In the marketing world the saying goes something like “social media won’t save a bad product.” Quite simply, if your product or service is horrible, no amount of tweeting, facebooking, blogging, podcasting will ever save it…it’s doomed. Well guess what? And this is going to be a shocker. The same goes for recruitment.
Stunned? I thought so… If your company is a tough company to work at, no amount of social media strategy and tactic will help paint a prettier picture. Social media won’t save you. Only you can.
Social media can still help with your recruitment, but it’s not going to hide what your company really is like. So you really have two choices before you refine your social strategy: Accept who you are as a company or change the company.
Because you’re in HR, you have an impact on both. Let me explain.
Accept who you are.
Lots of companies push their employees hard and give very little in return – whether it’s office work or manual work. Some people respond to that. Often it pays off to give it 110% at these companies and where most employees quit or give up, some respond well to the challenge. In other words, for every company, there are employees that will love working there. So accept who you are. Not too long ago, at TMP Worldwide, we worked on employer branding for a mining company. It’s hard and unforgiving work and that’s exactly what where we started when we developed the brand.
So when you’re working your social presences, don’t be afraid of who you really are. Some people don’t need snack bars, lazy-boys and lounges so don’t pretend working for you is all rosy.
Change your company.
Your second option is to change the company. Change isn’t an easy thing, but HR can definitely drive it by on boarding upper-management, communicating a clear vision of where you want to go, demonstrating what the advantages of a new corporate culture will do for productivity, moral and absenteeism and conduct regular follow-up meetings. Because change doesn’t happen overnight you may want to work on that before you jump on to social media.
As Gary Vaynerchuk puts it, our connected world makes it that our “bullshit radars” are stronger than ever, so lying about who your company is, will get you nowhere. Social media doesn’t do a good job at hiding stuff so before you use it help your recruitment, make sure you know what your company’s personality is. What’s your take?
(Photo credit: Jeremy Atkinson)
