How To Turn Every Employee Into a Talent Influencer!

TL;DR: In this article, I am trying to shed some light on why your job ad posts are not working and how you can motivate and turn your employees into talent influencers to become a better SIGNAL in the NOISE for the talent you are seeking to find. I will provide you with easy-to-use examples to start experimenting and further insights on the overall mindset to come up with your own ideas and experiments ??

You have probably experienced the following:

You have just opened a new engineering role or struggle with a hard-to-fill one. The position already got published on LinkedIn Jobs and other platforms and you have asked your employees to refer people from their network? But your pipeline still isn’t looking promising…

So you decide to make a post, so all your engineer connections you have built over the cause of your career can see it to jump on it and apply.

You are either doing it quick and dirty because you are overwhelmed with the daily madness and post something like this:

We are hiring software engineers! Come and join us! https://company.xyz/job/98594

or you go the extra mile and come up with a story about how special your culture is, what critical mission you are on, that you are remote-first or show some nice pictures from the last company retreat how happy you are all are. And then you go again like:

….and btw. We are hiring software engineers! Come and join us! https://company.xyz/job/98594

Where did that get you so far?

Did it bring you any significant results? Did you receive a lot of views and comments? Did all the amazing talents start rolling in you actually have in your LinkedIn connections from all the sourcing?

I guess rather NO ???(excluding the lucky moments). If yes, please share!

Here are some reasons why that could have been the case:

1. ???Everyone is hiring. Everyone states to have the best work culture, benefits etc. Everyone sees these kinds of posts on a daily basis.
2. ???Your connections are not real. You might think that you have many highly relevant connections that would match this role. But do these people really know you? Do they trust you? Or did you just connect with them during active sourcing?
3. ????You are not triggering any discussions. Social media is based on stating opinions or giving insights which in the best case trigger discussions between people and go viral. Does your WE ARE HIRING job link post trigger any of that? Do you receive interesting comments? Do people send you interesting referrals out of the blue?
4. ???You are not providing any value. We are all overwhelmed and we filter and decide to pay attention to the things that create value for us. That can be a topic, discussion or insight that is relevant to someone. Something which provides people with great learning and reflection. People are intrigued to join a debate or add their opinion if it’s interesting to them and if other people in their field will see this in order to increase their visibility and reputation.
5. ???Your content is lacking authenticity. First, you are a recruiter, so the incentive towards your network is clear. You want people to apply for a job. People don’t apply for jobs. They connect with a mission, values, experiences and insights. Second, even if you are sharing an interesting insight you are distorting the view through your underlying mission, the lack of real relationships with your connections and the domain. (That might be different if you are posting a recruiter/TA position)
6. ???You are adding to the NOISE. You expect people to show interest in something they are seeing every day. Again, how often do we see this kind of post and click on it? Even if you are coming up with a story like everyone did about remote culture back in the high of the pandemic… Everyone talks about the same stuff. Chances are low you are becoming a SIGNAL in the NOISE.

You might also have a real reason why you are not doing a better job here!

I have heard many colleagues saying something like:

• I am soooo overwhelmed with the daily madness like many other recruiters: yes but how much time do you spend on active sourcing instead?
• I am not experienced in content writing, marketing or employer branding!
• It’s hard to come up with relevant content or discussions myself. Yes, that’s true and you often depend on the team to help you with this.
• Yes, and the hiring manager doesn’t have time to help me come up with relevant content!
• I can’t motivate the team to post on social media. Yes, why should they spend their time next to the daily madness? What direct value does it provide them with?
• We don’t have an employer branding person on the team. Yes, but do you really need that?

How do you actually turn your employees into talent influencers?

Start thinking of the following: Are there any rituals in your organization that trigger discussion and learning on a regular basis? Anything people enjoy and what brings them value?

Why not take them public?

Here are some examples:

Experiment 1: Take your discussions and team reflections online

1. Once a week or bi-weekly for example at the end of the all-hands, present your team with a question or a set of questions.
2. Send them into breakout rooms and let them discuss and reflect on it together. Best do 2x iterations with different groups to foster more perspective on the discussions.
3. Then after the all-hands give people 15-30 min to write down their thoughts and ask them to share them e.g. in a dedicated slack channel.
4. Encourage your people to post it on LinkedIn as well.
5. Make sure to provide an easy-to-use template with the relevant hashtags and links e.g. to a Job Ad, your culture or careers page.
6. Find ways to motivate people. In the end, it’s good for everyone's career to maintain their networks and increase their visibility online.
7. During the next all-hands you can for example present some of the reflections or the posts that received the most attention…

Imagine the amount of authentic employee-generated content you can produce.

Imagine the combined network of trusted connections from your employees who gonna see this?

Experiment 2: Make your people more aware of your company values and show the talent out there that you are really living and breathing your values

1. If you want your teams to live and breathe your values your can for example rotate through your values during each all-hands and ask people to nominate team members who have been a great example of living up to that specific value and why.
2. Instead of filling an internal form and presenting them in the next all-hands, ask people to do it online in a LinkedIn post while tagging the person and your company and the link to your culture or career page.
3. Remember to provide people with an easy-to-use template.

Imagine how authentic you are able to prove to people your culture is real vs. putting your values on your career as everyone does. People want proof that your employer branding is not just a collection of bulls^&t statements that got written down on a founder retreat 2 years ago.

But you might ask yourself, how does all that give me relevant applicants when I need it?

Experiment 3:

1. You can do the same as an ad-hoc campaign for any role you are planning to open.
2. Ask the hiring manager to come up with a set of questions that are relevant to the role.
3. These can be interesting topics about the field, how the teams work, or even more specifically about the challenges of that particular role or team.
4. Let’s say 6x questions, so you can do 2x posts for a period of 3 weeks to create sufficient inbound.
5. Ask the Hiring Manager to select the most relevant people (with relevant networks) from the team to reflect on the questions and motivate them to post them online.
6. Again, provide them with an easy-to-use template with the right hashtags and the link to the Job Ad equipped with a tracking link, so you are easily able to measure the impact in your ATS.

Imagine the relevancy of those combined networks you can reach. Connections that trust your employees.

Make it a part of the role kick-off process!

Experiment 4: Turning your internal tech talks into recruitment events

1. Many companies have established regular (weekly or bi-weekly) team events like tech or lightning talks where employees come together to learn and present interesting topics.
2. Do your people enjoy this? Does it add value? So why keep that value floating around inside the organization only?
3. Next time ask each employee to bring an external friend or allow them to post about the event online.
4. If you are getting comfortable with this and see people making interesting connections, you can even design the agenda of your tech talks according to your talent needs.
5. Need to hire a new DevOps Engineer? Why not set the topic to something related?
6. Your employees (at best your existing DevOps people) can do talks or lead discussions, and invite relevant people from their network.
7. Recruiters can invite leads while sourcing. It can be so refreshing for an engineer who gets several job offers every day to get invited to a tech talk instead of a simple job offer. Propose them to do a talk themselves!
8. Again, you want to provide value to people. Become a SIGNAL in the NOISE and not add to it.

What is the advantage of turning your employees into talent influencers?

1. Trusted and relevant connections. There is a huge potential we are missing out if we are not making use of the trusted and often highly relevant connections our employees have. Imagine the massive pool of LinkedIn connections you can tap into via your employees.
2. Authenticity. If one of your employees is writing about interesting learning, reflection or how your company culture is real, it’s much more likely their connections and especially the ones they know personally will see it as real and not a sales proposition. This can play a huge part in how your entire employer (employee) brand is perceived.
3. Real added-value. If your employees are writing about something which has provided value to themselves of any sort, it’s much more likely that people find it useful and start joining the discussion. It’s like open-source. And even if an employee might never publish their thoughts online, it has already brought your people value in fostering discussions and learning during your company rituals.
4. It’s decentralised and easy to execute. You don’t necessarily need an employer branding person on the team to kick this off and be successful with it. Literally, everyone in the organization can start such an experiment on a small scale. Off course it’s always good to start with the buy-in from leadership to activate the entire team to contribute. Once you have gained some experience ****with running your employee-driven campaigns, write a playbook, so everyone in the organization can easily tap into it.

Can you think of anything else? Let me know in the comments!

But, how do you motivate your employees to take action?

The first thing, that probably comes to your mind is money? But, did that motivate your employees to make referrals?

I've been thinking about incentives a lot when I was still doing recruitment, but usually how it goes with referral bonuses… money is not the main driver here.

Ask yourself: Why would I be motivated to invest my time into something?

You would probably answer something like: If it’s something that brings me any value, learnings, personal growth, fun or secondly if it helps others I care for…

1. Focus on creating rituals or using existing ones that create value for the individual and the entire org and then just be smart about using the energy and momentum it creates to make people do the extra step of sharing it online.
2. Only ask your people to invest time in things that provide added value for themselves. Reflecting on interesting questions and discussing those with your team can foster a lot of learning. Yes, it’s also about a company's added value of bringing great people into the organization, but individual value-add comes first to get people motivated.
3. You can also present the posts with the most views, comments or conversions at the beginning of every all-hands or in a dedicated slack channel to add some sort of positive competition here. People can also learn from the posts that did well and didn't...
4. We need to encourage people to learn how to build their reputations online and build relationships with people in their field. It can have a very positive effect on someone's career.

Tips & Takeaways

1. Just get started with a little experiment for a couple of weeks. Observe how it affects your culture. Even if it's just fostering more collaboration and personal growth within your organization, you have already achieved something great.
2. Measure the impact of your employee-generated campaigns and celebrate the success together. Think of incentives!
3. Once you have gained some experience with running your employee-driven campaigns, write a playbook, so everyone in the organization can easily run them.
4. If you are familiar with the principles of open-source try to apply them to other aspects of the organization. Open-source your company culture! I will write more about that in my future articles.
5. Establish rituals that trigger discussions within your organization on a regular basis which brings value and learning to each individual whom you are asking to invest time to put their face out there for the organization. Only ask your people to invest time in things that provide added value for themselves.
6. Be creative and think in a decentralized way and how you can use the value that is already there. Don’t create! Surface!
7. You don't need to spend big money on paid Ads and in return deal with an overwhelming amount of irrelevant applications. Use that time for driven employee-generated content instead.
8. You don’t necessarily need an employer branding person on the team to kick this off and be successful with it.

Go Go Go and start your own experiments! It’s fun!

I hope this article provided YOU with some value, learning and interesting reflections! If so, please leave a comment and join the discussion. I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Do you have other ideas or reservations? Did you try similar approaches already?

Leave a comment if you want to receive a ready-to-use playbook for open-sourcing your company culture and turning your employees into talent influencers!

Need any help or want to have a chat? Just let me know!

See you around!

Flo ??

#employerbranding #usergeneratedcontent ?#recruitment ?#companyculture #startups #hiring ?#influencermarketing ?#talent ?#culture ?#branding