Jason Webster is a social recruiting enthusiast and co-founder of Ongig, a platform that creates shareable, visually-appealing job descriptions. He has spoken at multiple social recruiting events, where his passion for candidate experience is the primary topic. Connect with Jason and Ongig on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
A Salesforce.com Community Manager job description recently got 57 tweets, 20 likes, and 3,979 views. How’d they do it?
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First, let’s back up for a second. It’s no secret there are more online venues to search for jobs than ever before. According to recent research, job candidates today use an average of five resources in their job searches, most of them online.
However, recruiters haven’t yet adapted to all of these options and are only using one or two means of sharing a job. So, not only are jobs too cumbersome to apply for, but they aren’t being seen by the appropriate candidates.
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One remedy is to make your job description viral. A viral job has similar qualities to the other content (videos, websites, and photos) that you regularly share with your own social network. It’s socially connectable, visually appealing and transparent. Here are five easy tips to help you get there:
1. Be Transparent About Your Hiring Team
Top candidates are most interested in three things:
- Who will I work for?
- Who will I work with?
- What is the environment like?
If you are trying to communicate this through a three-paragraph, written job description, good luck. Top candidates will not take the time to read your description, nevermind a passive candidate.
Want a good attention-getter? Put the hiring manager or member of the hiring team up front. You can do this by posting their name and some means of contacting -- or better yet, connecting with -- them within your job description. Suddenly, your job is better and more attractive than 99% of jobs on the Internet.
You want to avoid making job prospects feel like they are sending their applications into a black hole. This quality itself will make the job description more appealing.
2. Integrate Pictures and Video
Studies have shown that employers using recruiting videos received a 34% greater application rate.
So, an even better thought is to post a video directly from your hiring manager. The average job seeker spends less than 30 seconds reviewing a posting. Sites with more compelling and content-rich job descriptions can reach upwards of four minutes on a posting -- that is due in large part to the pictures and video employers put up there.
Whether candidates give you 30 seconds or four minutes, here are some easy ideas for video and pictures to consider:
- Show team members.
- Show the office space, inside and outside. (Surprisingly few employers do this!)
- Show events you attended or hosted (including company parties).
- Have a little fun and go unscripted.
3. Enable Social Connectability To Your Team
We have had A-player candidates tell us a job “hooked” them primarily due to the fact that they learned they knew someone who worked at the employer. So, enable candidates to easily see how they’re connected to you and your team through social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn.
The providers of tools for connectability include Facebook and LinkedIn themselves (both of which will supply you with access to their API data), as well as new career-related sites like Glassdoor.
4. Give Your Employees A Good Reason To Share The Job
Just like any other shareable content on the Internet, if there’s a “Share” link that allows postings to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, it’s already more likely to be shared. This will not only increase referral rates, but also create a better job applicant pool.
But you can’t stop there.
You must arm your employees with awesome content to share. Awesome content that is based around people and emotion is more likely to be shared.
What makes for awesome content?
It begins with tips 1 - 3 above -- if you can do those, your content is already more awesome. But the most important advice for providing awesome content is to be authentic and just tell the story of the job opportunity through the best tools you can find.
Always remember this headline when creating content: Your employees are your best social recruiters. Get them involved early and often in the process. They will feel ownership in the process and share more frequently.
5. Real-Time Interactivity
Finally, businesses should add commenting to their descriptions that allows candidates to “follow” jobs, ask questions online, and receive updates about the application process.
Candidates should be able to interact anonymously -- or identify themselves if they choose. Real-time interactivity brings the job to life, and candidate can evaluate the opportunity over time versus in a 30-second browsing of the written job description.
Close the loop with all applicants and interested candidates when the position is filled by simply placing a comment. Everyone is notified, and you created a positive candidate experience instead of the application "black hole."
Applicants will feel more connected to -- and impassioned about -- a job description that provides them with job status updates straight from the hiring manager or, in some cases, the recruiting team.
Remember that Salesforce.com job? It received more than 50 applications and resulted in an awesome hire. If you follow these five steps, the chances that your job description goes viral -- like Salesforce.com’s -- will increase exponentially.
What other ways can employers make job description go viral? Tell us in the comments.
Social Media Job Listings
Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we've selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!
- VP Consumer Marketing at Porter Novelli in DC
- Manager, Social Media Channels at Princess Cruises in Valencia, Calif.
- Manager at BrainLine.org in Arlington, Va.
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, VCTStyleM
This story originally published on Mashable here.