Social Media Best Practices for Senior Living and LTC

Employer Branding: Using Social Media To Recruit Senior Care Staff

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Here's a great social media/networking story for you. Today I was contacted by Jodi Bach of Pacific Resources, a company that does recruiting for the senior living industry. She found me via my Linkedin profile. She was interested in what we do here at CareNetworks and wondered if, in addition to helping senior living and eldercare companies connect with customers, we did any "employment or employer branding." I was intrigued by her question, but had to confess that I wasn't sure exactly what employer branding was. She explained that employer branding is essentially marketing companies to potential employees, as opposed to marketing to potential customers. Jodi went on to say that, in the senior living and eldercare industries, this makes a lot of sense because companies are often trying to recruit from a small pool of qualified candidates (she should know). After she explained it, I realized I knew exactly what employer branding was (duh). I just didn't realize it was called employer branding. And yes, we do help with that, however, it's not something we have focused on, but maybe it should be. We did cover some elements of employer branding and social media in this post.

Jodi also mentioned that some of the larger senior living companies like Sunrise and Kisco are trying to use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to boost their brands and build a following of potential employees (I'm now following both on Twitter).

Social media changes the game of employer branding because it allows current employees and customers to throw their two cents in to the mix and opens up a dialog between companies and job candidates like never before.

To test how employer branding combined with social media might work for a home care company, we will be adding a job board to the Living Well Community site where prospective employees can view job openings, submit an online resume, ask questions, and get feedback from company executives. Living Well, a company that provides concierge style "at-home" assisted living services is in startup mode and they want to attract exceptional caregivers in a highly competitive market (San Francisco). Using their online community to attract, engage, and build relationships with prospective employees will surely be an interesting endeavor to watch.