Using LinkedIn for Employment Branding – How to Do It Right

Employers with a poor employer brand pay up to an additional $4,723 per employee hired, according to LinkedIn research. This clearly shows that employer branding isn’t just a buzz word.

Traditionally human resources (HR) departments that oversee recruiting manage employer branding, also called employment branding. Many communications experts now argue that HR should collaborate with corporate communications or PR when developing and managing employer branding, especially since PR pros are typically already familiar with LinkedIn and other social media networks.

Job seekers consider ‘positive employer brand’ a very important parameter for selecting a job offer. Hence, it is important to adopt and develop social media employer branding to recruit top talent. By using LinkedIn for employer branding you can attract the kind of employee aspects you want.

Moreover, recruiters worldwide believe that employer branding through LinkedIn helped them

• Reduce cost-per-hire by 50% and
• Receive 50% more qualified applicants.

LinkedIn gives you access to an enormous pool of qualified candidates. By using the right messaging, you can showcase what it’s like to work for your organization. And the best part? It’s easy!

Here are some proven employer branding strategies to help you recruit top talent on LinkedIn:

Introduce LinkedIn Training – Often, it’s your current employees’ profiles that best display your corporate image and branding on LinkedIn. Your organization becomes an easy choice for candidates if you offer learning and development opportunities. Go the extra mile and offer your employees social media training. Ask your employees if they’d like to be trained on how to portray their best professional self on LinkedIn. Chances are that many will accept the offer. The employees can be trained on:

• How to showcase their roles and responsibilities in your organization
• How to engage actively by sharing updates and blogs
• How to leverage their LinkedIn network
• How to manage recommendations

The great thing about LinkedIn training is that it’s a worthwhile add-on for every professional, irrespective of the domain. It will help you hire top talent and reduce employee turnover at the same time.

Make Your Employees Your Advocates – Your employees can be your social recruiting army if you use LinkedIn right. They can play a significant role in publicizing your company and in helping you attract ideal candidates. In training employees about LinkedIn, encourage them to tell a story about your company and their professional life through LinkedIn. Here’s how they can help:

• Share your company’s page and its activities so that their connections are aware of your brand.
• Share their authentic stories at work. For example, if an employee has relocated to work with you, encourage them to share on LinkedIn how your company tried to make their transition smooth. Your top priority is to have your employees promote your organization as a desirable place to work.
• Encourage them to talk about the benefits they receive at work on their social media platforms.

Highlight Your HR Policies – If you have innovative HR policies, share them on your LinkedIn company page. In 2018, BrewDog talked about its ‘Pawaternity Leave Initiative’ on LinkedIn. The policy offered a week’s paid leave to employees welcoming and settling a new pet in their family. Now, who wouldn’t want to work at a place like that?

If you have such progressive policies, you can attract applicants by posting the perks on LinkedIn and other social media channels. The bigger the candidate pool, the better your hiring results will be.

Use LinkedIn Features to Your Advantage – LinkedIn offers an array of features that businesses can use to hire efficiently. Here are a few of the most valuable ones:

1. LinkedIn Career Pages: Use the LinkedIn career page as the employer brand hub of your company to attract passive candidates who may potentially work with you in the future. You can:

• Share awards and recognitions your brand has received as an employer.
• Share photos and videos from workplace events such as employee recognition awards or festive celebrations at work to show your company culture.
• Share employee testimonials.
• Post available career opportunities.

Regular updates will help you stay top of mind.

2. Recruitment Ads: Advertise job openings and reach a large number of candidates whose skills match your requirements. Candidates can express interest in an open position with the click of a button. You can also share sponsored content and add calls to action such as ‘visit the website’, ‘join our team’, ‘and know more about our event.’

3. Pipeline Builder: Pipeline Builder allows you to create a landing page of sorts that consists of rich media and content that attracts candidates. You can invite potential candidates to the page through recruitment ads and sponsored content, so that people interested can be moved to the lead funnel.

Ingrate your measurement – A communications dashboard that can integrate internal corporate communications, social media analytics and media measurement can greatly improve a company’s ability to measure and improve employer branding strategies.

Bottom Line: LinkedIn is an ideal platform for employer branding and talent acquisition. When recruiting staff combine efforts with PR and marketing, businesses can quickly reap outsized benefits.