ALDI South at Social Recruiting Days 2019: “IT talents want to gain insights at a technical level, with examples of real projects.”
Nadja Auer is responsible for employer branding for IT talent at ALDI SOUTH and a real change agent. It was probably not easy but she managed to roll-out a huge social media campaign which is targeting tech talent. Read about her strategy, learnings, and failures. She will share her experience at this year's Social Recruiting Days in Berlin.
In traditional companies, it may not always be easy to raise awareness of the “war for talent” and how you undertake recruiting nowadays — how did you go about it?
We are a traditional family business with a long history of success and core values that the company has maintained over many years. ALDI SOUTH is aware of the changes occurring in society and the economy and is actively involved in shaping these changes. Our management team is very conscious of the competition within the labor market — especially for IT experts, for which our teams design suitable employer branding and recruiting strategies. For this reason, the initiatives undertaken in our area are strongly supported at management level.
How did you go about the development of your employer branding approach for social media? What data/metrics did you look at?
First of all, it was necessary to take a closer look at the potential channels and their user structures in order to find out which ones were right for achieving our goal: to reach our IT target group and make ALDI SOUTH IT more prominent as an IT employer. Luckily, our colleagues in Germany had already set up career channels on Facebook and Instagram last year and also created company sites on LinkedIn and XING. As a result, we at the International IT office only had to decide which channels we wanted to pursue, with which content, and to which extent. Our activities can be seen as an add-on to the activities, which our colleagues in Germany undertake for other target groups, such as sales, logistics, etc. As we especially want to recruit experienced employees, it became clear very soon that LinkedIn should be our main channel supplemented by the other channels.
What do you think is unique about the ALDI SOUTH approach?
To become the employer of choice, it is no longer sufficient to simply tell stories about what working life at ALDI SOUTH is like or that we offer employer benefits like fresh fruit or home office. IT talents want to gain insights at a technical level, with examples of real projects. And that is exactly what we are doing: integrating IT content into our social media communication concept.
Did you experience immediate success or did the outcome transpire over time?
Since we just launched our social media strategy in June this year, we are still getting an overview of our KPIs and concluding our success so far. What we can say is that until now subject-specific IT content has been well accepted by our target group.
How do you measure your success? What would be your advice to companies to measure the impact?
Of course, we measure our communication through KPIs like impressions, CPC, CPM, website visits and more. We also pay attention to the resonance from within the company. As we come from a very closed company philosophy concerning external communication, the positive internal feedback received shows us that our social media strategy is on the right path to presenting ALDI SOUTH IT as a more open company than it was in previous years.
Was there also a failure or a lesson learned that you would do differently next time?
At the time we started, there was an internal change in the dress code from formal business to a more casual style. During the launch of the social media strategy we did not have new pictures showing employees in casual dress, so all we had were the old ones showing employees with suits. The lesson learned would definitely be to align the timing of the launch with a new photoshoot to ensure a smoother start.
If I wanted to kick off employer branding on social media tomorrow, what would be your three tips?
- Keep yourself connected within the company — it’s the best way to get brand-new content.
- When it comes to something you implement now, be flexible about adjusting it one week later — social media is ever-changing.
- Don’t implement social media tomorrow, do it yesterday :)
Nadja is sharing the ALDI South story at Social Recruiting Days 2019 in Berlin.
Read here how Beiersdorf is fighting the war for talents.
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