Jobs That Are Hard to Fill? Call in Employee Ambassadors
There are always those nearly impossible jobs… You know the type: you need someone for that role ASAP, but no one’s applying or those that do apply aren’t the right fit.
It makes you want to pull your hair out and yet, you have to keep working to compensate for the lack of suitable candidates.
Fortunately, there’s a way to fill those jobs.
The key? Your employee ambassadors.
The Reasons Why You Can’t Fill that Job
There are plenty of jobs that are hard to fill, the most notable of which are optometrist, software engineer and even front end developer.
And even though the salaries are competitive (and so are the benefits), it seems like believing in Santa is more realistic than hoping you’d fill those jobs.
But why is this happening?
One of the main reasons is certainly the lack of qualified staff.
When it comes to software development, it only rose to prominence in the past decade, so many candidates had to get a requalification, and others aren’t out of school yet.
However, you may also be experiencing this situation because you don’t have a pool of potential candidates at hand.
Ideally, you should always have someone suitable in your applicant tracking system so you can call them in when you need to fill a job.
However, getting to that point isn’t easy.
Sure, big companies like IBM always have candidates vying for their attention, but just because you’re not a corporation doesn’t mean you can’t fill jobs with the same ease.
What you can do is use your employees to find talent for your company.
The Benefits of Employee Ambassadors
It’s no secret that referral hires mean:
- Improved quality of hire
- Reduced hiring and onboarding costs
- Increased retention rates
To put it simply: candidates referred by your employees are just better.
This is mainly because like-minded people tend to socialize with each other.
If you have great employees, they likely know people just like them who could become your next great hires.
According to MSL Group’s research on employee advocacy, the messages about your company that your employees share go 561% further.
Imagine that!
Additionally, your employees are more trustworthy when it comes to assessing workplace environment at a job seeker’s potential company. People trust people much more than they trust brands.
Finally, when employees share your job postings, more people see them.
According to LinkedIn’s research on the subject, companies receive six job listing views for every six pieces of brand content that an employee shares.
And if you use influencers to reach your customers, why not start using your own employees as social advocacy influencers?
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Hiring with Employee Advocacy
There are plenty of ways you can use brand advocacy to hire suitable candidates for those hard-to-fill jobs:
1. Ask Your Employee Ambassadors to Share Your Job Listings
The most straightforward way of utilizing your employees as recruitment influencers is, of course, just asking them.
First, post on your company page, and then ask them to re-share your post and add their comments.
Yes, they could simply re-share and forgo the comments, but it wouldn’t be as successful.
Their friends want to hear their two cents on your company.
You can also ask your employee advocates to create their own announcements about open positions at your company, in which case your original post will still come in handy because they’ll have something they can reference.
The more personal your employees can be with the announcement, the better.
Job seekers frequently turn to social media to review potential employers, so hearing that a friend really enjoys working at a company may just make a passive job seeker stop and think about it.
And who knows? Maybe they’ll be a great fit!
Pro tip: Use an employee advocacy tool like DrumUp to automate notifications to employees. With DrumUp, they’ll see the new posts you’ve made and you won’t have to send them an email every time you need them to share something.
2. Invest in Employer Branding
There are two types of employers:
- Employers that job seekers and employees simply think of as employers. You get to work, you punch your card, and at the end of the day, you go home. Simple as that.
- Employers who feel like friends. They’re your social butterfly friend – always posting on social media, celebrating successes, and creating an awesome workplace environment. Everyone wants to work for them.
You want to be the second kind, but you can only do it if you invest into your employer brand.
To explain it in simple terms: your employer brand attracts top talent to your company even before you’ve posted a job listing.
After all, when you’re a good employer, your employees will endorse your company because they want to share – not because you asked them to.
You can improve your employer brand by:
- Improving your company culture. Celebrate successes, appreciate employees, and focus on improvement in every way.
- Sharing more about your company and employees on social media.
- Creating incredible employee and candidate experiences by treating them with the same respect as customers.
And when you have a positive employer brand, it makes brand advocacy so much easier.
For example, you ask your employees for help with filling that complicated job.
If you have a good brand, they’ll be happy to do it. They’ll even share their favorite aspects of working at your company.
Conversely, if you haven’t invested in your employer brand and your employees, they’ll probably post something along the lines of:
“My company is hiring. Apply here.”
3. Start an Employee Advocacy Program
Ideally, you want to build a candidate pipeline with the help of your employees.
However, that takes time. The sooner you begin, the sooner you’ll experience results.
It’s a long-term strategy that pays off in more ways than one:
- Your employees will be more engaged, improving their job satisfaction and reducing the risk of turnover
- You’ll be improving your employer brand and ensuring that you are continuously attracting new, talented candidates to your company
- You’ll even attract new customers who appreciate you investing in your team and striving to be a good employer
If you treat your employees like stars, they’ll attract new stars to your company and make sure you never get a headache because you have a job that’s impossible to fill.
How to Start an Employee Advocacy Program
First of all, you need to communicate with your employees.
Find out what they like about working at your company, what their goals are, and who they are as people.
Ask them to help you shape your employee advocacy program, and always encourage them to give you feedback on what they think matters.
This is especially important because you want to attract talent just like them.
And who knows your target audience better than your target audience?
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Your second step should be to create a formal employee advocacy program with guidelines.
Having formal guidelines is incredibly helpful.
Sometimes, when employees aren’t given any rules, they can feel unsure about the things they’d like to post so they simply don’t.
Not everyone at your company has to be an employee ambassador of the same kind.
Some people are more prone to sharing, while others love creating content.
Make sure there’s a place for everyone who wants to participate, and don’t force those who don’t want to.
Keep your employees up-to-date on the company and your industry.
The more informed they are about the industry, the better will their performance be.
However, another benefit is networking.
If they start posting about your industry on Twitter, they’ll be more likely to connect with like-minded individuals (who may just be the next people you hire).
Finally, engage your employees. Make social advocacy fun, not just something the bosses asked them to do.
A great way to make your employee advocacy program more engaging for your employees and incentivize them to share is by gamifying the process.
You can reward them with points, badges and achievements for sharing and creating content, or participating in different activities.
If you want to up the ante (especially in competitive environments, or environments that could use a bit more competitiveness), you can even use leaderboards.
4. Provide Support to Your Employee Ambassadors
Finally, employee advocacy can be a hassle if you’re running everything manually.
And this is where DrumUp comes in.
DrumUp’s employee advocacy program comes with automation features such as:
- Company updates broadcast – Send notifications to your employees from your feed. Especially useful for job listings!
- Automated broadcast of company blog and press feeds – Help your employee ambassadors stay informed about the industry and they won’t just attract top talent to your company, but they’ll become it.
- Gamification – Points, monthly contests, and leaderboards to keep employee advocacy fun.
- Social media analytics – Improve your employee advocacy program and reach even more talented candidates.
- Easy administration
- One-click scheduling
- Mobile apps and browser extensions for advocacy on the go.
It’s time to fill that job.
Start your employee advocacy program today!
Image Source: Pexels
