Social Recruiting and Employer Branding (#SRCHAT)

This week we had a very fast paced and spirited chat on the subject of Social Media and Employer Brand. Lets dive right into what we found out…

What is Employer Branding?

This week’s chat involved the participants defining many terms. If a company’s Employer Brand is their reputation as an employer, then Employer Branding must be their efforts to influence that reputation.

This can have two outcomes, both positive and negative. Good candidate experience, evangelical employees and a transparent view of what life is like inside the company can enhance that reputation. On the other hand, poor communication with candidates and customers, a poorly engaged workforce and little effort to open the company up to the outside world can damage your brand as an employer. A great example of a company selling itself well on its own website was Fresh Egg. Take a look at their careers site.

Is the concept of Employer Branding realistic?

It seemed to be unanimously agreed that Employer Brand does exist as a concept. Every company has one whether they are aware of it or not. How we might measure it was a much trickier concept. We learned that Nokia are looking at using Radian6 for this.

Tools like Glassdoor can give companies an insight into how they are perceived, but it has limited penetration in Europe at the moment.

Matt Alder shared this video interview with Glassdoor that he filmed recently in San Francisco.

How does Social Media impact on Employer’s Brand? Social Media has given everyone with an internet connection the ability to become a publisher. This has put traditional word of mouth on steroids! People are talking about companies and have a potential audience of millions, even billions. Companies can choose to join in with this dialogue or not.

 A3 Gives company an opportunity to highlight company culture and have more 1 on 1 engagement on regular basis. #SRChat — Allen Jerkens (@AllenJerkens) June 20, 2012

Can companies manage Employer Brand via Social Media?

It was clear that Employer Brand seems impossible to measure at the present time using the tools available to us.

Social Media offers an immensely powerful way to offer insight into the inner workings of a business that would have remained hidden in the past. This can only help businesses attract talent that will fit in in that environment.

I think companies can influence their Employer Brand by using Social Media, but it’s not the only place that it exists. A company’s Employer brand will be strong in the eyes of the friends and families of its employees and those opinions would be harder to influence through tweets and YouTube videos.

That leads us nicely to the next question. Does the Employer Brand rest in the hands of every single employee within a business – without a doubt!

How can employees become Brand ambassadors on Social Media?

Lots of great Tweets for this one – I’ll leave it to the #SRChat participants to explain

What a great chat this week! Thanks to everyone that took part. If you’d like to follow all those that have taken part in an #SRChat then check out our Twitter list of participants.

Join us next week on the eve of #SRConf for more #SRChat at 8pm GMT (3pm ET and 12 noon PT). Next week’s topic shall be: Key Features of a Social Careers Websites. Get involved!

1 thought on “Social Recruiting and Employer Branding (#SRCHAT)”

  1. Pingback: Who Owns The Employer Brand? | Recruiter Claire

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