Three (free!) employer brand TikTok ideas
Plus, gen z's quarter-life-crisis
Hello!
Thank you for joining me, I’m so glad you’re here.
I hope you are staying cool in this heat. I am very much an Autumn person. My birthday is in October, and I am one of those Tumblr era millennials who feels most at home with a cardigan on, Pumpkin Spice Latte in hand, standing under Autumn leaves.
Grab yourself some iced water, and let’s jump in to today’s newsletter!
One of the major conundrums in early careers recruitment is that organisations pay to train up young people, only for them to go and leave a few years later, before that return on investment has had the chance to return.
There are a variety of ways in which organisations try to get them to stay - some focus on nice culture. Some focus on amazing pay. I’ve worked somewhere that has a “pay back” clause for the training they receive, should they leave. No matter what you do, the grass will look greener elsewhere and young employees will leave.
Though young employees in previous generations certainly would have jumped around a bit early in their career (I certainly did, a couple of times a bit prematurely), I feel that gen z are really searching for something - something that perhaps doesn’t exist.
This is in part due to work not looking how they’d imagined it. Most work presented in popular culture (whether it’s Elle Woods as a lawyer, Sheldon as a scientist or even the cast of Selling Sunset as estate agents) shows an artist’s interpretation of that job. The real counterparts working in those roles will not have an experience similar to what we see on screen.
What’s more, us employer brand folk will insist on making upbeat videos showing a variety of tasks someone could do in a day…without showing that actually most work these days involves replying to emails and responding to Teams messages [LinkedIn].
When you throw the Japanese term “ikigai” into the mix, telling people that they ought to be in work that they’re good at, the world needs, doing what they love…it’s a recipe for unrealistic expectations.
As someone who has had a “dream job” of translating video games at Nintendo, I can tell you that sometimes even doing things you’re interested in, in a field you love, doesn’t always feel like the right place to be. I would bet that there are lots of young employees out there sat in jobs they were told they were destined for, feeling awful because it’s not “it”.
For me, as I sat on a tram on the way to work one morning in Frankfurt, and I felt…not necessarily suicidal, but certainly that I wouldn’t mind not being around anymore, and also that I was being ungrateful because I had made “it” in a job millions would dream of. I knew at that moment that I needed to come back to the UK and find something else - and that quest brought me to early careers, and where I am today. And my job now has quite a lot of answering emails, but it’s better.
I’m going to come out with an #UnpopularOpinion here and say Ikigai is BS. Even Japanese people don’t follow it. You’ve seen those scenes of Japanese business men being crammed onto the morning train, in their heavy suits. Do you think they are ikigai? They can’t even wear clothes that suit the seasons - in Japan they have to have a whole government-backed initiative to tell people to wear lighter clothing to work in the summer [New York Times free link]. We should not be aspiring to be more Japanese in our careers!
All of this is leading to a big surge in gen z experiencing quarter life crisis. This is something I want to dig deeper into next week, as there’s a lot of online content around this, and I do want to give you as promised the three TikTok ideas.
But the bottom line is that this mismatch of expectations of what work was supposed to look like, and what it does in fact look like, I would argue is one of the biggest reasons why your early careers employees are leaving after - statistically - around two years.
The answer to this is for us all to be a lot more realistic with our advertising, and descriptions of what jobs look like. And social media is the perfect place for that…
So without further ado…
Three TikTok ideas to use in your employer brand
Now, I’ll preface this with - I know a lot of orgs out there are scared of social media, especially TikTok. Perhaps these trends could be used in other ways, on other platforms. But they’re three low-risk, light-hearted social media trends you can easily use within an EB strategy. Just be careful if you’re in an org where it takes three months for an idea to be approved - these will look outdated by then, so use them sooner rather than later!
Work fashion
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Starting on easy mode for you! There’s a super cute stepping trend, with different outfits after each transition. Pro tip on TikTok, if you click on the audio used, you can see all the other videos using that audio (and see more examples of the trend).
How you can use it: As explained a few weeks ago, gen z don’t know what to wear to work. So if I were using this audio, I’d get people around the office to do the stepping, showcasing their outfits. I’d switch to a different employee with each transition. You can also showcase your nice offices in the background.
The extreme transition
The content creator has turned off sharing on this so I’ll have to link to the video. And here’s another example. Now, this is a tough one, but this extreme transition is going to get lots of attention.
A non-physical example is using a transition from rising superstar Chappell Roan, as demonstrated by John Lewis.
You can do a nice office tour after the transition, or have someone explain their role…it’s quite versatile. Just don’t break anything doing the transition - ok!
“If you asked me”
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This trend mostly takes the form of four photos in a slider (yes, you can do photos on TikTok!) It always has the music in the linked video above.
The format is:
“If you asked me about _____”
“I’d say _____”
“But if you asked me on a deeper level”
“I’d say ______”
Now this is being used with very low level “themes” such as chips, and Pokemon.
But this could very easily be turned into an EB video.
“If you asked me about [company]/being a [job]/[work perk]”
It’s a very very easy video to make, and would do quite well due to the viral nature of the trend right now.
If you use any of these, please do send me links! I want to showcase more orgs doing amazing social media things!
Links
I really enjoyed listening to the Uncensored CMO podcast episode with Kory M, talking about the story behind e.l.f cosmetics. Here’s a great LinkedIn post with snippets of the best bit. I particularly liked the part where profit is shared amongst the employees.
My friend Kiel at Cambridge tech company TTP shared a BRILLIANT office tour video. Definitely makes me want to work there!
If you’ve been under a rock this week, perhaps you missed the Royal Mail advert that went viral. It’s good fun, and got people talking!
TikTok
Not gen z related, but I loved this video of how AI is helping those with sight loss experience live sports events.
And to finish on a cute video, here’s a festival that was put on in a care home:
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Want even more employer brand examples? Check out my previous newsletter post:
Employer branding in a TikTok world
Have a great week ahead!
See you next week!
Charlotte