The Coronavirus outbreak has changed the way we interact with others, and it’s limiting the way companies interact with large groups of candidates and industry connections. Now, more than ever, it’s time to think about keeping connections alive with digital capabilities. Is your business doing all it can to stay in touch with your candidate network?
In order to support my clients who I provide recruitment services for, I connected with Kevin O’Brian of Astound Virtual and Don Lewis of 6Connex to learn about digital recruitment marketing platforms. This led me to thinking more about innovative ways employers can continue to bring awareness to their brand, network with top talent in the industry, and create a strong candidate pipeline, remotely from the comfort of a home office.
Top 3 Innovative Ways to Connect with Candidates Remotely
There are a few ways employers can continue to engage with candidates in a 100% remote capacity through these innovative digital recruitment marketing strategies:
1) Social Media
Social Media is a powerful tool and can connect people in multiple ways. From creating brand awareness to hosting career fairs, social media accounts can be an easy and cost-effective way to keep connected.
Use sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to pose questions, share relative videos, discuss articles, and more with your audience. Even if it’s short video clips from your team about how they’re coping with teleworking; you want your network to know that you’re still there and as relative as ever.
Make it a point to post content about your sector and current events impacting your business. This is a great time to push out lots of information to ensure your organization stays top of mind in the industry and with candidates.
Even when in-person events are unrealistic, companies can still host wide-spread career fairs and sector get-togethers by leveraging social media accounts. Examples would be using Facebook to host recruiting events for candidates or event programs with your network. Your team can:
- Quickly organize an event on Facebook and share it publicly or privately to select individuals,
- Customize everything from the graphics and event details all the way to who can post information on the page,
- And even incorporate Facebook Live broadcasts into the event so recruiters or leadership members can connect via video with attendees right in the moment.
The trick with setting-up a social media event is thinking about who the organization wants to connect with and what type of connecting you want to do. Is this event to gather resumes for open positions or are you networking to keep industry connections top of mind?
Something to note is that not all social media accounts are created equal. It’s important to determine the best platform for your business and potential candidates and focus on that. Typically, one or two well-managed social media sites is a best practice versus trying to bite off more than you can chew…unless of course, you have a large team or dedicated content manager.
2) One-time Digital Fair
It’s no surprise that there are service providers out there who can handle any digital need. I’ve found there are many ways to be part of a digital career fair. Your organization can participate in a sponsored fair, such as this one coming to Fairfax County.
Or your company can choose to sponsor and host their own one-time career fair or networking event. This option would allow you similar connections and brand awareness as a social media event, although a customized event would have a more professional essence and an implementation specialist to help with set-up. While a social media event is something you can organize in a week, a high performing digital event needs an average implementation period of 4 – 6 weeks.
In these one-time digital career fair events, companies can fully brand the registration page, navigation rooms, and exhibition booths to reflect their logos and color schemes; some providers can even make the main backdrops look just like your lobby or conference room! Employers can give attendees content like pre-recorded videos, job descriptions, applications, whitepapers, symposium posters; anything you want to put out there for your participants, you can!
Here’s how it would flow:
- Work with the point of contact to discuss and implement the event,
- Publicize and share the event with those who should attend,
- Attendees sign-up, completing a registration form that your organization customizes (It’s in this form you can ask questions, request resumes, and more).
- At the time of the event, attendees log in through your designated link and have full access to your digital space.
Your virtual space can be as simple or robust as the company desires. Attendees can go straight from the log-in page to a single, tradeshow-esc booth, or they can enter a digital lobby with “rooms to enter” such as a help desk, chat lounge, exhibition hall, etc. Members of your organization can chat 1-to-many and engage in 1-to-1 chats with specific participants.
Since this is a single event, your digital space is wiped at the conclusion of the fair, no longer allowing you or event attendees access to the webpages. At the end of your engagement, providers share participant contact information, statistics, and sometimes even visual data. It’s a one-time, ultra-customizable event that can be formatted for small or large companies with varying networking and hiring needs.
3) Virtual Recruiting Centers
Virtual recruiting centers (VRCs) are extended versions of a one-time digital event. This option is great for organizations looking to have a standing recruiting and information landing page or host 3 or more career fairs or networking events in a year. VRCs are just as scalable and customizable as digital event spaces, only they are subscription based. After the 4 to 6-week implementation period, your organization can keep its virtual space standing for as long as desired. Companies can even temporarily take their spaces offline if they are wanting to create distance between two particular events or make updates to their content.
The flow of virtual recruiting centers is also similar to that of a one-time event, it’s just more fluid:
- Work with the point of contact to discuss and implement your center, connecting with them throughout your subscription for assistance and guidance
- Continually publicize and share the webpage as desired
- Attendees continually sign-up to enter your space, completing the customized registration form
- Employers can regularly monitor the site and engage with attendees, or participants can log into the site at a specific time for an event
With all the technological advances of our day, no pandemic or quarantine can stand in the way of keeping connections alive. And, most importantly, these tools have allowed for expansion of where you can source top talents, creating a great advantage for employers who are open to that idea. Whether you have a truly remote global workforce or a local employee and candidate population, these innovative digital recruitment marketing give you options to engage like we've never had before.
