The following is a guest post authored by Phil Strazzulla of NextWave Hire–a company focused on helping companies build their employer brands through authentic employee testimonials that dive deep into what life is like at a company.
Let me guess, you already tried to start a developer blog, or begged people to write on Glassdoor, or tweet out your culture video…and it just didn’t work. People put it on their to-do list, and it stayed at number ~5 for a while until it was forgotten.
Employee authored content is insanely powerful for recruiting. It can help build your employer brand by sharing your employee value proposition in an authentic way. Your employees have all the content that candidates care about, plus they are very credible.
Of course, your employees are busy. And, they may not feel as though building your employer brand is in their job description. So, how do we get them to actually create content? Here are a few tips:
Give Them a Personal Incentive
Don’t just make it about the company. Tell your employees you’re going to give them a shout-out on twitter, or give them a beautiful profile on your site that shows off their content.
Gamify It
If you’ve got the analytics, measure whose content is doing the best. Throw them a gift card at the end of the quarter. Or, just let people know who the top few leaders are…then ask for another batch of content at the point where people are thinking, “Ok, I want to climb that leaderboard!”
Make it Easy
DO NOT ask for thought pieces, or 500 words without a very specific topic. You will find this is like pulling teeth.
DO ask pointed questions that candidates care about, that your employees have already answered 100x before – what is your background, how have you been mentored, etc.
Make it Fast
Asking someone to spend more than 30 minutes is a mistake. How busy are you right now? How overwhelmed? Imagine someone asking for 30 minutes of your time for something somewhat outside the scope of your job…you’d be hesitant.
Have the Ask Come from Their Boss, not HR
Many times I see that HR isn’t directly involved with most other business groups. Have your hiring manager or team leads ask to create the content. This will increase participation, especially when creating it aligns with a business goal.
The Right Framing
Tell them why this is important – to recruit more awesome people like you, to grow our business so we can all make more money, to free us up from recruiting so we can focus on our jobs.
So, what’s next?
Yes, employee generated content doesn’t simply grow on trees. But, with a few tips you can actually get some awesome content for a reasonable amount of work.
Phil Strazzulla is the Founder and CEO of NextWave Hire, a software solution which collects and distributes employee testimonials about working at your company. Before NextWave Hire, Phil was a venture capital investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. He holds a BSc. from NYU and a MBA from Harvard Business School.
