We’re All Corporate Recruiters On Social Media

Imagine you participate in a discussion on Facebook on a hot topic, and despite using all the good arguments and from a moral perspective coming out on top, you manage to offend someone. Now imagine that someone finding out where you work and pressure your employer to dismiss you because you took part in such a discussion and offended some people. This happens more often than you think and in a concrete example, it happened to a 17-year-old from Denmark working at a large local retail store late last year. His only “crime” was that he participated in a religious discussion on Facebook where albeit in a provocative style he set some people straight. They didn’t like it and complained to his employer, who chose to dismiss him. Then it turned into a reverse "shit storm" against the retailer who ended up offering the guy his job back. For good reasons, he declined and was offered employment elsewhere. The point is that you’re not just you when you're active on social media. You’re also everything you associate yourself with such as your employer, school etc. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t state your opinions, but you need to be aware of the impact you have. 

In some way it makes you a corporate recruiter 

With such impact and power in your hands, you can also try and make something good out of it. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been discussing a lot about “Employee Branding” in the posts: “How To Make Your Company Shine On Social Media” and “Give Your Company Good Reviews. It’s Win-Win” which is really about activating your employees to speak and write about your company on social media, personal network, etc. I’ve highlighted the benefits from both the company’s and the employee’s perspective. However, whether or not you engage in any official social media activities on your company’s behalf or even on your own initiative, everything you say and do on social media also reflects on the company you’re working for. In the above example, the 17-year-old clearly had never imagined that this debate would be put in front of his employer and even less so that he would be fired. The company clearly also made many mistakes in this case and it hit them like a boomerang. I’ve even tried this myself once in my early blogging career i.e. not on LinkedIn, where I had written some harmless sentences about how I was hired at a certain company. I had mentioned the name of a recruiter specifically and not long after my post had hit the Internet, I got a call from HR asking me not to mention any names but other than that it was great that I was an active writer. So when everything you say and write reflects back on your employer amongst others, you also have a great chance to affect others view on your employer. In fact, your statements could be the deciding factor in either attracting or turning away potential employees from your employer. This actually makes all of us corporate recruiters. We might not be the ones that put job ads online or call and interview applicants but we all hold some sort of power in terms of people choosing to come work for a company or not. 

Employee branding in its broadest sense 

Therefore, while some companies might be starting specific programs on employee branding which in themselves can be quite successful as exhibited by Dell, all activity that is done by its employees online will be part of their corporate branding. In a simplistic way, there are two ways to look at. 

1. Social (media) control where you monitor all social media activity and when your employees are caught talking about you, they will be told to refrain from any such activity
2. Social (media) embrace where you accept that social media and your employees activities on same is a natural part of life in this day and age and you try to make the best of it by proactively encouraging your employees to be active and hopefully say good things about your company 

While social control was probably the first corporate response, most companies today realize that their employees are all corporate recruiters and should probably be trained and treated as such. The risk of social control causing a "shit storm" around your company is obvious as also became the case for the retailer in the example. Next week we’ll, therefore, continue the discussion around how companies should embrace social media from an employee branding perspective and not least how you can benefit from it, by formulating a draft employee branding policy. 

Did your social media activity ever come back to haunt you or have you experienced getting a better impression of a company from reading what its employees write about it on social media? Also, do you have any suggestions for what companies should put in their employee branding/social media guidelines? As always I’d appreciate your likes, comments and shares. That’s the best way to get a discussion going. 

Until next time, I encourage to read some of my previous personal branding posts which can be found below.

7 Steps To Improve Your Personal Brand

Personal Branding Is Like Building A Business

How Is Your Social Media Business Going?

How To Use Social Media For Career Building

Hi, My Name Is. The Powerful Self-Introduction

How To Tell A Story With Your LinkedIn Profile 

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Regional Finance Business Partner for Maersk Line North Europe and is working with the transformation of Finance and business on a daily basis. Anders has participated in several transformation processes amongst others helping Maersk Drilling to go Beyond Budgeting and transformed a finance team from Bean-counters to Business Partners. He would love the chance to collaborate with you on your own transformation processes to help you stay out of disruption. If you are looking for more advice on how to get the most of LinkedIn Anders also has a few tips to share as well as if you want help in your job search. Don’t be shy! Let’s get in touch and start helping each other.