Anyone who follows this blog knows I spend as much time talking about our culture as I do discussing our marketing and social media strategies. The reason is simple, they go hand in hand; our employees define our culture and without them our marketing strategies would be dead in the water. From our employee recruiter program to social media testimonials promoting diversity – our employees are the key to it all.
Social media testimonials are the cause of our current conundrum.
Within our immediate work group we receive enthusiastic support for this outreach. However, when we request testimonials from contacts outside of our ‘shop’ we encounter increased hesitation.
We put out the call for employee testimonials for our LinkedIn company page and let’s just say we’ve been underwhelmed by the response.
At first we thought that it might be a fear of the unknown. To combat this, we make sure people understand these testimonials are only used on official approved social media sites. We provide specific guidelines for what testimonials should look like – from word count to questions employees can consider when writing their testimonial. Despite all these details, it’s still a struggle to find employees who are willing to share their story with our external audiences.
How do get employees to buy in to the idea that storytelling is a great recruitment tool?
Recruitment 411 is the official blog of the IRS Recruitment Office.
Hi Julie,
Last summer one of our Canadian Gov’t departments (Parks Canada) asked their student employees to put together videos of their summer jobs to assist in promoting and recruiting people for their department. They’ve displayed them on their external website below.
http://www.pc.gc.ca/media/index_e.asp
Hope this helps. If you need more info or have any questions let me know.
Rod Gallant
Canada Revenue Agency
Here are some high-level thoughts that may spur some inspiration…
• Create a contest of some sort – people tend to get excited or more interested around contests
• Conduct a survey and use the results to compile a general sentiment – this provides an easy way for input that may not seem as overwhelming as writing a testimonial
• Ask department heads or all employees to nominate co-workers for recognition and interview them – many people like to talk as opposed to writing
Many might perceive the request as an overwhelming task – the more you can do to narrow the scope of the idea the better. How you promote the request is also important, you will want to make it as exciting as possible and let them know that it is a valuable use of their time. Incentives are always helpful and don’t have to be anything spectacular or outrageous but something that will be worthwhile.