As a Cleveland employer, you have many networking strategies for hiring. These strategies help market your employer brand and encourage candidates to apply for job openings within your organization.
Networking helps you engage with active and passive candidates, showcase your employer brand, and diversify your candidate pools. These activities help you reach your hiring goals.
Choose among these networking strategies for hiring in Cleveland.
Ensure Your Company’s Website and Social Media Stay Updated
Make sure the content on your company’s website and social media pages remains current. Similar to how Cleveland continues to modernize and innovate, your website and social media should keep up with the changes within your organization.
More job seekers are moving to Cleveland to find roles that fit their skills, experience, and interests. As a result, they might view your website and/or social media to look for job openings. Therefore, you should provide the most current information to support your networking strategies for hiring.
You can use these tips to keep the content on your website and social media updated:
- Emphasize your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and progress.
- Post recent employee stories, testimonials, work photos, and videos to demonstrate your company’s culture.
- Share positive employer reviews that highlight why employees enjoy working for your organization.
- Highlight your company’s mission, vision, and values to attract like-minded employees.
- Include your employee benefits and perks.
- Ensure your Careers page lists current job openings with accurate job descriptions.
- Stay active on the social media platforms where your targeted demographics spend the most time.
Encourage Employee Referrals
Ask employees to refer qualified members of their networks. These members should fit with your company’s culture and have the necessary skills and experience to be successful in the role.
Employee referrals typically perform their best and remain long-term because they already know someone within your organization. As a result, you save on hiring, onboarding, and training costs.
Leverage Social Media for Hiring in Cleveland
Most job seekers use social media to learn about companies, discover job opportunities, and communicate with employers. Therefore, social media should be among your top networking strategies for hiring.
You can use social media in the following ways to help fill your hiring needs:
- Provide customized content that engages your audience with company news, employee accomplishments, and job openings.
- Respond to comments, questions, and feedback to build relationships.
- Use targeted advertising to share job postings based on audience demographics, skills, experience, interests, and related details.
- Engage with followers by inviting them to participate in online events.
- Participate in LinkedIn Groups and other online gathering spaces to network with industry professionals.
- Identify and qualify active and passive candidates.
- Offer informational interviews.
- Measure and analyze key metrics such as reach, impressions, clicks, and conversions to determine the most effective social media hiring strategies.
Participate in Cleveland Job Fairs
Network with job seekers at Cleveland job fairs relevant to your industry:
- Offer resources that provide information on your company, job openings, and career growth opportunities.
- Talk with participants about their career goals, skills, and experience.
- Ask follow-up questions to learn more about what participants are looking for in employment opportunities.
- Highlight specific ways your organization provides opportunities that match participants’ interests.
- Request participants’ information to follow up later.
- Build participant relationships to increase your candidate pools.
- Set up interviews with qualified candidates.
Sponsor Cleveland Area Professional Groups
Engage in sponsorship opportunities for Cleveland area professional groups relevant to your industry. You can network with the members and build relationships to widen your candidate pools.
Engage! Cleveland
Engage! Cleveland is a nonprofit organization focused on early career professionals, emerging leaders, and business and community members who want to make the city a lasting home for the next generation. The organization’s goal is to attract, engage, and retain diverse talent in the Greater Cleveland area by connecting them to people, jobs, companies, and events.
Sponsorship opportunities
Engage! Cleveland’s sponsorship opportunities include programs, learning opportunities, and Cleveland-centric content for emerging professionals. The sponsorship opportunities support the nonprofit organization’s mission to provide professional and personal development opportunities at affordable rates. The different price points and benefits packages are designed to fit a company’s outreach goals and budget.
You might consider sponsoring Engage! Cleveland for any of the following networking opportunities:
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Conference
- Generation NEXT Awards
- Lead CLE: Professional Development Conference
- Young Professionals Week
- Mid-Career Professional Development Series
- Mentorship Programs
Employer benefits
Employers gain many benefits from sponsoring Engage! Cleveland:
- Complimentary, unlimited job postings to the organization’s job board with 50,000+ reach
- 2 complimentary consulting hours with staff
- The ability of an emerging company leader to serve on the leadership council
- Exclusive members-only e-blasts about early registration, discounts, news, and events
- Invitations to elite Cleveland events with complimentary or discounted tickets
- Feature story in the organization’s newsletter reaching 8,100+
- Logo recognition on the website and in the monthly newsletter
Increase Your Company’s Visibility Through Community Events
Participate in activities that increase your company’s visibility within the Cleveland area. Many job seekers prefer to work for organizations that are active within the local community. As a result, you can attract employees whose values align with your company’s.
You can choose among the following opportunities to increase your company’s visibility within the Cleveland community:
- Sponsor local sports events for school-age children.
- Provide paid volunteer days for individual employees and teams to support local nonprofit organizations.
- Reward employee milestones by providing donations to a local charity of their choice.
Partner with a Cleveland Staffing Firm
Work with an experienced Cleveland staffing firm that specializes in your industry:
- Talk with a recruiter about your specific hiring needs.
- Interview a few vetted candidates.
- Negotiate a job offer.
- Onboard the new hire with help from the recruiter.
- Engage in regular follow-up with the recruiter to ensure your complete satisfaction.
- Request a replacement at no charge if the candidate does not work out.
Would You Like Help with Hiring in Cleveland?
Vector Technical can provide qualified professionals to help reach your Cleveland company’s hiring goals. Connect with us to learn more today.
