How WHC leveraged LinkedIn’s Hiring Enterprise Programme to strengthen its position within a competitive and fragmented marketplace
SUCCESS STORY
Aligning brand awareness goals with ambitious growth trajectories
WHC is an award-winning HR services specialist with more than 30 years of experience in the professional services sector. It is one of the largest industry players in East-Central Europe and in the last two years, has quickly grown its presence. Formed in 1990 and founded in Hungary, WHC has recently entered the market in Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Slovenia and is providing a rapidly growing roster of clients with unrivalled talent acquisition and full-scale HR services.
With a people-first approach to talent acquisition, WHC must attract the most skilled candidates. However, it is operating against a backdrop of industry fragmentation and significant competition from established brands. It needed to increase its brand awareness to drive superior candidate acquisition and ensure its brand awareness goals aligned with its growth trajectory.
WHC turned to LinkedIn to increase its visibility in the marketplace, source highly skilled candidates for an expanding client and geographical portfolio and attract talented individuals to join the organisation to help meet its ambitious growth targets.
THE CHALLENGE
Growing superior candidate engagement and increasing brand awareness
At the beginning of 2023, WHC set ambitious growth plans of 25 per cent in revenue. To deliver its goals, WHC needed to consolidate its market share across key lines of business like white-collar permanent placement. However, its brand wasn’t yet recognised enough to drive superior candidate engagement and responsiveness on LinkedIn compared to the market.
WHC’s use of LinkedIn and results were strong but not strong enough to support its growth goals. Intense competition and market transformation meant the organisation needed to be smarter than its competitors. It had to leverage the power of the platform, develop strong relationships with target candidate groups, increase employer branding and position itself at the forefront of HR services and talent acquisition.
THE SOLUTION
Using LinkedIn to increase visibility and support talent attraction and retention
WHC was experiencing significant pressure on white-collar candidates’ InMail response rates. It was not high enough to ensure a high likelihood of placement success for high-stakes recruitment projects or strategic clients. Furthermore, the organisation also wished to increase its internal recruitment and employer branding to support internal talent attraction and retention.
To ensure WHC met its targets, the company sought to grow its brand awareness, on a monumental scale. It embarked on a large omni-channel brand campaign to achieve brand visibility across Hungary. Statistics and data suggested that 65 per cent of the Hungarian target market had seen the WHC brand at least once in the last 12 months.
WHC used the LinkedIn Hiring Enterprise Programme as a 270-degree communication platform to leverage the full power of LinkedIn Recruiter to reach internal employees (current and future), white-collar specialists, and clients with offices and headquarters in Hungary.
It sought to broaden top and mid-funnel activity across multiple channels including LinkedIn to drive added efficiencies in converting candidates.
Changing perceptions
A lack of awareness hampered WHC’s white-collar recruitment team. The organisation was perceived as a blue-collar recruitment supplier. WHC needed to act and improve brand awareness and enhance employer branding and visibility.
According to WHC, LinkedIn is the main platform for white-collar talent in Hungary and the only platform where it can communicate with white-collar candidates, clients, and internal talent at the same time.
WHC wanted to leverage increased brand awareness to improve conversion effectiveness for its LinkedIn Recruiter users and broaden the reach and engagement that its brand was generating within key LinkedIn audiences, both B2B and B2C.
The right platform = engaged audience
LinkedIn enabled WHC to communicate consistently with all its key stakeholders. WHC leveraged LinkedIn as a media platform, which had a considerable impact on the organisation’s bottom line, especially when rolled out across the entire organisation.
Previously, WHC had been using LinkedIn but in a limited capacity. The organisation used local talent suppliers and focused on direct search and less on branding.
WHC knew that LinkedIn was the right platform because it allowed the company to engage multiple key audiences at the same time and measure impact. However, WHC was not aware at that time that the impact would be so substantial in traffic and engagement.
Adopting a collaborative approach
WHC aligned internally on target groups, geographical areas and key messages to ensure that its brand strategy and activities aligned with “go-to-market operations” and translated into revenue. It assigned a point of contact for each division benefitting from the new solution to work with the LinkedIn account team. WHC and the LinkedIn account team worked collaboratively to understand how best to use the platform. Regular onboarding and optimisation meetings took place and gave WHC’s internal team a clear understanding of the marketplace. For instance, LinkedIn Talent Insights’ data meant that WHC’s in-house teams could track the results, report on progress and tweak campaign strategies accordingly.
Leveraging the platform to achieve exponential growth
WHC set itself several goals. It wished to significantly increase its InMail response rate and job application rate. Plus, it wished to grow the number of Company Page followers. Within months of adopting a fresh and new approach to how it used the platform, WHC soon reaped the rewards of its hard work and intelligent moves.
When WHC saw the boost in brand reach and engagement it was able to generate, it wished to explore how much more it could leverage.
In 2023, WHC’s InMail acceptance rate was equal to the market average. This figure has grown by 16 per cent year on year and the number of InMails accepted by brand engaged candidates has doubled. Plus, follower growth – whilst slow at first – has grown five-fold.
WHC has found LinkedIn easy to use and easy to target specific target groups. The company believes the platform is a great tool to build brand awareness and brand consideration for all sorts of organisations and will continue to use LinkedIn products and introduce them to other countries where WHC is present.
THE RESULTS
High levels of engagement
• Brand awareness – 5.2x more awareness actions YoY
• Brand engagement – 6x more engagement actions YoY
• Pipeline – 3x more considering actions YoY
• InMail acceptance rate (brand engaged candidates) increased by 74%
• Exceeded initial goals and outcomes (set internally) by 30%
In their own words
“LinkedIn is a great platform for staffing, recruitment, marketing, PR, and sales for companies looking to engage their stakeholders, from clients to candidates and internal talent. We have found that it is easy to use and easy to target specific target groups. It is also a great tool to build brand awareness and brand consideration for all sorts of organisations. We have a great relationship with LinkedIn and we receive help to optimise each of the Hiring Enterprise Programme products we use. We will continue to use the products and introduce them to other countries where we are present.”
About WHC
WHC was formed in 1990 and is one of the most dynamically developing companies specialising in HR services throughout Hungary. It has 16 offices in Hungary and operates subsidiaries and local branches in Austria, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. In 2022, WHC acquired a majority stake in Heads Adriatic, one of the leading HR services provider in the Adriatic region, which resulted in further expansion into Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia. WHC provides clients with full-scale services in human resources, including employment placement, temporary agency work, student jobs, a maternal employment cooperative, pensioner jobs, and payroll services.
INDUSTRY:
Staffing and Recruiting
No. OF EMPLOYEES:
201-600 employees
HEADQUARTERS:
Budapest, Hungary