A good company reputation makes attracting talent (the best talent) relatively easy. It’s one of the reasons top talent in various industries want jobs in renowned companies like Microsoft and Apple. It’s not rocket science—we humans just naturally like to associate with anything popular and perceived to be good.
Want your company to attract great talent? Then you need to start investing in your brand image. Public relations is key here. PR strategies like press release writing and PR events are designed to ensure a good public perception of your brand.
That said, here are our top five tips for attracting talent with PR:
1. Attracting Talent: Showcase Your Company Culture
It’s good that you showcase your workplace culture in your job descriptions on job boards, but even better is regularly showing it off.
Over 77% of adults across the United States and parts of Europe would consider a company’s culture before applying for any job. This is why showcasing company culture is a critical part of a good PR strategy for attracting top talent.
You can leverage social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn for this. Explain your employee value proposition.
Share nice pictures and videos that capture your beautiful office environment complete with amenities for employees. You can also share posts of your employees doing random fun stuff on a business day. This is a great way to show you’re not just all about serious work.
Here’s an Instagram post by Sproutsocial that shows one of the company’s managers making jokes behind the scenes.
You can also dedicate a section of the company’s website to your current employees. Showcase your workers’ unique stories and career spotlights.
Check out Livechat’s website:
Since you’re giving them space in the company’s own website, such content will help job seekers see how much your company, as a whole, values its staff. The content you write can also showcase the other values the company considers important. For instance, each write-up on the Livechat website above highlights what talented employees do at work and outside of work. So, it also emphasizes the work-life balance culture the company espouses.
2. Attracting Talent: Publicize Your Corporate Social Responsibility Programs
Publicizing your company’s corporate social responsibility goals can positively impact your hiring process. It will attract qualified candidates whose values align with yours. Besides, nearly 70% of employees say they wouldn’t work for a company that has no strong purpose.
On your marketing platforms, you can talk about your charity outreach, social impact, and sustainability initiatives as part of your strong employer branding.
See how Coca-Cola, for instance, displays its sustainability initiatives on its website:
Has your company won awards because of its social causes in the past? Showcase all of them!
On its website, for instance, Tesla announced that it won the Environmental Leadership Award from Global Green USA.
You can also leverage the services of a good PR agency to ensure well-written press releases about your CSR initiatives. Just make sure you choose an agency that specializes in your field. That’s because a specialized agency is also likely to have industry-specific media contacts that can disseminate your PR content. A good food PR agency, for instance, will have links to food bloggers and food magazine editors who can feature your brand.
If you don’t have CSR programs to showcase just yet, don’t worry. It isn’t too late to start having an active voice in your community. But you have to make sure you choose the right CSR initiatives. They should align with your brand values, otherwise, you’ll only come across as hypocritical and turn off, not just potential hires, but also potential customers. For instance, a luxury brand that sells fur coats may not be the best organization to speak up against animal cruelty.
3. Attracting Talent: Manage Your Online Reputation
We’ve already established that talent recruitment will be easier if your company has an excellent reputation, not just as a brand but also as an employer. Over 50% of job seekers abandon an application when they see negative reviews about the company, particularly online.
The thing is, you can’t really please everybody. You’re bound to have a disgruntled employee or customer venting out their issues against you on social media or on review sites. So, what should you do?
Just answer them.
Think about this for a second. When potential employees see someone calling out your company online for firing them for “no reason,” they’ll likely sympathize with that former employee who was “wronged,” right? But what happens if you give them the entire backstory for why the employee was fired in the first place?
For instance, you tell them that the person was caught stealing company money on camera, or you post their attendance card to show that they only showed up for work three times in one month? You essentially transform the bad company narrative that was left in the minds of those potential applicants after they read the negative feedback. Because you gave your side of the story, you end up becoming that company that only disciplined an erring employee. That’s not so bad.
Of course, this isn’t always what happens in real life. In some instances, former employees and even customers do have valid reasons for dishing out their negative comments.
In such cases, you just need to show that you sympathize with what they went through and acknowledge the wrong if the fault was yours. If it was a customer who left a negative review, find ways to make the wrong right.
See this brilliant CEO’s response to a critical Glassdoor review by a former employee:
Now here’s a great example of a brand responding the right way to customers’ negative feedback. Videos of some of Domino’s employees farting on the salami used on a customer’s pizza went viral sometime in 2009. As a result, it triggered a public backlash. So, the president of Domino’s USA Patrick Doyle made an apology video which was posted on social media sites.
In the video, the visibly concerned official took responsibility for what happened and outlined the actions the brand took to show it was taking everything “incredibly seriously.” He said Domino’s had fired the erring employees and had temporarily shut down the involved store to conduct sanitation operations.
Recording a video like the one above is pretty easy to do. Writing long posts to air your side and respond to negative feedback, however, can take up a lot of your time. This is where generative AI can help you. Just insert the right prompts and the powerful tool can produce on-brand feedback replies in a few seconds.
Now what do you do with the positive reviews? If you have the time, respond to them as well with a simple “Thanks!” This will also help boost your company’s reputation. You can also showcase these customer and employee testimonials on your company website for prospective employees (and customers) to see.
4. Attracting Talent: Seek Opportunities to Discuss Industry Trends Before an Audience
Sharing your thoughts on industry trends before an audience is the best way to position your company as an industry expert, not just in the eyes of customers but also in the eyes of potential applicants. When that happens, you can expect those applications from actual talent to come in.
So, seek opportunities to have your company represented at these events.
This is a PR strategy Apple follows. Its CEO, Tim Cook, is a constant in known tech conferences. He even gives speeches in events held outside the US, such as China and Belgium.
Just do a quick Google search, and you can easily find a list of conferences in your niche and area.
Then reach out to the organizers so you can pitch your services. Just make sure to highlight your expertise and experience in the field that make you an ideal guest speaker in your pitch.
If you have the budget, why not hold these industry events yourself where you or your executives can share their expert insights? This is what Hubspot does to boost its authority in the sales and marketing industry.
In fact, the PR strategy has been so successful that other companies want to be featured as speakers in Hubspot’s events, like Inbound.
5. Attracting Talent: Attend and Network in Industry Events
The thing is, you won’t always get to be the guest speaker at an industry event or conference. Does that mean you can no longer leverage this key PR strategy to attract the best talent?
Not necessarily.
Even if you’re just an ordinary participant, you can still get the attention of prospective employees attending the event by showing off your great personality. Remember, you’re the face of your company. You’re a reflection of what your company is and what it values.
Of course, you can only show off your great personality if you get out of your shell and network with other people. So, when attending industry events, make sure you take the opportunity to talk to others. Approach them with a smile and introduce yourself. Share your insights when asked and listen if they have something to say. If you have a business card, share it with them. Ask them for one, too. This way, you can use all the contact details you gather to create your own talent community and keep them updated on the latest company developments even after the event.
Attracting talent is easy if you know how to put your best foot forward. When potential candidates see you’re a great person, they’ll likely conclude your company hires only people with the best personalities. The result? They’ll send in their applications to be part of such a wonderful and appealing workplace.
Measuring the Impact of PR on Talent Acquisition
To measure the impact of PR on talent acquisition, you need to evaluate several key performance indicators (KPIs).
These include:
- Quantity and quality of job applicants: Track the total number of applications you got via PR efforts and how well (or badly) the applicants match the job requirements.
- Number of new hires: Monitor the number of successful hires stemming from your PR initiatives
- Employee retention: Check how many of the hires you derived from your PR efforts stayed in the company.
If you’re satisfied with your findings from measuring the KPIs above, then you’ll want to determine which specific PR strategy and channel the results can be attributed to. You can ask your new employees and hires about this directly. Send them surveys and polls asking them how they found out about your company and what ultimately convinced them to send in their job applications.
With this approach, you can easily determine what PR strategies work to attract top talent. That way, you can double-down on these strategies for even better talent acquisition results the next time around.
Why I Wrote This:
A good brand reputation makes attracting talent easier regardless of company size. That’s why PR is important. With the right PR strategies, you can enhance your brand reputation before top talent and get them to apply.
When attracting talent, begin with identifying the best aspects of your company’s culture and values that you can promote. Once you figure that out, leverage online platforms (and even offline channels). Share photos and videos that give prospective employees a sneak peek of what it feels like working in your company. Showcase your CSR initiatives as well.
As part of your PR strategy to attract the best talent, manage your online reputation. Also, seek opportunities to speak and network in industry events.
Remember, a well-written job description isn’t enough to reel talented individuals in. Your entire PR efforts should also revolve around presenting your company as a great workplace. Do this and attracting talent will become just a walk in the park for you.
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