Recruitment marketing involves a lot of numbers, statistics, and figures. This can be a bit…well, dull, to be honest. But it doesn’t have to be.
Today we’re going to look at 5 employer branding statistics that every recruitment marketer should be familiar with, and we’ll show why these stats are so important and how to use them to further your team goals.
1) Only 21% of candidates would apply to a 1-star rated company. Only 1 in 3 (34%) would apply to a 2-star company.
Are you paying attention to your Glassdoor rating? How about your LinkedIn page? We guarantee your audience is. Looking at the above statistic, what’s your initial reaction? Ours was something along the lines of, “well, yeah.” It seems rather self-evident, who would want to work for a company that got a 1-star rating?
What’s your company rating? If you can’t answer that question off the top of your head, it’s time to get to work. Monitor your LinkedIn page, Glassdoor, and any other rating site you find your company listed on. First you may have to claim ownership of the company page, you want to do this anyway so you can ensure all of the information is accurate and up to date.
Now, do you see any low ratings? Respond to them. Be honest, authentic, and open in your responses, that way people will see that your company cares about reputation and is working to improve whatever the situation is that caused the bad review in the first place. See some great ratings? Respond to those too. Now those same people see that you value feedback in all its forms. See #2 below for more on the value of these interactions.
2) 62% of Glassdoor users agree their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review.
As we discussed above, reputation matters. This statistic clearly shows the power interactions can have on first impressions and reputation. This applies to both positive AND we would argue even more importantly negative reviews as the way a company handles complaints goes a LONG way toward displaying their overall sense of responsibility and conveys the importance they place on reputation and the impact it can have on people.
Imagine how someone will feel about your company’s willingness to respond to internal issues if they place this much importance on nurturing their external reputation. This is where you can have some fun, too. Make your interactions authentic, be yourself, that way people will feel that they’re seeing the real face and hearing the true voice of your company.
3) 79% of job applicants use social media in their job search.
While we’re on the topic of reputation, how are you doing on social media?
In today’s job market, companies need to have a robust presence on the top social media outlets in their geographic area. This is not only important for your content marketing efforts, it’s where you can show your dedication to your current employees by sharing their content, liking their posts, etc.
This is also where you’re going to find and nurture connections with potential applicants for future openings AND where you can generate good feelings even among your competitors by sharing and commenting constructively on their content.
Using this multi-pronged approach to social media ensures a few things. First, it solidifies your reputation as a 21st century company, and that you keep up with your employee’s interests and needs. Second, it shows that you know how to nurture important relationships. That applies to current employees, potential candidates, and even your competitors. Yes, your competitors. They’re on social media, so following and interacting with them shows that you’re secure with your place in your industry.
4) Candidates trust the company’s employees 3x more than the company to provide credible information on what it’s like to work there.
You can totally use this to your advantage. Feature current employees in your branding efforts. Create a testimonial scroller for your internal career page. Film short videos of them talking about scenarios they’ve encountered and how much they love their coworkers. Show them hard at work, and play, on your gorgeous company campus.
Make these videos fun and engaging, then use them in your social media campaigns, Youtube advertisements, etc. Get as much mileage out of each piece you create as possible. As a bonus, the employees you feature will also get excited about sharing this content with their networks so now you’ve got an army of self-recruited brand ambassadors helping spread your employer brand!
5) The top three channels SMBs plan to extend their employer brand are company website (69%), online professional networks (61%), social media (47%).
We know, this one’s cheating since there are actually 3 statistics. They’re so closely related, we hope you can forgive us. These highlight the importance of content marketing to your overall employer branding efforts.
These three channels, internal blog, professional networks, and social media form the backbone of any great content marketing strategy. And by extension, any great employer branding campaign, as this is how you’re going to spread the word about that brand. The content you created for your branding campaign? Yeah, you can post that to social media too.
Then, you can post it as part of a series of pieces about movement in your industry on LinkedIn, boosting your reputation as a leader in that space. And as a bonus, this content is evergreen, meaning you can post it again in a few months, use it as the content on landing pages, and link it to specific positions you’re recruiting for.
We talk a fair bit about relationship cultivation and how vital it is to all of your recruitment marketing efforts, not to mention your employer branding campaigns. What do you think is one of the easiest ways to set about doing this relationship building? Yep, social media, professional networks, and blog comments.
Hopefully you can see how keeping track of these statistics, and incorporating the metrics you have on them into your branding efforts, can go quite a ways toward fostering a better online reputation for your company. These metrics will help you stay on top of your relationships, show you where to focus your energy, and help keep ROI high on your branding campaigns. And you can have fun interacting with people in the process!