0:00
Jennifer Gutman
All right. Hi, everyone. I see people are still logging in. We'll just give it one more minute and we'll get started. All right, let's kick off. So welcome everyone, to our webinar, how to develop a strong employer brand on LinkedIn. I am joined by special guests from LinkedIn and. Hi, Bob. Which we'll get into in a moment. My name is Jennifer Gutman. I am the director of Customer marketing at Oktopost. I've been with the team since 2014. So call me crazy or call me awesome, but I've definitely been around the block here at Octopos. I'm really excited about today's topic again, joined by some fantastic guests from LinkedIn and Hibob. So let's go ahead and kick off with some introductions. Greg?
0:44
Greg Mcloughlin
Absolutely. Thanks, Jen. So, hi, guys. My name is Greg and I'm what's called a senior client solutions manager here at LinkedIn for the UK iMarket. If you haven't guessed, I'm based in sunny tropical Dublin, Ireland. Fun fact, because, yeah, I didn't rehearse this part. So I. I was in a band when my teens, like, relatively successful band. I had the emo fringe, I had the. The lip piercing, I had the whole lot. So somewhere on YouTube, I hope you never find it. There you go.
1:19
Mark
How did I do?
1:20
Jennifer Gutman
You did fantastic. I'm now just thinking, after this webinar, who's going to go take to YouTube to try to find that band?
1:27
Ale Schlesinger
Definitely.
1:28
Greg Mcloughlin
Yeah, definitely you.
1:29
Mark
Yeah.
1:29
Greg Mcloughlin
I knew it.
1:31
Jennifer Gutman
All right, Ale, you're up next.
1:33
Ale Schlesinger
Hi, I'm Alice Lesinger. That's short for Alexandra. I'm so used to saying it that way because my parents are from Argentina and if I don't say that, my name just doesn't make sense to people. I run social media at Hibob. I'm responsible for all our social accounts as well as our social strategy, including employee advocacy. A fun fact about me. It's not so fun for my children, but I have a huge aversion to ketchup and I cannot have ketchup anywhere near me. The smell, I just can't handle it. I'm not a picky eater in any way, except for ketchup. And when my three and a half year old asks for ketchup, I make someone else give it to him.
2:21
Jennifer Gutman
I assure you there will be no ketchup during this webinar.
2:24
Mark
Hello, I'm Mark. I am based in the uk, so I work out of Hibob's London office. I run the talent acquisition team for the region. So I've been here just over a year now. Last year was crazy. Globally, we doubled our headcount. We hired about 410 people through last year. So, yeah, nice to be here. Fun fact, I, I, I thought maybe the benefit of going last would mean I'd have time to think about this, but I was too busy listening to everyone else's answers and I completely forgot to think of anything for myself. But whether it's fun or just makes me sound a bit nerdy, I don't know. I have. So for people who work here and have had the pleasure of being on zoom calls with me at home, they'll know this already. But I am a very big child and I'm a huge fan of lego. So if I do, if I do have to speak to anyone who's on this and they see me at home, you'll see a big fan of LEGO and a big fan of Star Wars. So I've come. I have a passion for the two that go together. So I have a lot of LEGO Star wars in my own home office, which my wife very often reminds me is the only room in the house that it should be allowed to stay in. And it's on things that are screwed to the wall and all sorts, because I also have a four and a half year old son who will absolutely try and get it if it's not secure. So not quite as fun as the
4:05
Jennifer Gutman
others, I assure you, in a safe space. Many of us are LEGO fans and I would do the same to stop my toddlers from getting up to my Legos that I know have many, many pieces. So let's go ahead and kick off. Now that you know a little bit about each and every one of us, we're going to be talking today about what is employer branding. Right. And really diving into how we can develop a strong employer brand across LinkedIn and how we go about thinking about that.
4:33
Ale Schlesinger
Right.
4:34
Jennifer Gutman
How are marketing and HR teams working together? And I brought hi Bob. On because they're just doing a phenomenal job blowing it out of the water. If you haven't caught them on LinkedIn, go ahead and give their, their company. Hi Bob. A follow up. Right, so what's employer branding? Essentially, what employer branding is is the market's perception of your company from the point of view as the employer. What I often find a little bit scary about employer branding is oftentimes we have very little control. Right. What the market's perception is. So we have to do our very best in order to help guide that narrative and really showcase our brand in a positive light. And what are all the great things about working at our organizations? And I think what it really comes down to when it comes to employer branding, it's being able to showcase your brand, your company culture. And I know that, that Mark and Ale are going to keep me honest in a moment about this, about what exactly is it and how do we make the magic of it and how do we bring it to life. And something before we kind of hop in to really diving deep into how do we build this employer branding strategy, how do we communicate this to the rest of the world, right? Why does employer branding matter so much? And I think when we think about employer branding, oftentimes our HR hats will put on and we'll say, well, that makes sense, right? We need to showcase a positive brand because it retains talent and it attracts top talent. But there are so many other things that building a positive employer brand across social media does. Right. And I think one of the biggest things to think about, especially in 2023, is that when you showcase your brand in a positive way and what it's like to work at your company, at the end of the day, what we've seen is it builds trust and credibility. Right? It's a great way for organic lead sourcing. We'll get into that. It's a great way to better serve your customers. It's insight into your company's work ethic. We're also seeing, right. Happy employees naturally create happy customers. People love talking to happy people. And then of course, we also are seeing how purchasing decisions are being made right. On how employers treat employees. And I think this is a big one and it's rather new in like the last few years. Right. And one of the stats that just has my mind blown daily is that 64% and this is from career arc of consumers have stopped purchasing a product after hearing how the company or if the company treats employees poorly. Right. And I think that's something to think about, especially as we all go to build our personal brands on LinkedIn, to do our branding across LinkedIn. Right? Because that's a pretty big number and it's a pretty, pretty big number to keep low if we have a strategy for employer branding. So I want to pose this question to my guests and throughout the webinar, have us all be thinking, right, how do we market our company to to desired job seekers while also showcasing our brand across social media? So allay. Hi, Bob, I'm going to kick off with you because like I said earlier you guys are doing something right when you go and you see the number of followers that you have, the campaigns that you're running, how you're owning social. Like I wake up daily wanting to work at Hibob. So can you tell me a little bit about Hibob and how you're doing it?
8:02
Ale Schlesinger
Yeah. First of all, I want to take it back to that number, that 64% that you said. And that really ties in with our entire kind of model. Whether it's our product or the company itself is people first. Always put your people first. You will see that over and over in all of our social posts. You'll see that in all of our blogs and our guides. The most important asset a business has has is its people. And together with that comes the product that we've developed. So we're a modern HR platform for modern businesses. And it's a platform that kind of takes all of the HR management. And Mark will jump in here and as he is the HR person who is often using the, the product from the HR side can tell us whether it's true or not. Obviously it is. We are taking companies that work globally remotely and giving them an opportunity to still work collaboratively. We're taking a platform and making a modern home for employees. So like I said, Mark is working on the HR side, but I'm an employee of Hibob and I'm using Bob on the daily as an employee. We, I use the different features and it's a huge part of my day to day. As Mark said earlier, we have grown so quickly. And actually I started at Hibob November 2021 and then I actually went on maternity leave a month later. And when I left There were about 300 people in the company and when I came back it was over 700. So I had a little bit of a hard time knowing who everybody was when I came back from mat leave. And so that's where I would heavily rely on Bob to use our org chart, to use our directory. Somebody would come up and talk to me about social, about whatever, maybe I wasn't sure who they were. So I would go straight into Bob, be like, I could use the Club View, which is like if I, if somebody spoke to me in Spanish I mentioned before, Argentinian maybe I didn't know their name. So I would go into our Club View and be like, okay, who speaks Spanish? And be able to find the picture and figure out exactly who they were. So it's a huge part of our daily activity as a remote company and as an in person company as a hybrid model as a whole, to be able to really kind of have a home, even though we're all dispersed all over the world. Seven different sites and then la.
10:36
Jennifer Gutman
Like, I know because I've been keeping up with you guys. I do follow you on LinkedIn. You guys have been winning award after award after award for being, you know, nominated and winning great places to work and honored with all of these really awards of excellence. So congratulations to the Hive up team. I want to go into, right. Kind of. And Mark, this is probably totally your cam. You're talking to a bunch of marketers. So. So, right. But what, when comes into building out, right, you're thinking about company culture, right? And I feel like sometimes it's like chicken and the egg, right? It's like what comes first are, is, are these how the people are behaving and then you kind of mold your EVP around it or are you creating an EVP and then like adapting the people and looking for who you hire? So what goes into building the ideal evp? What is it? And like, can you tell us from the world of HR and give us some insight into that?
11:34
Mark
Yeah, I mean evp, it's a very like, it's a really small, subtle distinction, but there is one, right? EVP and employer brand are two different things. Your, your EVP is your value proposition, right? So you're talking to your current employees and people who potentially come work to you and say, can I, you're almost writing that contract between you as the business and the people that you may want to come and work for you to say, this is, this is us. And if you're bought into that, this is what we can give you if you can work it. The branding piece then becomes how do you, how do you, how do you then market that to that EVP to the outside world? But to that first point on, I get that chicken and egg thing, like which comes first. I think it's really interesting. I think what you definitely cannot do is say, okay, well here's our EVP and this is how we're going to go and find some people that fit it. Most companies, startup organizations or whatever, the first thing they're doing is not thinking, what's our EVP going to be? Before we go and hire anybody. They've just got to bring people in, build the product, get the funding, grow even further. If you think about our journey as a company, our evp, it didn't really become a thing. To 800 people. So you, I think everyone talks about it. And it's a very difficult thing to kind of button down. But you know, for most organizations, your EVP is kind of already there when you, before you start thinking about doing it because you've, you've naturally started to culture build. And I think obviously it's a lot easier to do when you have a leadership that portray their image of what they want the culture within their organization to be. I think we're very fortunate we have a CEO and leadership where culture is coming right from the very top down. So maybe it made it easier for us to do it. But I think the chicken and egg answer thing is you, I don't think you, it has to come after, right? The company already has to be there, you already have to have people in it. And then you, what you want to be doing is going and capturing what that it is to put it into the evp. Which is why the, the, my biggest answer to the question of what goes into building it is feedback, right? You, you cannot build it if you don't ask your current people what, what their, what their perception on you as an employer and what you offer is, you know, you can't go and build an EVP because the clues in the name, employee value proposition. If you're not going to ask your employees about it, then how do you even know it's accurate? So, but for me, yeah, where do you start? Feedback. And you know, that's taken from personal experience, not just here, but in companies I've worked at previously. You start by gaining as much information and asking as many questions as possible to the people that you already have working for you. And you know, it's lots and lots of qualitative data starting to pull that into themes. And then you might go back to the same focus group and say, right, we've pulled all your feedback and we've kind of come up with these. Let's dive into some of these areas a bit further. And how much are they resonating or not? And you know, you get the baseline of what's our value right now, but then you have to do the next piece of what do we not do enough? What do people feel like they're not getting enough from a value point of view? What is it that they want more of? How do we amplify that or add to it? And so it all starts with looking in. You have to look inward on it before you can then start to take it outward. Because I suppose we come onto it a bit with the marketing, the branding piece. But like your employees are not going to push out and support your branding efforts if they have absolutely no affinity to what it is you're putting out there. Otherwise they'll just look at it and go, oh, my God. So you let my watches started to talk to me. So otherwise there will be. There will be no affinity to it and nobody's going to want to push out because you as a business come along and go, hey, here's what we're like. And you've got 700 people sat there going, no, we're not. So you need, yeah, a short answer to. You need to ask your people first before you even think about building it or pushing anything out.
16:26
Jennifer Gutman
Absolutely. And, you know, kind of going off of that. You kind of mentioned it as you were speaking, but right. When you're creating and nurturing a positive company culture, we know now that the EVP really comes from the people and that you're kind of navigating and understanding and analyzing how the people behave and what kind of culture is being, you know, built naturally. But how do you then make sure that it's positive and what, what goes into creating and nurturing it?
16:56
Mark
Yeah. So I think thinking about the answer to this question, probably reflective more on the times that we're in as well. Right. So if you think about it, if I think about it from my point of view, you know, I spend last year, I spent most of my time thinking about this from the point of view of we need to bring lots and lots of new people into the business. So we're saying this is what we're like. Do you fancy coming and being a part of it? Whereas, you know, this year there's perhaps a bit of a shift in. We're very fortunate.
17:34
Greg Mcloughlin
Right.
17:34
Mark
We're still growing as an organization. And I know, you know, we don't need to talk about macroeconomic climate or whatever. You know, lots of businesses aren't in that situation. So, you know, trying to think of this more broadly in terms of not just going out there to add to your talent, but also how do you, how do you make sure that you've worked really hard as a business to bring them in. You've gone out there and said, hey, this is, you know, with your, with your evp, with your brand, and said, hey, this is what we're like. You got to put your money where your mouth is. Right. If what you've been selling in the shop window doesn't actually match up with what's on the shelf when they get there, people are going to leave very quickly and especially in these challenging times, say this in the nicest possible way for the companies like us that are still growing, we want to go and take your people, right? So if you're in a bad spot, we'll take them. So maintaining that culture so that we talked about it in a retention point of view is also really, really important, think important to make sure that this covers both elements. And so some of these things for me, especially in a time like this, continue to be transparent, be open with everything. How is the company performing? Is it above expectation? Below expectation where if you as an organization are going to need to pivot to meet the changing needs of the market, tell people about it, make you fear is bred in uncertainty, right? And if people don't feel like they're fully aware of what's going on, then that people, if you don't tell people, they'll talk amongst themselves and you don't want that to start happening in your organization. So again, this is kind of a, you know, a leadership message I guess. But making sure that, that, that openness and communication is being fed, it's being seen to be important is being, is being fed fit from, from the top. You know, make, make, make sure you are, you know, make. So go back to high Bob. I don't want to sell it too much, but it's, it's, it's been. I think one of the best ways I've ever heard it described is it's like work day, which for the people who aren't keen on HRC workdays, very big, powerful kind of HR system but people have described it as kind of work day on the back and Instagram esque on the front. Right. We've got a very good blend of a system that does drive engagement and culture within an organization. And that's what we sell the value of Bob on And I think not saying that everyone has to have a systems do help, but however you want to do it. Hibob is a very good tool for creating that community and Ale talked about it with the way she uses it as an employee. That's what we encourage in our own organization and that's what Bob helps other businesses to do do so, you know, however you want to do it. Making sure that the transparency and openness, the communication brings people together and links into, you know, tough times. Celebrate everything, celebrate the small stuff, you know, because it's important to remind yourselves that there is a lot of cool, funky, important stuff that's happening in a business. You know, you only got to look at the news and it's like, lay off this doom and gloom, that whatever, but focus on the things that are going on in your organization that are fun and exciting and new. XYZ just closed the biggest deal in the company's history. Hooray. Like shout about it, you know, do something about it. Promotions, people having babies, you know, whatever it might be. You know, you're, you're encouraging people to form that connection with somebody and you're, yeah, you're kind of spreading the positive positivity as well and, and caveat that, say with that last point or make sure you don't forget it. You know, I think there's a lot of, there's a, a habit or a, and sometimes it can be an unconscious desire to go and do it. But you know, if you're, if you're thinking about like a downturn in the economy that goes straight into, right, we've got to, we've got to save money, we've got to do this, we've got to do that, right? What can we cut? And, and some of it's quite often some of the first things to, to go are all the things that are keeping people engaged and motivated and happy. So you know, the little, the little gifts that come out to people on their birthdays or the, the celebrations in the office for, for holidays and events and, and the things that help cement that culture in the first place. If you just look at them purely on a cost basis as some comes with you, you take all that away, then you're inhibiting the culture. And again, people go, oh well, it's not highball anymore. For example, if we're not celebrating everyone's birthday or giving their birthday off anymore or whatever it might be. So actually there's so much evidence out there that talks about, I read a talk once about, it's basically going to your CFO and saying it's actually really good to spend money on these things for employees because, you know, it's been proven that productivity engagement and that output in your workforce actually increases tenfold as a result of putting a bit of money on this stuff anyway. So don't just see it as a short term cost saving. There's a longer term impact to the organization by, you know, again, either willfully or otherwise neglecting some of that stuff.
23:20
Jennifer Gutman
I think you raise a lot of powerful points especially in these financial times are, you know, a bit uncertain in this economy right now. So thank you for, for sharing that and really, you know, putting that straight. I think it's an important message. I Want to shift for a moment and this can be a debate. Greg, you're welcome to chime in la Mark. But when I think about marketing and HR working together, right. Like, especially when it comes to the evp, because in some ways, right, hr, you guys are the experts in people, but I have to hand it to marketing. They're the experts in branding and right. Literally it's in their, their job description, like to market marketing. So what involvement should or does marketing have in an evp, if any? And you know, we can kind of debate it a little bit, but feel free, whoever wants to take it first,
24:19
Ale Schlesinger
I'll jump in. You know, it's funny you say that HR is the experts in people, which they 1000% are. But I also. So I actually another fun fact about me, I have a master's degree in psychodrama therapy. And so this like psychological point of view and understanding people combined with the love of writing is actually what led me to marketing and to social media. So I definitely think that to be a good marketer, or sorry, marketeer, you have to really kind of understand people. You need to know your audience, you need to know who you're selling to, you need to know what they want to hear and you need to know how to talk to them. And that is so combined with what HR is doing on another level. Like they're the people experts where, the people experts where I feel like, Mark, tell me what you think. But I feel like we're two sides of the same coin and we just work together so much, especially at a company like Hibob where, you know, people like Mark are my audience.
25:41
Mark
Yeah, I'd echo everything there. You know, I think you see it in so many other businesses. I mean, when I've, where I've worked in before, you know, sometimes the people team have gone and hired, you get kind of recruitment, marketing or people marketing, whatever, your bringing people in to do the marketing team's job, quite frankly. But the problem is in most organizations is that because we're not, we're not as aligned, as closely aligned as we should be in other organizations. Because if you go and work for a bank or whatever, the marketing team are talking about selling current accounts to people on the street. And why do we need to work with the HR team? Those guys just do stuff for the people already here or whatever. Right. But I think the nice thing about here is that window of opportunity to say we're selling, we're selling to the same audience, just in a slightly different way. So actually this is probably One of the best case examples to be in an organization where you can kind of show the power of when these two teams do actually spend a bit of time together and talk to each other because whatever the marketing team does from a company level inevitably helps pull candidates to us anyway and vice versa, if we do some, if we do something that tries to encourage people to come and look at us to come and work here, actually they may all, they may work in the HR space and decide that they want to buy Bob for the organization they currently work in. So there's, you know, there is that trade off and there's so many other examples of, in other industries of actually why HR and marketing teams should spend more time with each other than they do. So, you know, from a personal perspective, I'd echo that and say that actually we're, I think both, both teams are in a very fortunate position to sort of through, through circumstance because of what we do be, be made to work with each other. But you know, it's very easy to see the, the output of that as well.
27:43
Jennifer Gutman
So perhaps what you're hinting at, right, is why hibob is so successful in both EVP and what you're doing in marketing and across social is because there's a quite heavy involvement of marketing with HR and vice versa with HR and marketing. And which leads me right to kind of our final point with Hibob before we hop over to Greg at LinkedIn. But right when it comes to social media, I think everybody recognizes brands, recognize today that social media is no longer a nice to have, but it's a must have. And now it's all about figuring out. Right. And cracking the code to how to do employer branding. Right. So la, can you talk us through a little bit? And I see these fantastic examples. How is social media strengthening your brand? And when it comes to specifically employer branding, what are the, some of the things that you're doing to showcase your team across your social channels?
28:38
Ale Schlesinger
Yeah, well, one of my, I mean my main thought process when it comes to social media in general is that social media for a brand, whether it be B2B or B2C or whatever it is, is an extension of the personality of the company, just like it is in our personal lives. So just like your LinkedIn is about your professional life and your Instagram is about your personal life and whatever it is that should be kind, it's the same idea in a company social media. And like we said, we are a modern platform, we're for modern brands. Our, our platform itself is Fun, engaging. It's very social media, like itself, just as Mark was saying. You know where we've got that Instagram in the front type of feel. When you work with Bob, you're getting a fun vibe, like, want to be here, tone of voice, relax. Like, that's kind of the vibe and the feel that our product is. And so I work really hard to make sure that all of our social is. Is an extension of that is also a fun place to be, or at least what I think is fun, because I tend to think that I'm funnier than I probably am. But, like, we really want to go with that kind of extension of this is our personality. So if you're seeing our social, you're seeing a fun vibe. And then if you take that into the product, it translates. And if you look at it from a company culture and an EVP perspective, it's the same thing. It is a fun place to be. It is a fun place to work. It is a fun product to use, and it's hopefully a fun social media page to look through. So here are some just examples of the way that we're taking really relevant things and making it fun and interesting. So you've got, for example, the when this I'm the problem, it's me trend was going around with Taylor Swift. When she came out with her new album, we kind of incorporated that. Is it because we were hopping on the trend, or is it because I'm personally obsessed with Taylor Swift? I'll let you guys decide. But we wanted to keep it modern. We wanted to keep it with. With it. And then you see the same thing with our EVP announcement. We had a huge launch of the campaign. And so we talked about how it's being you, being Bob. You can see the first line. Uevp. Who did who this? Like, you know, we're going with what is fun to be around. And obviously everyone loves animals. So when we talk about, for example, our. We have once a. Once a quarter, we have what's called the bow balance day, where the whole company takes a day off. So, as in the company shuts down for the day, so that everybody, like, really is able to kind of, you know, unwind and shut everything down. So we connected that with our, like, animals, with our pets. These are barber pets. Basically, we're taking things that are relevant and using that for what we're talking about. And that includes our product and our social and of course, what it's like to be a bobber, which is what we call ourselves, our employees, Our Bobbers.
32:06
Jennifer Gutman
So, like I said, when you go on to hi, Bob's Instagram, you're going to want to become a Bobber. I want to. Just before we hop into LinkedIn and before we answer, how does HR and marketing work together? La, I know that one of the initiatives, I'm just going to go back a slide that you work religiously on. And I think that this is also a testament to how amazing the Hibob culture is. But you're leading one of the strongest employee advocacy programs at I think that I've seen. And I was wondering if maybe you can give some insight specifically to how. Right. Employee advocacy as a strategy or as a program. Right. How does that help position hibob as a fantastic way to work? How does that help employees feel part of the organization and want to be sharing this. This amazing content?
33:01
Ale Schlesinger
Yeah. That ties directly into what Mark was saying earlier is that you need to have the kind of company culture that your people want to share. And because we are, we do have an incredible company culture at hibob. And I can say that because I'm not an hr, I'm an employee. So it's not biased when I say that, like, we have a great company culture because I'm not the one creating it. I'm the one enjoying it and benefiting from it. So we have this incredible culture and because of it, our people are barbers. They want to be engaged with the company. When we launched our advocacy program, I had people slacking me nonstop asking me to join the program, asking me how they can join, asking me for tips and tricks, and they want to be a part of it. So because of that, we are able to use advocacy, which obviously we use through Oktopost and we love. We're able to then provide our people with content to share. So I give them, you know, an asset. Hey, guys, we have a new content piece that came out and we'll put that up for them. They can share it. I can give them the text to share it. They can write their own thing. And actually something that we really strongly measure our success in terms of advocacy on is the edit ratio. We want. We check how often our people are editing the. The post and not just clicking share because that's usually is engagement.
34:30
Mark
Yes.
34:30
Ale Schlesinger
They're going. If they're not just clicking share and they're saying, oh, I am putting up this asset, but I'm going to change it and I'm going to write my own thing. That to us means that they're engaged with the company. That's also means that they're engaged with the brand. And that, of course, is what we're trying to do through advocacy, is trying to create that employee engagement.
34:51
Jennifer Gutman
Absolutely. And if you think back to one of the first slides we shared, right. We said, why is employer brand so important? And when you think too, and employee advocacy program, right. Your. Your employees are now sharing content, whether it's about the brand or the pride of which where they work. And all of these. These great pieces of content through an advocacy program. Right. And then your customers who are then connected to those employees are seeing, wow, this, this employee really loves where they work. This must be a great company to do business with. Right. So employer branding all around is quite important. Last but not least for Hi, Bob. Right. And you. You shed a lot of light on this. So maybe just to kind of wrap up how you guys are working together, but. Right. What would you say? I'll rephrase the question here, but what would you say is the key to how. Hi, Bob. HR and marketing are working together?
35:42
Ale Schlesinger
Yeah, I do think that we kind of went off topic earlier and really kind of answered most of this. But to wrap it up, I personally would say that, like, we are. I try to be super aware of what HR is doing and what HR is consuming, because that's who I want to speak to on my channels. So any kind of company culture, any kind of activity, they'll do that to me, is content that I want to put out to our readers.
36:10
Jennifer Gutman
Fantastic. So I want to shift over to our partners over at LinkedIn, because you guys, I mean, you're the platform we're all living and breathing on, and we want to know from you, Greg, if you can share how the algorithm works at any time, feel free. I'll just throw that in there. However, we want to understand a little bit better. What does LinkedIn have to say about employer branding? Right. What. What exactly is the lay of the land in terms of how we should be utilizing LinkedIn for showcasing our employer brand in an authentic way?
36:46
Greg Mcloughlin
Absolutely. Thanks, Jen. And maybe just a call out. First of all, it is incredibly refreshing and energizing to have somebody like, hi, Bob, like, on this call today. Like, the stuff you're doing on LinkedIn is absolutely phenomenal. So there's a genuine privilege. It makes me super excited to see some of those pieces shared today. And, yeah, I'm a massive fan, so thank you so much for having me today. But look, just to kind of step. Step back a little bit, just before we go into those nuts and pieces around Employer branding. I think it's good just to kind of look at the economic graph thus far. So just to kick things off here, so we actually just passed the 900 million member mark on LinkedIn. So the road to a billion is super, super close. We're super excited about that. And those members are across 200 plus countries and territories. We have about 1.85 monthly interactions with organizations. And just to your left there, which I think is increasingly important, is skills. We have about 39,000 skills on LinkedIn and counting skills. I'm sure the HR people can speak about this here. Skills are becoming an increasingly important currency in the HR space and in the LinkedIn ecosystem itself. So super excited about 2023 and what it can bring. So Jen, if you can get me onto the next slide. Amazing. So just when we talk about the members on LinkedIn, it's super important to keep in mind that 70% of our members are what's called passive candidates. So if you think about the 30%, those active candidates, so you have jobs online and people are jumping onto those jobs and applying. So those jobs are getting you exposure. About 30% of our members on platform. But if you don't have that employer branding strategy, you're leaving out that 70% of people, people who aren't actively looking for jobs right now, but will be in the future. So when you're kind of positioning your employer branding strategy, you got to ask yourself, how are we tapping into that 70%, the vast majority of our member base on LinkedIn, and how are you showcasing your employer brand in a meaningful and engaging way? So if you can move on to the next slide. Amazing. So just a few high level stats on employer branding on LinkedIn. So candidates are 1.8 times more likely to apply for a role if they're familiar with the company. Employees are 60% more likely to engage with posts from co workers. Employees are 14 times more likely to share their organization's page content. And lastly, companies with a strong employer brand see a 43% decrease in recruitment costs. So there's something to be said here. How do you kind of engage your current employees to kind of amplify your content in a more authentic way? And then how do you use that employer brand to actually tap into those priority candidates to actually fuel your pipeline into the future? So if you could move on to the next slide just to go through some free tools here that are at your disposal. So first there's the My Company tab. You would have seen this ramp at some point in 2022. It lives on your company page. It's actually a really great way just to get some of those engaging employee posts just to get you started. It will kind of bring out, bring up some trending employee posts. Like to be honest, like employee posts are almost like the low hanging fruit for your employer brand strategy. So I'd highly recommend you jump in here. You can also curate some recommendations for you to just give employees some content to share that's super important. Like if you think about your kind of employer branding strategy on LinkedIn, like a company that kind of says we're great, come work for us sometimes lacks a little bit of authenticity, right? So using your employees as a vehicle to kind of amplify that employer brand, it kind of adds some authenticity along the way there. So you can see Engage employees influence 8 times more company page views, 4 times more company page followers, 7 times more job views, and 4 times more job applications. So the writings on the walls. If you're not leveraging your employees to actually kind of amplify that employee brand, you're really missing out on a trick here. So if you go on to the next slide, like content suggestions tool, this has been around for quite some time now, but it's a really great way just to kind of help you just understand what people are engaging with on LinkedIn. So for example, you could look at, I don't know, you can see here, San Francisco, you could look at a specific job function maybe in a certain industry and I'll just quickly give you a list of some pieces that people are engaging with on LinkedIn. If you're lacking some thought leadership content, if you're just looking for inspiration just to fuel that content strategy, it's just a super quick way just to help you gather some kind of living breathing examples on LinkedIn to kind of form that strategy further. So if we move on to our kind of more paid solutions, we do have LinkedIn career pages. This will live in the life tab of your company page. This is basically a fully customizable landing page to just help you showcase your employer brand in really whatever way you want. You can share kind of like LinkedIn leaders, maybe some specific profiles, some stories from employees across your business. It's a nice nifty feature. You can also customize the view depending on who visits. So for example, if you have somebody from IT that visits your career page, like they will get a full view just specific for it. So you could show it leaders some stories from people maybe in engineering and then if somebody from marketing visits, that will automatically change for somebody suited to marketing. So it's a really nice way of just showcasing different sides of your business depending on who's actually viewing. And next, there's also like our actual kind of paid media solutions. Like this is something I would work quite closely with. So you know your organic activity, while super important, can only go so far. So like if you're kind of lacking that reach on your organic side, what the paid solutions can do is basically amplify that content to people who might not see your content or might not even follow your page. So we have like tons of solutions here, whether it's video ads, single image ads, carousel ads that would live on the LinkedIn newsfeed, and then all the way to kind of dynamic ads or kind of text ads if you're just looking to build your follower base in some priority candidates for the long term and if you could move on to the next slide. Grant. So just some quick examples just of how you can kind of just I guess jumpstart your employer brand strategy on LinkedIn organically. So first off, I said this before and again we have hibob, the living breathing superstars at this but just showcase your employees here. I was delighted to get one example from hibob to the left here. But you can see some quick and easy ways that some businesses on LinkedIn are doing this. Like booking.com like an employee took a video of an off site, super simple, they just share it straight away and it just makes a super powerful piece of content. Netflix opt to just share outright, just share that share a piece from their employees directly from the LinkedIn feed. And lastly, another one that I'm actually quite fond of is Sainsbury's. If you're not familiar with Sainsbury's, they're a supermarket based in the United Kingdom and they have a hub called Sainsbury's Digital tech and data. They're really good at sharing those employee stories specific for it, which is a priority for the business. So I'd really highly recommend you check that out and if you move on to the next slide, amazing. So like diversity, inclusion and belonging, it's becoming an increasingly important topic on LinkedIn. And like for your business, it is super important that you really kind of take a stance and kind of voice your opinion. You'll see some three quick examples here of just kind of like showcasing it's Black History Month if you weren't aware of that. So you can see Amazon, you can see LinkedIn, you can see IBM just kind of sharing some quick pieces. And to be honest, like, I would really recommend you just jump into LinkedIn and maybe search some of these pieces because you'll see the hashtag Black History Month, for example. It's a really quick way to just get some inspiration and like, yeah, hopefully that can kind of feed your strategy further. Again, working back to the My Company tab, you will see some pieces of content bleed through there through as the month goes on. So share that content like your employees are arguably your best vehicle to amplify your employer brand. So like, like this is super important, like for, for a company, but also for your employees as well. And if we can move on to the next slide,
45:42
Jennifer Gutman
here we go.
45:43
Mark
Brilliant.
45:43
Greg Mcloughlin
Okay, sorry, I'm Irish, so I can talk for hours. Absolutely. So someone has to stop me somewhere.
45:52
Jennifer Gutman
We can listen to you for days. And listen, I think when it comes to what we've spoken about today and employer branding, I think we can all make the case that we really need to think through a powerful and engaging employer branding strategy. It's super important. Right? How are you going to do that? I'll throw it out there as Oktopost. Perhaps you want to give the Oktopost employee advocacy tool a try. Don't believe me? Talk to la. If you're listening in from HR and you're looking for an engaging tool, you know, go ahead and hit up Hibob and of course LinkedIn, our partners. Thank you so much for joining us today as well. Some of those best practices have my brain spinning, especially the My Company tab and how we can better utilize how we position our company on LinkedIn. So with that said, thank you all for joining us. I've gone ahead here. Everybody will get a copy of this presentation after the webinar. You can see that our contact details are linked. If you go ahead and click on our names, you'll bring us bring you to our LinkedIn pages and you're more than welcome to reach out. We'd love to hear from you. It was a blast having you all and hopefully we can do it all again soon.
46:59
Greg Mcloughlin
Thank you so much everybody.
47:01
Jennifer Gutman
Thank you everyone again for joining. While we are at time and we don't have time to address all of the wonderful questions that have come through, I will be making sure to get back to everyone via email to answer all questions with follow up answers and the right resources. So thank you again and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.
