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It’s not quite clear exactly what’s going to happen to TikTok in the next few months.
The company has been ordered, through a bill signed into law by President Joe Biden, to find US ownership or sell up. In response, TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the US federal government, claiming the divest-or-ban bill violates the First Amendment rights of those who use TikTok in the US. The company also made major layoffs in late May to its marketing and operations teams.
But despite a relatively hazy future, TikTok talent acquisition – and recruitment on social media in general – is not a frontier that HR leaders can afford to ignore.
As someone who is employed to write this article having scored the role on social media, I’m not alone. The #careertok hashtag alone has a staggering 1.5 billion views, including many who speculatively post their resume on the platform.
On the other side of the candidate-interview axis, 91% of employers currently use social media as part of their hiring process, according to Glassdoor.
But while many will be familiar with the halls of LinkedIn, the frontier of TikTok is admittedly much less trodden, However, creating a strong employer brand presence on these platforms can broaden a talent pool, attract previously hard-to-reach talent that may not be accessible on other platforms, and tie into the community-based approach many are now taking in their recruitment efforts.
TikTok talent acquisition best practices
It’s a fair assumption that for a large share of the 91% of employers using social media for hiring, most are content to copy and paste a job description from their website onto LinkedIn and call it a job well done.
Besides the odd applicant, the benefits of this approach are few. As any social media expert will tell you – in fact, this is a great opportunity to forge closer ties with your marketing team as a company brand and an employer brand are implicitly tied together – the trick to social media success is community-led brand building.
In fact, under-committing and keeping social media activity going in “survival mode” can be detrimental to your employer brand. A well-designed, dedicated strategy is key to successful TikTok talent acquisition. Here are five fundamentals to consider whilst planning your approach to hiring on the platform.
1. Lean on marketing and branding teams to create high-quality, diversified content
Lesson number one is that the content you share on TikTok to attract prospective candidates should not simply be job descriptions repurposed in a video format. As noted above, by building relationships with marketing and branding teams, recruitment professionals can lean on the support of marketing experts to segment their target audience into different pools and create personalized, distinctive, and sticky content that appeals to each group within the confines of the employer brand guidelines. Educational or community-based content is essential alongside anything more ‘sales-y,’ alongside user-generated content (UGC) – in this case from existing employees.
2. Distribution matters just as much as creation
Having taken the time to carefully craft high quality content, many TikTok-ers and social media users neglect the importance of distribution. Knowing what to post, when to post, what hashtags to include, how many hashtags to include, how often to post, how much text to include in the video, how much text to include in the caption, and more can determine how popular your posts and pages are. These best practices are in constant flux and can have a huge impact on how successful your content is. Again, this is where a close relationship with marketing experts can be hugely beneficial.
3. Push candidate-driven content
Social media activation or candidate-driven posts is a form of user-generated content that can also be highly beneficial thanks to its reach and authenticity. It could be college students who completed an internship, participants in company schemes from volunteering to job rotation, or high-tenure employees with a story to share.
Encouraging employees and other stakeholders to share their own experiences with the company could help drive engagement and build a close community of followers. Moreover, empowering employees with their own following or audience can help draw users to your page and increase the reach of the content.
4. Be patient
Building a community on TikTok takes time. Yes, some lucky few are fortunate with a viral video that can elevate their page to stardom, but it can take time to build a community of followers and a reputation for being a great page to follow.
Think of this as an inbound approach to talent acquisition. Talent acquisition on TikTok not about posting the odd job listing that comes up and hoping you will get a few extra applications. Instead, it is about building a well-loved employer brand that will add value over time, and feed a steady stream of candidates toward your recruitment pipelines who are familiar with, and admire, your brand.
5. If you can’t commit fully, don’t commit at all
It’s better to be narrow and deep, than broad and shallow. Many talent acquisition teams are understaffed and faced with filling more requisitions than they can handle. If you do not have the resources to fully commit to launching a TikTok recruitment strategy, it’s best to avoid it altogether and instead invest more time in other channels that are a priority.
Without consistent posting and a detailed strategy for talent attraction and community building, these efforts will be wasted and could even damage your employer brand if prospective applications are put off by a low-quality page.
TikTok and beyond: The future of talent acquisition?
Knowing the role (employer) brands should play on social media is tricky to get right. TikTok users love that their platform is home to authentic content and brands that do not understand this, and attempt traditionally bullish forms of advertising, quickly learn their lesson.
TikTok is not a home for a stream of job ads. Nor is it a replacement for hiring talent elsewhere. Rather, it is an extra string to the bow of an employer brand. With younger workers increasingly turning to social media for guidance on their career and whether they should join a particular company, having a presence on TikTok – should you be able to afford the time and resources it demands to maintain one, and should the platform find a way to stick around in the US – is growing in importance.
The leading talent acquisition and recruitment teams will forge close relationships with their marketing or communications teams, if they have not done so already, to ensure any social media presence feeds into a healthy employer brand that attracts, rather than alienates, the growing number of candidates who use social media for career-based decisions.
