you learned from your listening phase and using it to craft your approach.
Everything you learned in step 2 gives you a picture of what your target talent, internal and external, actually thinks today. Now consider how that stacks up against what you WANT people to think about your organization. Is there a massive gap or are you not too far apart? You can then think about how to use your messaging to get people to the place you want them to be. But as you do that you’ll want to be real, be consistent, be personal, and be brave. BE REAL: What you say about your company must be true for your employees. If not, they’ll see through you and so will the marketplace. BE CONSISTENT: Think about how to align this messaging with your company’s overall brand. There should be strong consistency between the two. Consult whoever owns brand at your company as you go. BE PERSONAL: Go back to the individual employee stories gathered during the research phase. Stories are more easily remembered and are motivational for employees. Those you feature will be proud to participate. BE BRAVE. Sometimes what you wish you could say is just too far from reality to run with. If that’s the case, find something related to your desired messaging that feels believable. You can brainstorm options with your marketing, comms or branding team. One example of a client that did that is Aurecon, which is based in Australia. [story as on screen]
While you’re crafting the messaging, it’s important to define success at the outset and establish the baseline against which you will measure progress. Measuring your talent brand is notoriously difficult but if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it and it’ll be harder for your senior leaders to really have confidence that your efforts are paying off. You can certainly look at traditional measurements in line with your recruiting metrics, such as offer acceptance rates, attrition rates and familiarity with your company as a place to work . Additionally, as a client of LinkedIn you can use the Talent Brand Index, a free resource we rolled out last year to help our clients measure how well they’re reaching and engaging professionals with your talent brand. It will allow you do things like benchmark engagement of talent relative to your peers and also compare your talent brand across different geographies or functions. We’ll talk more about how that works toward the end of the presentation.
The fourth step is promoting your brand and engaging talent with it.
Whether you share, post, tag, tweet, like, pin, or something else. it’s important to promote and protect your talent brand. Here are 8 rules that really apply across all social platforms. [talk through each rule] Rule 1 – you really have to be the most upstanding social citizen at your organization. It’s up to you to display best practices so others can model their behavior on yours. Rule 2 – if you allow your employees to get involved, you’ll get so much more mileage out of a social platform. There’s only 1 of you, but there are dozens/hundreds/thousands of them. You need to set them up for success though, and help them understand how to act on sites like LinkedIn. We’ll talk about that more in a second. Rule 3 – we already talked about getting exec buy-in. You should keep them informed about which platforms you’re using, for what purposes and why. Rule 4 – targeting is a golden opportunity on sites like LinkedIn, where we know so much about our members based on rich profile data and can help you reach exactly the right kind of person. What matters to a software engineer isn’t the same as what matters to a marketer. Think about that and make sure you’re relevant and targeted in your outreach. Rule 5 – make your culture shine. If all you do all day is pump out job descriptions, candidates won’t get a very good sense of your culture, what it means to work there, why your employees love it. Think about how to incorporate the essence of your culture into your messaging. Rule 6 – going viral (for the right reasons) is the ultimate goal. This is where you can revisit the stories gathered in your research phase and elevate the employees who have great experiences to share. Often your employees themselves might have thoughts on how to creatively get the word out in a memorable way. Rule 7 – be visual. There’s a great opportunity to incorporate video and imagery into your employer branding efforts (and that can also help with driving virality sometimes). Rule 8 – try to prioritize your efforts and don’t chase every branding opportunity up front. It’s really easy to set up a presence on a major social platform, much less easy sometimes to be responsive to people that post or ask questions. Try to keep the scope manageable with the rest of your workload and get some success under your belt with one platform before moving onto another.
On LinkedIn specifically, there are a whole range of solutions that you can use to build an employer brand on LinkedIn. The most important thing to do is think about the overall experience you’re creating for your candidates. The most successful companies take a look at all their touch points with the candidate, think about how those touch points interact and drive traffic, and turn each one into a branding opportunity.
On LinkedIn the initial touchpoint is your profile. Your profile is the first place a candidate will go after receiving your InMail or seeing you viewed their profile, so it represents a prime branding opportunity where you can make a strong first impression. Set up your own profile as a model for employees, and have the rest of the recruiting team follow suit. Treat personal status updates like a megaphone to further spread the word about your company. [talk through highlighted areas on slide – these are simply examples of how to put together a profile that works well for recruiting]
[NOTE: THIS SLIDE BUILDS] Of course it’s not just your profile that the world is looking at; it’s your entire employee base. Today there’s 1 of you but there’s xxxx of them. Every employee on LinkedIn is an opportunity to brand your company as a great place to work. And that can be done at any budget. Here are two examples of companies with high budget and low budget programs, both successful. DELL story Dell’s a large company, and so they needed to create a structured program to succeed. They established a certification process (SMaC University - Social Media and Communication) to help employees talk about the Dell brand. The program was optional, but those who signed up had to stay the course. Strong executive support helped raise the program’s profile. As a result, since July 2010, more than 5,000 employees have been trained At the other end of the scale, Stacy Takeuchi and the team at Universal Technical Institute adopted a highly successful grassroots approach to upgrading their team’s presence on LinkedIn. With the exec team’s blessing, UTI hosted a series of brown bag lunches to help hiring managers create a strong first impression for candidates. The informal lunches helped employees overcome their anxieties about what to say on their profiles – “I don’t want it to seem like I’m looking for a job”. CLICK Additionally, since the #1 activity on LinkedIn is checking out profiles, more companies are taking advantage of this traffic to promote career opportunities, through Work with Us Ads Work with Us ads allow you to purchase the ad space in the top right corner of every employee’s LinkedIn profile. Click-through rates on these ads are typically 20x the industry average! In most cases there’s no creative work required. So it’s a smarter way to invest in diverting high-quality traffic to your opportunities.
You can use those WWU ads to drive more traffic to your job opportunities on LinkedIn. Job posts on LinkedIn represent another great opportunity for you to brand your company as a great place to work. Interestingly, half of all the applications via LinkedIn are generated through paths other than search – meaning that the candidates weren’t actively looking for the job; somehow it found them, for instance by appearing in the ‘jobs you may be interested’ module on their home page. Here are some thoughts on how to leverage your job postings for branding and talent attraction on LinkedIn. The tips are part science, part art. SCIENTIFIC TIPS (these are about leveraging the professional graph for matchmaking and gaming the system so the right candidates are exposed to your jobs) Avoid overly-creative job titles. Stick with standard titles and keywords commonly used in profiles and job searches. This helps LinkedIn’s special algorithms match and deliver your job postings to the most relevant active and passive candidates. Tie the job to your LinkedIn Company Page. Use the drop-down list to link to your Company Page, so candidates can easily learn more about you. Give high-priority positions extra oomph. Use Sponsored Jobs to showcase key positions to targeted talent. Simply bid the amount you want to pay for your positions to show up at the top of the ‘Jobs You May Be Interested In’ module on our home page. And on the ART side… Use your job post as a talent branding vehicle. Share the things that make your company a great place to work. Specifics like “annual chili cook-off” paint a more vivid picture than just saying “fun culture.” Showcase the position’s impact. Our research shows that passive candidates are 120% more likely to want to make an impact. Your jobs on LinkedIn will be seen by passive candidates, so get them excited about the potential of the role. [note: see http://talent.linkedin.com/passivetalent/infographic1 for more on the 120% stat] Try a conversational tone. Marketing is usually more effective when you write like you would speak to your audience: simple, direct, and friendly.
Well over 100 million professionals come to LinkedIn every month, so an official presence on the platform is critical. Make sure your Company Page reflects your overall brand and provides a unified experience for your audience. LinkedIn Company Pages are now optimized for mobile devices – which is important since over 27% of LinkedIn’s unique monthly visitors come through mobile apps. If you’re looking for tips on company pages, you’ll find some in the playbook. 1) Talk to your marketing team and coordinate your approach. 2) Add an image that welcomes visitors to your page and showcases your brand. 3) Post status updates to start a conversation with your target audiences. 4) Add products/services and solicit recommendations so people can learn about what you have to offer. 5) Feature relevant groups to attract a broader audience and extend your reach. And then there’s your career page, which is really the hub of all your recruiting activity on LinkedIn. We see clients using videos, banners, and employee spotlights to showcase their cultures and what it means to work there. At the top of every career page you’ll see a section showing who in your network is at the company, which is a great icebreaker for visitors. You also see any jobs posted on LinkedIn. Here are 4 guidelines on how you should approach the content on your career page [see slide]
So, here’s an interesting fact: 71% of company followers on LinkedIn are interested in career opportunities at companies they follow. That makes targeted status updates a great, free way for interested professionals to engage with your talent brand. This is something that’s free to every company on LinkedIn by the way. So long as you have a company page, you can attract followers and then send targeted messages to them that appear in their network updates on LinkedIn. The screen shot is a little small, but you can target by factors such as function, geography and seniority. Our three tips for using TSUs are: 1) Mix it up. Don’t bombard your followers with links to job openings. Share relevant news stories about your company, employee interviews from your blog, and more. Aim for 2-3 status updates per week to start. 2) Have a plan. Sketch out what you’ll say in advance and build a dialogue with your followers. 3) Stay on brand. Remember the messaging you’re trying to get across and think about how to incorporate it into your updates. [CLICK] You can also use APIs to speak in a personal way to potential candidates. Visitors to Disney’s careers site instantly see who in their network is at Disney. That provides a much more welcome path into the organization and might be enough to drive an applicant to apply. If you go to developer.linkedin.com you can find more info about this API and several other widgets and buttons that can be used to make your own site social. Another popular one is embedding follower buttons so that candidates can automatically sign up to follow your company on LinkedIn.
So the last piece that‘s really important is measurement, and optimizing your approach based on the results and business priorities.
So I mentioned the Talent Brand Index a couple of times a little earlier, and I just wanted to take the last couple of minutes to explain a little more about this free resource that we make available to our clients. TBI: - Measures the strength of employer brand, and benchmarks it against your talent peers - Tells you how attractive your employer brand qualities are to external candidates How can we measure your employer brand? We start by looking at the reach and engagement you have with external talent TALENT BRAND REACH: Includes the people who know what it’s like to work at your company—those that are familiar with your company as an employer TALENT BRAND ENGAGEMENT: Includes the subset of people within your reach who are interested in you as a potential employer Research shows that people familiar with what it’s like to work at your company are the same people connected to and engaging with your employees on LinkedIn Research also shows that people who are interested in working at your company are the same ones who are taking that extra step on LinkedIn to learn more: browsing/applying to jobs on LinkedIn, following your company, and visiting your company and career pages. Because these activities happen on LinkedIn, we can measure them.
We use your talent brand reach and talent brand engagement to measure your talent brand index . Talent brand index measures your ability to engage the potential candidates who know about you. It measures your attractiveness among external talent. We will use your talent brand index number to benchmark and compare your employer brand to peers, over time, and across functions and geographies. How this can help practically – if you are trying to recruit a certain population of candidates over time, say engineers, you can Understand off the bat how you stack up against talent competitors change your strategy to focus on that population and drive more engagement with your talent brand measure how the results change over time You can also use it to prioritize resource allocation – for instance if you find your talent brand is relatively strong for one geography but relatively weak for another key market, you can invest your time and resources differentially in trying to move the needle in the weaker geography, and monitor how you do over time.
I hope that was useful. I’d encourage you to download the employer brand playbook from lnkd.in/gettheplaybook to get many more practical tips and tricks to building a strong employer brand.
