Tackle Your 2024 Hiring Goals with Employer Branding and Social Recruitment

In a competitive talent market, the company that gets the best candidate for the role wins. But before you can make an offer, you have to get candidates to look at your role and think of your company as a viable option for employment — and that starts with your employer brand. 

At least, that’s what recruitment marketing, employer branding professionals, and talent acquisition (TA) executives say in a recent survey by CareerArc and HR Dive, where 92% of HR executives believe that it is “extremely” or “very important” that candidates think of their companies as a great place to work.

Think of it this way: there are endless ways to get a company’s job openings out there today, from tried-and-true job boards and employee referrals to technology powering your social media presence with automation and artificial intelligence. But the only way to create a real connection between a prospective candidate and open roles at your company is to ensure they know what a great place to work it is. 

“Using employer branding and showcasing a company’s culture and employee experience is so important,” says Debora Roland, vice president of people operations at CareerArc. “The majority of companies don’t have a recognizable company brand on the employment market. For both passive and active job seekers, your employer brand is your chance to signal to candidates what it will be like to work with you.”

To better understand the interplay between hiring tactics and employer branding, CareerArc partnered with HR Dive’s studioID to survey 150 HR executives about their current talent attraction activities and how they plan to change for 2024. The results explore the current state of talent attraction performance, including job boards and employee referrals, and consider how these tactics are influenced by the big-picture strategic initiatives related to employer branding and social recruiting. 

The results reveal the fascinating potential of the current hiring environment, in which traditional tactics merge with modern approaches to support a highly leveraged recruiting funnel. Key findings include: 

– Traditional tactics at play 

Straightforward talent attraction tactics top the charts, with the most frequently used including hiring events (72%), organic social media (71%), and job boards (69%). The five tactics viewed as extremely effective for driving qualified candidates to open roles include hiring events (virtual or in-person) (34%), job boards (34%), employment agencies (33%), executive recruiters (33%) and paid advertisements (programmatic, social, etc.) (31%).

– All eyes on employer branding and social recruiting 

For all that HR executives rate traditional as effective, the top changes in talent acquisition tactics being considered to meet 2024 goals include big-picture force multipliers that will increase the effectiveness of all the other tactics: strengthening the employer brand and utilizing social media more for recruitment. Employer brand promotion can improve performance throughout the entire recruitment funnel, which has many HR executives reconsidering the high potential of social recruiting in the future. 

– AI-based tools on the rise

Almost half of HR executives (47%) use AI-based tools in their talent acquisition strategy, and another half (49%) plan to in the next two to five years. The current or planned uses include skill assessments (60%) and job postings/descriptions (58%), and more than 40% of these respondents report AI-based tools are used or will be used for candidate screening and candidate sourcing, as well. 

These findings encourage HR executives to think long-term and build a strong social media recruitment strategy to create awareness of, interest in, and demand for job openings. Investing in this one area of your talent attraction strategy will create ripple effects across the rest of your tactics, creating a positive cycle that fuels itself and improves the performance of all recruitment activities lower down on the funnel — and that’s how you ensure the best candidate for the role chooses you. 

About CareerArc

CareerArc turns social media into your recruiting engine. By activating your two most influential recruiting resources — your employer brand and your employee networks — CareerArc quickly scales your recruiting reach through automation so you can attract more qualified candidates for any, and every, role. Finally reach the top candidates you’ve been missing — faster, more efficiently, and more easily than ever before.

With over 350 active customers, we have seen it all, and what we have learned is that one size does not fit all. Every company has different talent acquisition needs and goals. We are committed to helping you build a social recruiting program that works for you.

Learn more about CareerArc, the only automated social recruiting solution built for talent acquisition.