Now more than ever, an onboarding experience that puts people first is critical to retaining your hard-won recruits. But did you know that an exceptional new hire journey can also help your organization attract candidates?
Good onboarding helps support a strong employer brand - an essential piece of HR vocabulary that describes how your organization is perceived by potential job applicants and the wider talent community.
How does it do this you ask?
By building a positive, experience-driven new hire process that leaves recruits with a strong sense of your organization and its values. The idea is that through a combination of good marketing and word-of-mouth, the wider-world eventually finds out that your company treats new hires like royalty, and is, therefore, the bee’s knees.
The thing is, good marketing and positive word-of-mouth don’t just happen. It has to be fostered, by both HR and new hires. So, with that in mind, we’ve put together 6 simple activities to help promote your onboarding experience and attract great future employees.
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#1 LinkedIn campaigns |
As we know, when it comes to potential new hires, LinkedIn is like shooting fish in a barrel, yet many organizations don’t leverage the social giant to promote their onboarding journey.
Consider working with your marketing team (or whoever is responsible for your social media output) to put together some campaigns that utilize feedback from existing onboardees.
Here are two ideas to get you started:
Simple | Image & quote carousel
Put together 3 stand-out images that represent your new hire journey. Overlay each image with a quote from a recent joiner illustrating the most memorable part of their onboarding experience.
More complex | Onboarding video
Take a cue from Orange Business Services and create a short video that showcases your journey. It doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production - you can ask recent joiners to film short testimonials on their phones and cut them together using a free online video editing tool.
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To ensure your campaign is delivered to the right candidates, try using LinkedIn’s intuitive ad portal that allows you to target posts to a specific subset of people. For example, if you’re a tech company, you can ensure that your campaign is only visible to candidates who work within the tech industry or follow tech-related hashtags.
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#2 Q&A blog article |
If your organization has a blog, you have an excellent resource at your fingertips to help promote your onboarding experience.
Work with the blog author to create a comprehensive post that outlines your organization’s new hire journey from beginning to end. Interview recent joiners for some great quotes and insider information on the most beloved parts of the process. Be sure to include some great photographs to help catch the reader’s eye!
The resulting article can then be published on your website, sent to blog subscribers, distributed internally, and used as a future resource for HR and recruitment.
To keep things current, consider renewing the article every 6 months with fresh onboardee quotes and feedback. This will allow you to re-promote the piece internally, encouraging members of your organization to share it with their network, extending the lifespan (and reach) of your article.
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#3 Give them a reason to share
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Sometimes, all your new hires need is a little encouragement to get them talking about your organization’s fantastic onboarding experience.
So try giving them a push in the right direction with ‘share-worthy’ incentives:
Wrap up the first week of onboarding by sending a small gift or a bunch of flowers to your new hires’ home. This surprise will be worth its weight in gold when the recipient shares a snap on their LinkedIn or Instagram accompanied by a gushing review of the wonderful reception they’ve had from your organization. Include an Instagram takeover as part of your onboarding experience. This is where new hires get to ‘run’ your company Instagram (with supervision) for a day. This will allow them to create posts that resonate with them, which they are more likely to then promote to their own network.
Provide new hires with some first-day snaps that they can take home and share. A simple hands-off way to do this is to purchase a couple of polaroid cameras for the office and provide departments with some film for each new hire. Of course, if you’re working from home, some (sanctioned) zoom screenshots might have to do!
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#4 Start onboarding early (really early) |
An easy way to get potential candidates talking about your onboarding journey is to give them a sneak-peek behind the curtain.
Here at Talmundo, we have several clients that invite every applicant who proceeds to the interview phase to participate in their onboarding experience.
They have a small series of interactive activities available exclusively at the interview phase that gives the candidate an insider look at their onboarding journey and prepares them for a potential role within the organization.
Not only does this streamline the onboarding process for successful applicants, it means any unsuccessful applicants leave with a well-rounded, positive impression of the organization that they are sure to share with their wider network.
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#5 Leverage your career site |
This one might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s surprising how many organizations don’t promote their onboarding experience on their career site.
It’s as simple as leveraging some of the previous content on this list, such as the Q&A blog article, and putting in onto your career site.
This insight into your onboarding process will give site visitors a positive sense of your organization and let them know that you take the new hire process seriously.
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#6 Incentivize job site reviews
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A positive job site review score can be a big indicator of your reputation as an employer - and candidates are paying attention. So it’s important to encourage new hires who’ve had an excellent onboarding experience, to follow their onboarding up with a review on a relevant site.
Build this into your new hire process, so that new hires receive a prompt to complete a job site review towards the end of their onboarding lifecycle. This shouldn’t be compulsory, but you could consider incentivizing the process. This could be in the form of a coffee card, small gift, or even a donation to a worthy charitable organization.
Remember, any incentive should be offered regardless of the employee’s review score and reviews should be considered anonymous (or at least confidential) unless the employee wishes otherwise.
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The Takeaway |
There are so many creative ways to promote your organization's onboarding experience.
As we have discovered, done well this can significantly help boost your employer brand and enhance your overall recruitment efforts.
Whatever you do, ensure that you weave positive feedback from recent joiners into every activity. This lends authenticity to your efforts and ensures you’re selling a truthful representation of your company.
Of course, all these fantastic suggestions only work if your onboarding experience is WORTH talking about.
Talmundo can help with that! Try our 2023 whitepaper for future-proof ideas will help revolutionize your onboarding journey.
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