How to Leverage Your Online Presence for Hiring

As I’m sure you’re well aware, there is a hiring crisis right now in almost every area of the for profit and nonprofit sector. A combination of economic factors and the pandemic have put great workers in short supply and organizations fighting for the best talent available.

I've helped many clients with their hiring by leveraging online strategies to make them stand out and attract top talent that will have a major impact on the organization. Keep reading to learn more about my top tips and strategies for leveraging your online presence for hiring.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

Savvy job seekers these days do their research. If you want to attract top talent you need to think beyond your physical walls and make sure your online positioning is appealing to the ideal candidates that could end up being rock star hires.

This usually entails a huge variety of online tactics that benefit both people searching you out for a prospective position, and people your are courting to join the team. Of course your website is a major factor, as surly everyone considering employment at your organization is going to at least review the company's main website.

However, there are many other places a job seeker may visit, including your social accounts, job board pages, workplace review sites and more. It's essential to optimize all these online properties to make sure the organization is represented as best as it can be. Don't overlook how the company appears in places outside of your main website.

The organizations having great success with hiring often make sure their online presence is an authentic representation of their true company culture, and that culture is aligned well with the type of people that thrive in the organization. A great way to dial in your online communications to benefit hiring is to get feedback from actual staff.

Consider asking some of your best hires:

• Why did you consider a position at our company?
• What about our online presence was appealing to you?
• Where did you do your online research about our organization?
• Did you find anything online that gave you pause?
• What makes you stick around?

Most organizations do exit interviews, collecting important information about why employees choose to move on. I would also consider doing entrance interviews. Get to know what is actually attracting the best new hires and leverage that knowledge.

Think Beyond Your Website

As I mentioned, your online presence is a whole lot more than just your main website. Here are some important considerations for all those other areas that perspective employees may review.

Social Media Channels

Chances are your potential hires participant in social media in some form or another. Even if they aren't regulars on Facebook or Twitter, they can easily review what your company puts out on social media and what people say about your organization on social media.

Tips for optimizing your social media channels for hiring:

• Make sure your company culture comes through and stands out
• Be uniquely positioned, don't blend in with other competing organizations
• Use language and content that appeals to potential hires
• Address any negative social media postings about your organization, use it as an opportunity to become better
• Align your social media with other similarly appealing accounts
• Use social media to highlight staff accomplishments and interests

Job board websites

If you choose to leverage job boards or hiring systems that live outside of your main website don't forget to optimize your presence there. Many times these services will also come with a cost, sometimes significant, so make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck.

Tips for optimizing your job postings and job board profiles:

• Post as much information as possible for your listings, leaving off critical information like salary range or education requirements will only frustrate top talent
• Complete your profile on these sites, don't leave optional extras unused, having a robust profile can elevate you above competitors and attract more job seekers
• Include multimedia content like photos and video if possible
• Maintain your profile and listings well, don't leave outdated information on these sites or postings up for roles that have been filled

Company review sites

Company review, or employment review sites, have become a mainstay of savvy jobseekers. These sites let current and past employees post reviews of companies, and let prospective employees get a peek behind the curtain and get an idea of what it might be like to work there. 

Tips for optimizing your employment review site profiles:

• Claim your profile and assign someone inside your organization maintenance of it
• Conduct a thorough review of your presence on the site, benchmark yourself against other similar organizations 
• Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative
• In partnership with HR, develop a response strategy to reviews and create a robust feedback loop to leverage the information you see on the platform
• Leverage your happy employees stories, feedback and insight

Develop Effective Content

To really optimize all the channels mentioned above, including your own website, you'll need great content. Specifically, content that will appeal to your ideal hires. The best content to leverage for hiring showcases your company culture, employee success stories, major organization achievements, and positive contributions your company has made to the industry or world.

Content Strategies for Hiring

Powerful and effective content will go along way to attracting quality employees. The goal for this content is to highlight your organizations best qualities but also portray an authentic story. Also, be extremely wary of coming off tone def or inappropriate. Many companies have been lambasted online for going outside their lane in an attempt to latch onto some newsworthy topic or event. Here are some of my top tips for effective hiring content.

Be authentic and stand out

Showcase what makes your organization unique and stick to story based content that isn't dry or generic. If position, salary, location and other factors are similar to other available jobs, your unique company culture could be the thing that seals the deal with an amazing new hire.

Don't make it all about work

Make a routine of collecting real stories from inside your organization. Seek out employee growth, successes, passions, hobbies, and even significant events that happen outside of the workplace. People exist outside of their jobs, and acknowledging a healthy work life balance can be attractive to quality candidates.

Show top down solidarity

When management and entry level staff share values, vision and goals, some wonderful things can happen. Top talent don't want to simply be a cog in a machine, showcase the organization has a team based approach and everyone is rowing in the same direction. This makes your company more approachable and attractive to potential hires.

Hopefully you've found these tips useful and can leverage them for your own hiring needs. As the labor market struggles to keep up with the demand for highly skilled workers companies will continue to compete heavily for the best hires.