The digital talent experience is created to give future talent as well as new hires the ability to complete a user-journey even before they are onboarded. This experience, by design gives talent control of their experience and requires input from internal management to bring it to life. As your organization is building out this seamless experience, it’s important to assess that it covers all steps of the talent journey, while also being conscious of the various steps within that process. 

Understanding your organization’s talent funnel and journey is a vital part of that. Whether you feel as though your digital talent experience is sophisticated, or if your organization has recognized its shortcomings and wants to pivot on strategy, this blog will help to breakdown the questions you need to ask, and the tactics you need to use to ensure your organization has all it needs to create and maintain a world-class digital talent experience.

Is your journey seamless, or are you possibly creating roadblocks? What step are you losing talent at? 

Here are the questions to ask:

• Does your digital talent experience cover all the bases and steps of the journey, from Awareness to Application?

• Are you tracking key metrics? Is your tech and research method set-up to do that?

• Are you using each platform to its advantage, fulfilling its role within the funnel?

• Do you have a multi-platform strategy in place to ensure you’re reaching all talent segments where they are?

• How well do you know your audience and their online habits? Do you have a customized strategy in place for each segment? (Targeting, content, platform etc.)

With these questions top-of-mind, assessing your goals is key. Investing the time and resources to create a digital talent experience will lead to a positive impact on your business goals:

It increases awareness of your Employer Brand

Using social platforms can give an overall impression of your employer brand because of the significant reach they can potentially have. Implementing a sound social media marketing strategy can garner awareness when combined with paid media support to amplify it. 

Google Adwords help in achieving awareness due to the scale of organic search. When creating your strategy, it’s important that your Google Adwords and SEO are associated with relevant salient topics which your audience is interested in during their research phase, for example, “top places to work in” or “industry awards”. An organization can be associated with specific topics from research, so they are top-of-mind to the audience. Having an SEO strategy helps ensure these topics are incorporated within your website, and is important from a long-term organic awareness perspective.

It increases attention and engagement

Being present on engagement-driving platforms (across Social Media) allows you the ability to interact with your audience. Social media allows you to showcase your culture, work experience and benefits from a perspective that differs from any other outreach strategies. Using each platform to its varying advantages allows for optimal reach, and reaches talent where their interests lie most. As an example, Linkedin can be used to build credibility and drive job-related activity, while Facebook and Instagram can be used to highlight culture and align EVP with your overall brand.

It Drives Application Interest

If from your research you know that flexible working hours are important to talent, your Careers website needs to have this built-in, from an SEO standpoint. It’s important to make sure your careers website is search engine optimized, and catering to topics which will garner your audience’s interest and attention depending on various career objectives.

You can use platforms like LinkedIn to publish relevant job ads, refresh and rebrand employee review sites (such as Glassdoor, Indeed) and acknowledge employee comments. Employee review sites are a key source an audience looks at prior to deciding whether or not to apply to a company as it gives an authentic viewpoint of the employee experience directly. 

It Drives Conversions

The copy on your job descriptions need to be appealing, informative and in line with your employer brand and employer value propositions. Your career website should be optimized regularly to reflect all changes, and tell your brand story articulately, giving people a clear understanding of your business ethos. This is often the final frontier, so you want to leave a good final impression.

You can also use search engine marketing to encourage applications for roles by bidding on specific terms for your key roles. This will help you be placed above your talent competitors. Programmatic ad-buy words are useful across various job boards and assist to find qualified candidates for your open jobs in an efficient manner, only paying per application.

It Encourages Loyalty and Advocacy

Your current employees are your untapped advocates. Encourage and incentivize them to leave reviews, share employee-generated content on social media, and create content themes and hashtags that your employees can rally around.

Do You Have a Digital Measurement Framework in Place?

Implementing this framework only matters if you measure it. In order to assess progress and optimize for better results, you’ll need to track awareness (reach, SOV) on social media and visits to your digital assets (i.e. website). You can also track employer preference by tracking reputation from employee review sites, sentiment analysis via Social Listening, and applications.

Through social listening tools, you can also track employer associations and see whether or not your organization and employer brand is resonating, and use that data to analyze engagement. Track your loyalty using a tracking number of advocates on employee review sites, and content shares and engagement, as well as by application referrals from existing employees.

Measure the key KPIs from the measurement framework and understand where the gaps are, versus what the ideal outcome of your strategy is, and look to enhance and optimize that first. Beyond the numbers, assess the common brand story being told across channels for a consistent, coherent Employer Brand.

If you would like to learn more about employer branding and how we can help you build a resilient corporate culture, call Blu Ivy today at 647-308-2352.

This blog was written by Zeeshan Merchant, Director, Employee Brand and Culture