Using TikTok as a Recruiting Tool
Within 2 years of its release on the App Store, TikTok became the most downloaded app with over 1 billion active monthly users. Since its creation, the app has truly transformed into a key marketing tool for businesses, brands, and even recruiters. That’s because the methodology for TikTok is simple: create engaging content. Whether it’s sharing those still popular dance videos or sharing an interesting tidbit about your product or service, TikTok’s algorithm will push your content to the right viewers and in turn, potentially help you get viral and reach new audiences.
So how does this help recruiters you ask? Well, if you’re hiring, chances are many of your candidates are already utilizing TikTok. Because of this, reaching out to your audience via TikTok can be a great way to recruit candidates and get your name out there. Companies like DuoLingo have mastered this by showing what a day in the life of their company looks like while creating funny and trendy content. But before you begin your engagement on TikTok you’ll want to do some research into what topics are trending on the app in your specialty. A great way to do this is by browsing relevant hashtags, such as #construction or #plumbersoftiktok, which have 23.1 billion and 342 million views respectively. Once you can get an idea of what topics are trending in your specialty, you can use this knowledge to create engaging content of your own. As a bonus, be sure to use those same hashtags in the caption of your post to boost engagement and chances of landing on the sought-after “For You Page,” i.e. where viral videos usually wind up.
Once you have an idea for what type of content to post, a few other key tips to get your videos seen are to utilize trending sounds and filters. Oftentimes TikTok will push the use of these trending sounds to users which will ultimately boost your engagement. So be sure to stay in the know of what’s trending.
It is also good practice to share content that revolves around your employees. Users and potential candidates want to know what it’s like to work for your company before they apply, so creating some content that features current workers can be very helpful. This can be anywhere from a day-in-the-life type of video to an explanation of why they enjoy working for the company or their job in general.
Some of your employees may create their own content, and you never know, one of them could have become viral/an influencer. If that is the case in your business, it’s never a bad idea to encourage their creativity by partnering with them on your company account. Your employee can then even take over your company account and create content that way sharing your business to their viewers that are already engaging with them. Even if you don’t have an influencer employee, you can also try to reach out to existing influencers that you enjoy the content of or that align with your companies goals to try and partner to share more about your brand, both of these strategies have been effective with brands like American Eagle, Aerie, and Kum&Go Convenience stores.
If your budget allows it you can even consider promoted posts on TikTok which have been proven extremely successful for many users. Alongside these, brands have come up with creative hashtags and challenges for other users to use and attempt to create a stream of potentially viral videos. For example, American Eagle’s brand Aerie created the #AerieREAL challenge which encouraged users to share videos of themselves feeling “real” while utilizing the hashtag. The company promoted a few of these posts of their own and ones where they partnered with influencers gaining a lot of traction and resulting in 8.4 billion videos using the hashtag.
The key to TikTok is truly about getting creative along with using the tips and tricks from above. While you may not go viral on every video, you’ll likely reach a much wider audience of candidates who are interested in working for your company and filling your open positions much faster.
