Find the right solution for your business.
Explore SolutionsAre you one of the many companies that have been ignoring the power of Instagram for recruitment? Or are you looking to find ways to make your strategy stand out to job seekers? The popularity of Instagram has grown tremendously over the past few years, now reaching 500 million active daily users. This platform is the place to bring your employer brand to life and capture moments from your workplace. Here are three ways to bring your careers profile from blah to whaaa!
1. DEVELOP SPECIFIC HASHTAGS THAT HIGHLIGHT YOUR COMPANY CULTURE OR RECRUITING EFFORTS.
Did you know that posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than posts without? #wowza
Creating custom hashtags for company culture helps to build your brand awareness on social and allows users to easily search for your company photos. Hashtags serve as a great opportunity for employees to share moments on the job that bring them excitement, and more importantly, to show off why they love working for you! They foster employee advocacy and create a fun space where employees can share their work life with their followers and interact online with colleagues. Also, as a bonus, the more employees that post content using your hashtag, the more content you have to repurpose and upload to your own company page!
Additionally, as of December of 2017, Instagram users can now “follow” hashtags, in the same way, a user would follow an account! Share your hashtag around the office and encourage potential candidates at recruiting events to follow your hashtags. Having a branded hashtag can help give the most realistic, first-hand views of what it’s like to work at your company to potential candidates. If job seekers are able to engage with your employees’ posts and see what it’s like to work for your company, it will be easier for candidates to picture themselves being on your team.
2. CREATE INSTAGRAM STORIES
Instagram decided to go head to head with Snapchat and develop their own “story” feature, and it has really helped to transform the application. (As a die-hard Snapchatter, I have to admit I now find myself really loving Instagram Stories! Shhh!) So what are stories? A story allows you to share photos or 15-second videos of moments throughout your day. Each photo or video stays live for 24 hours and then disappears. Stories appear in the top row of the Instagram application, not in your usual profile grid and newsfeed.
How can you use Instagram Stories for recruitment and to promote company culture? Well, here are some great examples of businesses that are #killinit when it comes to stories.
Feature your employees! This can be as simple as posting a few photos of an employee and having them share facts about themselves and their role, or as creative as developing a template and incorporating videos to promote the individual. Major Instagram for recruitment tip: always end your story series by linking to your careers or open jobs page. (Disclaimer: only verified accounts can share links in their stories.)
Show a “day in the life.” Hand over your Instagram account to an employee for the day. Encourage them to share their entire day with your followers. It is key that the employee shares what they do outside of work as well. Not only does this highlight what your employees do outside of work for fun, it serves as a subtle yet realistic representation of work-life balance in your organization to job seekers.
Recruitment hack: Develop a hashtag for your employee takeovers and also encourage the employee to post a recap on your actual profile. The hashtag will create a space to collect all of the takeovers and for people to easily search for more content.
Post from events. Going to a career fair? Attending a conference? Having a company party? Volunteering as an organization? Share on your Instagram story! Posting snapshots of your time at an event lets others feel as if they are there.
Recruitment hack: Tag your location in the posts so that your followers know where you are!
3. EXPERIMENT WITH INSTAGRAM LIVE
If you are really looking to make your Instagram for recruitment game all-star worthy, then utilizing Instagram Live is a great feature to add to your strategy. So, what is it exactly? It allows you to livestream instantly to your followers and simultaneously allows your followers to interact with you via chat.
Engage instantly with your followers by hosting Instagram Live events. Some ideas to promote recruitment efforts are: Q&As with recruiters about the hiring process, Q&As with current employees about their roles and what it’s like to work at the company, livestreaming from events, etc. If your team is volunteering for the day or at a conference, hop on Instagram Live for 5-10 minutes and show your followers what you are up to! Being in real-time allows you to directly answer questions and engage on a more personal level with your Instagram followers. To boost your event, schedule it ahead of time and build up awareness by posting on your social media channels. Additionally, you can leverage your Instagram Live video afterwards by saving it and archiving it to your profile page.
4. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IGTV
Originally on Instagram, if you wanted to post a video to your feed it could be no longer than one minute. Now with Instagram Television (IGTV) the video can last from one minute to as long as an hour. This allows users an opportunity to tell longer engaging and compelling stories through video. So why should businesses use this feature? Video has become a powerful tool for brands to engage consumers and potential employees. 54% of consumers are demanding to see more video content, so now is the time to jump on the bandwagon and incorporate it into your recruitment strategy.
Through IGTV you will be able to give your followers the opportunity to truly see what your company is all about. You can take “behind the scenes” videos of the office and the employees to allow your followers to see what your culture and workspace entails. This will give your followers the opportunity to get a glimpse into every atmosphere. In addition, you can stream an event through IGTV and allow for those that could not attend to see what is going on during it. Whether it is a community service initiative or a company party, allowing your followers to see it will give them the chance to be able to feel like they are a part of it and engage with the content. Interviews also are a great idea to add into your Instagram strategy through videos. Having current employees discussing the company, their experiences, and thoughts about your company’s industry could shed light on things that followers might have questions about or wanted to know more authentic information. Now that you have a few ideas on how to incorporate IGTV into your recruitment strategy, start turning those ideas into real videos that you post!
5. PRODUCE THOUGHTFUL REELS
You may have heard of the app called TikTok that has taken the world by storm recently…well, Instagram came out with a similar feature called Reels. You can create short videos, match them up to music or other audio, and share them on your company’s Instagram account. The main differences between Instagram Reels and TikTok is that the content you create is put on your social media feed, profile page, and the explore page on Instagram. So, you might be thinking how can you use this to your company’s advantage when it comes to recruiting? Well, Reels gives you the opportunity to do a little show and tell and to showcase your company’s personality. Not only does it give you the chance to show off your company’s personality but also your products/services and resourceful information.
Reels can be incorporated showing followers every employee in your company by department. By doing this it lets the follower see the diversity of the current employees and what they contribute to the company. This could also be beneficial if your company is looking to hire for a position. You can make it very engaging by showing a day in the life of what that person would do in that position. This allows for that potential candidate to actually (visibly) see what they would be doing if they got that role. Reels can truly take your recruiting to a whole new level and display a whole new side of your company that people might not get the chance to see.
There is no limit to what you can accomplish for your employer brand and recruiting efforts on Instagram. Don’t be afraid to get started—even starting small and incorporating one tiny part of the tips I’ve shared can do wonders to your Instagram for recruitment strategy. We’re excited to see what you create! If you try any of these out or want to show off your Instagram account be sure to add it to the comments below.
