12 Steps to Make your Job Ads Go Viral (Part 1)
But, still the rewards of making something go viral are immense and hence why making things goes viral has become the favorite past time of just about everybody, and that includes HR, and particularly recruiters.
It’s the name of the game in sourcing now to make an infectious employer brand and subsequent viral job message to attract the cream of the top talent into your business.
And I thought it was about time we dedicated an article to helping those in the HR profession to create socially infectious job adverts that go viral. Therefore, below I have set out the first 6 out of 12 tips to help your job ads go viral. (The second 6 tips can be found in part 2 of this article to follow.)
1. Create an infectious employer brand
All the articles that I have read suggest that the key to making something go viral is creating a piece of content that people are passionate about sharing, that they want to tell their friends about.
In HR terms this means that the first step of making job ads that go viral is creating a great employer brand and culture in terms of benefits, working conditions, pay, career-development and flexible working; all those things that employees love. We know that people are driven to work for companies that have great employer brands. Just ask Google, one of the employer super-brands, who at one point received 75,000 applications in a week. Such was the power of the employer brand. Therefore, create an employee brand that employees, candidates, journalists and bloggers want to talk about. A strong employer brand has to be the starting point of making a job posting that goes viral.
2. Build a job ad that reflects the employer brand
Having built your employer brand, make sure that it is marketed effectively in your job description, making sure to emphasize the positive company culture, good working conditions, career development opportunities, and work-life balance. Research tells us that these are the kind of things that attract employees to a business.
3. Post/share your ads when job seekers are most responsive
For example, research from e-Quest based on more than 1 million job adverts has found that jobs posted on Twitter experienced their highest level of searches and responses from mobile devices on Sunday, Monday and Tuesdays, while Monster, CareerBuilder and Indeed.com were at their strongest Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from computers during the lunch hour. Healthcare job postings were most active when posted on Wednesdays; retail jobs on Saturdays; and technology jobs were at their strongest Tuesdays and Fridays.
4. Identify influencers
Identify powerful influencers who might be interested in retweeting or re-sharing your role and make sure you share your job with them. This could be: local employers who you know are downsizing their teams, professional bodies, industry magazines, local governmental employment agencies, alumni, etc. So, before you tweet out a job, do your research and make sure to tweet it to influencers who will be motivated to retweet your ad to their followers—hopefully a large list of followers.
5. Include employer branding videos that people want to share
Incorporate a promotional employer branding video into your job description or link to video. Why? CareerBuilder research shows us that postings with video are viewed 12 percent more than postings without video and receive a 34 percent greater application rate. Video will make your job ad more infectious.
As well as this, think about investing in a good quality corporate video. Recent research by HBR into the Science of Viral Ads suggests that the most viral ads are ones that create a sense of joy or surprise at the start and create a roller coaster of emotional ups and downs during the ad. I am not sure if it is entirely applicable to all types of employer branding video but worth a thought. So, the idea is to create an employer branding video that is funny, thought provoking and or surprising so that people really want to share it.
6. Make it easy to share your jobs
Post your job adverts on your company careers page and make sure there are social share buttons prominently positioned on each ad encouraging readers to share with a friend.
Of course, there is no guarantee that these steps will make your job ad go viral, but taking these steps will help you to create the most infectious job advert possible. If you found these steps useful, please look out for part 2 of this article for more helpful information.