From cooking up award-nominated work with KFC to launching clever journey mapping tech for Asda, August has been a scorcher at Chatter HQ. We’ve been gathering social recruitment insights with HIYA, prepping for major autumn events with Luminos, and lacing up for the final stretch of our half marathon training. August, you’ve been brilliant.

We're shining a light on one of our favorite projects currently up for awards at the upcoming RMAs (Best Social Media) and EBMAs (Best Brand Ambassador Programme).

KFC UK&I need to hire thousands of frontline restaurant workers every year. The catch? Their candidate audience was scrolling on TikTok and Instagram, but KFC's social footprint was almost exclusively LinkedIn-facing. To solve this without risking food safety or brand mishaps in active kitchens, we launched "The R1s" - a premier creator collective of 20 real restaurant employees.

Paired with a bulletproof compliance framework, structured EVP content briefs, and a training day at the O2 arena, we turned authentic workplace moments into 370,000 organic impressions.

Want to see the secret sauce behind this great work?

Want to see the secret sauce behind this great work?

Read the full KFC Case Study here

Want a nosey behind the scenes of our KFC shoots? Alex Blow has given us a sneaky peek over on our TikTok!

Social media is officially the leading global talent attraction channel- but is your strategy keeping pace with changing candidate habits?

To help us unpack what’s actually working right now, we caught up with Dereck Maruma, founder of social-first employer brand agency HIYA.. Fresh off the back of publishing their new report, The State of Attracting Talent on Social Media, Dereck breaks down where candidates are really forming impressions, why company pages are losing reach, and the one shift your team should make today:

"I'm Dereck Maruma, founder of HIYA. We're a social first employer brand agency, which in practice means we build from the phone out.

We published The State of Attracting Talent on Social Media in June. The core message is that social has already won the talent attraction race, with 55% of organisations now ranking it as their number one recruiting strategy, but adoption has run well ahead of sophistication. Most teams are running a 2023 playbook on 2026 platforms."

WHERE THE DECISION ACTUALLY HAPPENS

62% of job seekers check an employer's social presence before deciding whether to apply. The decision is being made before anyone reaches your careers site, which makes your social presence the first stage of your recruiting process rather than a supplement to it. Meanwhile, LinkedIn company page organic reach has fallen to around 1.6% of followers, so teams still pouring effort into the company page are reaching a fraction of the audience they built. The fix is to move employer brand content onto people: employees, recruiters and leaders posting as individuals.

THE PLATFORMS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER

The honest answer is that no single platform serves every audience, and the most common mistake is applying LinkedIn strategy to TikTok or vice versa. LinkedIn is still foundational for professional hiring, with 90% of recruiters using it for sourcing. But 46% of Gen Z have secured a job or internship through TikTok, and 76% of Gen Z prefer Instagram over LinkedIn for professional networking. If your entire early-career pipeline strategy lives on LinkedIn, you are not where those candidates are forming their impressions.

The useful part for TA teams: TikTok's algorithm rewards watch completion over follower count, so a genuinely good employer brand video from a brand-new account can outperform an established competitor's page. And campaigns running across three or more platforms outperform single-platform strategies by 25 to 35%. The point isn't more channels, it's content built natively for each one rather than copy-pasted across all of them.

⭐️ IF YOU ONLY CHANGE ONE THING THIS YEAR

Fix your content ratio. Most employer brand feeds are mostly job postings, which tells passive candidates, who are up to 70% of the workforce, that the channel is a broadcast tool rather than somewhere worth following. The ratio that works is roughly 70% culture and values content to 30% or less live vacancies, and when jobs do appear they perform better framed around growth, impact and team fit than around salary and requirements.

The test I'd use: if someone who has never heard of your organisation lands on your social profile, can they get a real sense of what it feels like to work there within 60 seconds, without reading a single job description? Most can't. It costs nothing to change and it's the fastest way to stop being invisible to the people who aren't actively looking yet.

Want to dive into the details of the report?

Head to https://www.hiyaagency.com/talent-social-report to find out more!

ASDA journey mapper

We launched a neat little feature addition to the Asda careers site this month that we’re hugely proud of! Candidates can now get instant travel times and route visualisations right on the job description page - whether they’re commuting by car, public transport, or on foot.

Even better? We’re collecting anonymous candidate intel on travel preferences for Asda. Early data shows a surprising trend: 53% of jobseekers are looking to walk or take public transport (37% public transport, 16% walk) versus 46% driving. We are always looking at ways to improve candidate experience, and we think this one will be a real game changer in helping candidates find the right new job for them.

Take a look at the journey mapper in action over on Asda.jobs

KFC Internal Careers Site

KFC UK & Ireland has a massive focus on helping their team members grow - in fact, Believe in Potential is a core pillar of their EVP. The problem? Previously, internal team members had nowhere to explore new opportunities, find growth resources, or connect with career contacts outside of a basic ATS portal.

To bridge the gap, we built a brand-new internal careers site designed specifically to host all of that in one engaging, accessible place. Now, KFC's people have a dedicated platform to help them take the next step in their careers within the business.

Candidates have never had more ways to ignore recruiters. Between unread LinkedIn messages and overwhelming application volumes, candidate ghosting goes both ways.

That’s why we’re partnering with talent research experts Luminos Insight and a panel of in-house TA leaders for an honest, practical morning session in London:

• Event: Candidate Engagement Strategies in a Changing Market
• When: Tuesday 3rd November | 08:30 – 11:30 AM
• Where: London

Over breakfast and fresh coffee, we’ll explore how candidate behaviors are shifting and share practical ideas to tighten your hiring journey without adding complexity.

Grab your spot on the Talent Labs events page here >> 

This is it - the final stretch! August marks our last full month of training for the York Half Marathon and 10K on September 13th. We hit an impressive 515 KM in training miles this month, and while the cooler August mornings were a welcome relief, the pre-race jitters are officially setting in.

We’ve raised £750 for Physcap so far to help fund specialised equipment for children with physical disabilities, but we’d love to smash our target before race day!

Click here to donate to our JustGiving page and give us some kudos!

August’s running playlist bangers:

• I’m just Ken - Ryan Gosling
• Sun / Rise / Light / Flies - by Kasabian
• Your Love - Nicki Minaj
• Brand new chanel$ - Slayyyter