Why set up a Reddit Community?

Nowadays, when I am tasked with setting up a hiring process within a new region, one of my first ports of call is to think about building an infrastructure for that particular region.

What I mean by infrastructure, is a multi-functional ecosystem which will create the feeling of community, provide information to the market, build brand awareness (for free :D) and most importantly, over the long term all of the above will lead to driving top passive talent to your organization.

Building any community from scratch is a labour of love, and it is certainly not about bringing you any 'short term' wins. If that's your expectation then it's best to stay one-dimensional and stick to Linkedin Recruiter! It is about taking a more mature approach and thinking about the long-term wins - including brand reinforcement, transparency to your org and building long term relationships with top passive talent. What started as an initial thought, has led to two communities with now over 400 members (and growing)

So, why Reddit?

I'll give a disclaimer right now, I was terrified of Reddit before I really knew the platform. What good can come from an anonymous platform where you don't need to disclose your name or have a photo of yourself, where people only seem to troll eachother endlessly! The reason is that you can be your own boss once you build your own community (or 'subreddit'), you set the rules, boundaries and you remain in control.

I ran a poll in 2021 amongst my network (mainly within the software world) as to where was the best / most utilized community for Engineers to network and share ideas/knowledge? - I fully expected it to be Github, and you guessed it - it was Reddit, so that's where I went.

So, whats the strategy with Reddit?

1. You can use Reddit to build, effectively, a digital open house, where members of the public can liaise and network with employees of your own site in a safe way. They can ask questions directly to your employees about interview process, advice, discuss software, any topics of interest. (You of course need to advertize your community internally through Teams, email, newsletters etc to create awareness and have your employees join themselves!)
2. You can use it to broadcast positive company news, PR, which will be seen by your employees, but also the public.
3. You can use it for new employees to network and find out where the best place for lunch is near the office! the opportunities are endless!
4. Encourage employees from your org to build their brand by sharing their own views, blogs, or collaborate on content with them, everybody wins.
5. You can post job adverts (for free) for your company, you can encourage prospective talent to reach out to you with questions and give them quick answers - thus vastly improving the candidate journey. It provides incredible transparency to an organization and shows the human side to your company.
6. Brand reinforcement - by building a community long term that people join, they can be notified and continually updated on the site, they may not be looking for a new role when they join, but after 3,6,9,12+ months, when they decide they need a new challenge - your company may be top of the list.

So these are just a few reasons to build a community, be it Reddit, or elsewhere depending on where your target market hangs out.

As a Sourcer/ recruiter, it is the easiest thing in the world to entirely put your eggs in the Linkedin Recruiter basket, and you may get some results and tick by, but if you want to take your sourcing ability to the next level, and unearth the REAL passive hard to reach talent, it is about creating niche and diverse talent pools in the real places where your targets are/ could be. Start with some research, then plan, then execute! Ask your candidates where they go online - why not?

As a prospective candidate for that org, wouldn't you love to see honest, open transparent content, that you can familiarize with? Wouldn't you love to feel that it is achievable to work for your target company - and reinforce that feeling by seeing the great content and story shraing by employees of that org?

At 微软 in Romania, we are re-inventing the curve of how to interact with the community, and you can join our open community here:

Microsoft Romania (reddit.com)

Good luck, and if you want any further advice - Ping me!