As staffing companies are looking for different ways to target, engage, and increase traffic with job seekers, creating engaging and targeted content is critical in this competitive job market. We’ve talked about using video for job postings as a way to increase candidate engagement and campaign reach, but what about creating a viral job posting?
In our industry, it’s rare to see a viral job posting with millions of views unless it’s for all the wrong reasons – like this video posting from a London cafe and theater that was shared all over the internet in 2017 for its rant about the millennial generation. When you’re creating job postings with the expectation of going viral with candidates, “going viral” is actually a misnomer. Good hiring strategies are about quality of candidates, not quantity. After all, what’s the use of 100 applicants if none of them are qualified? It’s not about millions or billions of shares, views or clicks, but about getting a thousand targeted views or clicks from a targeted candidate audience.
How to Turn Your Job Postings Into Viral Hits
In staffing, we’re always looking for new ways to reach candidates to fill our open requisitions. If you want your job posting to be shared and promoted, here are four tactics that can boost your engagement with your ideal candidates:
1) Video
This is where you can get really create and make something that’s fun, exciting and engaging. Here’s one example from Hubspot Dublin that speaks to their company culture and brand, plus it shows that you don’t have to have a huge marketing budget to produce a professional and engaging video:
And a sense of humor goes a long way towards getting the attention of job seekers, like in this “Join the Revolution” video from SodaStream that features the company CEO meeting “The Mountain”:
Don’t forget to make it easy to share! Not everyone who comes across your post is going to be interested in your open position, but they might know someone who is. Increase the chances that they’ll pass the description on by including sharing functions on your job post. The “send to a friend” email button is standard, but you could also include buttons to tweet, share on Facebook or whatever your preferred social network might be.
2) Job postings that are out of the ordinary
These Game of Thrones job postings are one of my favorite examples. In 2016, Mashable reported on Westeros Recruitment, a parody career website packed full of Game of Thrones themed job vacancies. It was a marketing stunt made by Time Recruitment, but as far as marketing stunts go, it’s one of the better ones.
Instead of creating another job posting for the positions you’re looking to fill, why not shake it up and create a “dream job” that will get people interested in working for your company? I’m not talking about an endless list of perks, autonomy, and are some form of gurus, ninjas, and hackers. We’ve all seen these “unique” job titles that end up reading exactly the same. A catchy job title will get the attention of job seekers, but make sure you’re using something that’s unique to your company and not a replica of the thousands of “rockstar” titles that are already out there. And don’t get hooked on an “innovative” title for a standard job.
In 2017, a Dublin vet clinic posted an ad for a “Cat Cuddler,” an actual full-time, paying role for someone who wants to pet cats all day. Job seekers and cat lovers took notice, and the position was featured in news stories across the Internet. This was a great strategy for earned media and going viral, but advertising for positions like “Ambassador of the Internet” when you’re really hiring for a digital marketing role like social media coordinator could backfire – and it’s not a sustainable strategy. It could, in fact, just confuse qualified candidates and you could lose them before they even apply.
It’s also worth mentioning that when it comes to SEO, or how likely your job posting is to be discovered in search engine results, a more conventional title may work better. People are more likely to search for a “Customer Service Specialist” than a “Passionate Customer Success Ninja.”
3) Images
Images in your posting increase your visibility in search, not to mention help you stand out from your competition. These can be fun images of the work environment or a header photo that catches the eye at the beginning of a job posting. And think beyond static images. GIFs are inherently sharable (and it’s easy to make your own and upload them to Giphy).
4) Target your reach
Expanding the reach of any type of content, especially a job description, takes consistent, timely and creative promotion. Using technology like Talroo can help you give your post the boost that it needs. Talroo has a robust set of tools to help elevate visibility for your job posting and hyper-target your ideal candidate audience. Using a data-driven talent attraction solution allows you to optimize a paid campaign in real-time, amplifying what’s working and turning off what doesn’t so you get the most out of your recruitment advertising budget.
There’s no magic formula for making anything go viral. Most importantly, remember that the key to reaching the right candidates comes with careful targeting, planning, and strategy. But these strategies can be used to make your job posting share-worthy. And when you’re trying to find the perfect person for a role, the more eyes you get your post in front of, the better.
