Bring your followers to work day: How TikTok influencers are changing the workplace

Thousands of young professionals are turning their careers into views on TikTok. But what does that mean for the companies they're working for?

CareerTok is a term coined by the growing community of TikTok users that have dedicated their accounts to all things business, from posting vlog-style videos walking viewers through their daily workplace routine to tips on how to have hard conversations with managers. And although that much visibility on social platforms may be daunting to companies now, it's best to embrace it early-on if they want to reap the eventual benefits. 

"Everyone loves a peek behind the curtain," says Alexandra Anema, social media director at marketing firm Bayard Advertising. "One of the things that I think is really different about this generation is that before, you didn't know what a workplace culture was like before you took a job — you had to just accept it based on gut check alone. Now I can find out what a workplace culture is like in 30 seconds, all because of people creating content on their lunch break."

Read more: How TikTok became Gen Z's top healthcare resource

It was only a matter of time before social media grew to include the workplace, according to Anema, and the pandemic only accelerated the trend. As the boundary between work and life blurred, social platforms such as TikTok offered users an avenue to express themselves and speak freely about their professional experiences. The instability of the job market also left many young people with questions and concerns about how to engage at work, all of which gave way to the rise of a new kind of influencer.

"People think of an influencer and they think of someone with a million followers," Amena says. "And that's not true. An influencer is someone who can simply impact the people who are in the sphere of people you want to influence."

Which means that influencers can be found anywhere — including the office. Tamar Nisbett, whose TikTok handle is @Corporatebaddie, currently works as a content strategist and analyst for Netflix in Amsterdam. She went viral for telling users how she got her lucrative job without a degree in computer science. Laura Whaley, or @Loewhaley on TikTok, is a young IT consultant in Toronto who garnered her three million followers by posting funny anecdotes from her office and dubbing herself everyone's "work bestie."

Nisbett and Whaley are just two examples of the kind of talent opportunity employers have at their disposal with young hires — just as long as they're willing to loosen their social media restrictions and rethink their strategies.

Read more: TikTok for work? How social media is changing the workplace

"One of the things that we're actually encouraging our clients to do is identify internal influencers," Anema says. "Because we know influencers can have a huge amount of pull, so we're asking companies to look at who they have. They don't need someone who has a million followers, they just need someone who's good on camera and who can help create that type of content." 

If a company doesn't already have someone who fits the bill, they should be keeping an applicant's social media potential in mind when hiring. According to LinkedIn, almost 80% of hiring managers believe that video — such as TikTok or YouTube — has become more important when it comes to interacting with or vetting job candidates. Anema herself has made it a permanent part of her recruitment process to check an applicant's social media platforms before hiring them,  both to ensure that there's no threat to the company's image and to gauge their online potential.

It's in a company's best interest to figure out how social media plays in their recruiting strategies now before it's too late. Because as helpful and resourceful as it can be when it's done right, it only takes one viral video about a company's culture to ruin a company's prospects. 

Read more: TikTok is more than a workplace distraction. It's a recruiting tool for Gen Z talent

"A lot of companies think they don't have the bandwidth or don't want to invest in social media or take the time to understand it, and that's a mistake that a lot of them are still making," Anema says. "I had a client who had a negative hashtag go viral on TikTok about a toxic work environment and it was devastating for their recruitment." 

In order to truly benefit from social media movements like CareerTok, employers will have to completely flesh out their social media training, invest in talent and strengthen their DEI efforts to ensure that their culture can handle the kind of visibility and scrutiny that comes with a social media presence. CareerTok is not the first nor is it the last example of ways social media will play a large role in a company's success. 

"Buckle up, this is not going anywhere," Anema says. "It's just going to become more and more prevalent and it's now just one of those things that I think that people need to get on board with. You need to start investing in social media strategies or you're just gonna fall behind."