How TikTok influencers are helping companies recruit new workers
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On TikTok, Emily Durham is a content creator with over 200,000 followers. She also works as a senior recruiter for Intuit. Durham’s following on the social platform and her success show how influencers and content creators on TikTok can strengthen a company’s recruiting efforts.
“Having a social presence has been a game changer for me from a professional perspective,” Durham said. “Probably half of the candidates that I reach out to have responded with, ‘Oh my god, I follow you on TikTok,’ especially with early career talent or when I’m recruiting for other HR roles at Intuit.”
Durham said while she doesn’t post Intuit-specific content, the company’s trust and open-mindedness about her TikTok presence allows her content to be mutually beneficial for her and Intuit. Her TikTok presence gives potential candidates familiarity and recognition that often leads them to apply and be interested in roles at Intuit.
TikTok influencers help recruit desired candidates
When you think about how people previously searched for jobs, it’s most likely they turned first to their local newspaper for open roles. When the internet came onto the scene, people began searching on sites like Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, and eventually LinkedIn.
Now, especially with younger audiences, companies can use TikTok to advertise open roles and reach candidates, like Gen Z and millennials, said Erin Lazarus, director of solution architects at SHL, a data and insights platform for talent acquisition and management. An influencer promoting open roles can help increase the impact of a company’s recruiting effort.
“Gen Z and millennial audiences, from a value perspective, appreciate authenticity. What we used to think of social content, which was previously over-edited, commercial-like content, doesn’t resonate with those audiences,” Durham said. “In fact, you have about two to four seconds before a millennial or Gen Z social media consumer will scroll past your video.”
Durham said companies can hire influencers, who are real and authentic, to post content about what it’s like to work at a company and why someone should work there.
“Influencers have trust and credibility with their audiences, and they’ve become what I think of as the signal through the noise,” Lazarus said. “In the digital world, opportunities are nearly endless, and that level of choice creates so much noise around us.”
Lazarus said influencers help employers increase the signal of their opportunities and cut through the noise to reach a more targeted audience, and TikTok is one of the mediums to reach audiences the fastest.
Finding the right type of TikTok influencer
Lazarus said companies interested in using TikTok influencers to promote jobs, must first distinguish between the different types of influencers and which ones have the right following to reach ideal candidates.
“The first category is celebrities, and there are fewer celebrities promoting jobs than other types of influencers. Another type of influencer is content creators or bloggers, like who we follow on TikTok and Instagram,” Lazarus said. “A third category, where most influencers are likely living for recruitment efforts, is industry leaders and thought leaders.”
These categories are not siloed, and influencers can exist across these distinctions. Influencers can have large or small followings, they can be community leaders, and they can specialize in a specific topic or niche area. With Durham’s specialty in career coaching and job searching advice, she can be described as a thought leader in that area on TikTok.
“Thought and industry leaders could be local from a geographical perspective or from an industry perspective,” Lazarus said. “These are also influencers that can operate both online and in person in a professional setting to help with recruitment efforts.”
It’s also important to ensure that your company’s TikTok influencers have a following relatively located to the locations you’re hiring for, said Daniel Blaser, a senior content manager at Workstream, a recruiting and hiring platform for local businesses and restaurants to fill hourly and deskless roles.
Blaser said companies, especially local businesses, don’t necessarily need to tap into influencers with millions of followers to recruit for open jobs. Companies can engage with influencers, of any scale, that can reach their targeted group of potential employees.
“Anyone can be an influencer if they have an engaged following, and there are people that have an engaged following for whoever you want to connect to, as a business, and in your hiring efforts,” Blaser said.
Blaser added that companies can even have their existing employees post videos or content on TikTok and become an influencer for their business. The focus should be on how well the content resonates with audiences.
How to start leveraging TikTok influencers
Influencers can be hired, if a company is looking to reach an existing following from a content creator like Durham, or influencers can be created, like Blaser suggested, from existing employees who may find a new following.
Lazarus said influencers on TikTok, and all social platforms, can advertise your company’s recruiting efforts in their short videos, in sound bites on podcasts, or in advertisements in newsletters, wherever the influencer’s following reaches.
“A company should ask: Who is my target audience? What kind of candidates am I looking for? How do I reach them? What media are they consuming?” Lazarus said. That helps you figure out: Who are the trendsetters in the areas I’m recruiting for? How do I get in touch with them?
Lazarus said this is a growing and exciting trend in recruitment and talent acquisition. Social media recruiters play a strategic role in the talent strategy of an organization, she added, and it can help ensure they’re bringing in the best talent and lead them to get creative in approaching talent.
“There are so many different ways you can get creative, as long as you’re highlighting the voices of the authentic people at your organization,” Durham said. “That’s where you’re going to see impact and benefit. You’re going to see absolutely nothing if you’re an organization first and a people-company second.”
Lazarus said TikTok influencers can also help companies increase diversity and reach underrepresented populations, because this type of recruitment reaches candidates through their trusted sources that they’re already consuming.
“We have an opportunity as organizations to really compete for the best talent out there to increase diversity, create more inclusion, and bring ourselves to where those pipelines are,” Lazarus said. “These platforms help us create a diverse, enriched pipeline of candidates from every walk of life.”
Meta approached artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI about a potential takeover bid before ultimately investing $14.3 billion into Scale AI, CNBC confirmed on Friday.
The two companies did not finalize a deal, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the negotiations.
One person familiar with the talks said it was “mutually dissolved,” while another person familiar with the matter said Perplexity walked away from a potential deal.
Bloomberg earlier reported the talks between Meta and Perplexity. Perplexity declined to comment. Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Meta’s attempt to purchase Perplexity serves as the latest example of Mark Zuckerberg‘s aggressive push to bolster his company’s AI efforts amid fierce competition from OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Zuckerberg has grown agitated that rivals like OpenAI appear to be ahead in both underlying AI models and consumer-facing apps, and he is going to extreme lengths to hire top AI talent, as CNBC has previously reported.
Meta now has a 49% stake in Scale after its multibillion-dollar investment, though the social media company will not have any voting power. Scale AI’s founder Alexandr Wang, along with a small number of other Scale employees, will join Meta as part of the agreement.
Earlier this year, Meta also tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence, which was reportedly valued at $32 billion in a fundraising round in April, as CNBC reported on Thursday.
Daniel Gross, the CEO of Safe Superintelligence, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are joining Meta’s AI efforts, where they will work on products under Wang. Gross runs a venture capital firm with Friedman called NFDG, their combined initials, and Meta will get a stake in the firm.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the latest episode of the “Uncapped” podcast, which is hosted by his brother, that Meta had tried to poach OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million with even larger annual compensation packages.
“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” Altman said on the podcast. “Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.”
–CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this report
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Ether ETFs have finally come to life this year after some started to fear they may be becoming zombie funds.
Collectively, the funds tracking the price of spot ether are on pace for their sixth consecutive week of inflows and eight positive week in the last nine, according to SoSoValue.
The second largest cryptocurrency has become more attractive to institutions in recent weeks largely due to recent regulatory momentum in the U.S. around stablecoins – many of which run on the Ethereum network – the successful IPO of Circle, the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin; and new leadership at the Ethereum Foundation.
“What we’re seeing is institutional recalibration,” said Ben Kurland, CEO at crypto charting and research platform DYOR. “After the initial ETH ETF approval fizzled without a price pop, smart money started quietly building positions. They’re betting not on price momentum but on positioning ahead of utility unlocks like staking access, options listings, and eventually inflows from retirement platforms.”
The first year of ether ETFs, which launched in July 2024, has been characterized by weak demand. While the funds have had spikes in inflows, they’ve trailed far behind bitcoin ETFs in both inflows and investor attention – amassing about $3.9 billion in net inflows since listing versus bitcoin ETFs’ $36 billion in their first year of trading.
“With increasing acceptance of crypto on Wall Street, especially now as a means for payments and remittances, investors are being drawn to ETH ETFs,” said Chris Rhine, head of liquid active strategies at Galaxy Digital.
Additionally, he added, the CME basis on ether – or the price difference between ether futures and the spot price – is higher than that of bitcoin, giving arbitrageurs an opportunity to profit by going long on ether ETFs while shorting futures (a common trading strategy) and contributing to the uptrend in ether ETF inflows.
Ether (ETH) 1 month
Despite the uptrend in inflows, the price of ether itself is negative for this month and flat over the past month.
For the year, it’s down 25% as it’s been suffering from an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about Ethereum’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year has not helped.
In March, Standard Chartered slashed its ether price target by more than half. However, the firm also said the coin could still see a turnaround this year.
Since last week’s big spike in inflows, they’ve “slowed but stayed net positive, suggesting conviction, not hype,” Kurland said. “The market looks like a heart monitor, but the buyers are treating it like a long-term infrastructure bet.”
A motorcycle is seen near a building of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company, in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on April 16, 2025.
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Semiconductor stocks declined Friday following a report that the U.S. is weighing measures that would terminate waivers allowing some chipmakers to send American technology to China.
Commerce Department official Jeffrey Kessler told Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Taiwan Semiconductor this week that he wanted to cancel their waivers, which allow them to send U.S. chipmaking tech to their factories in China, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF declined about 1%. Nvidia, Qualcomm and Marvell Technology fell about 1%, while Taiwan Semiconductor slipped about 2%.
The latest reported move by the Commerce Department comes as the U.S. and China hold an unsteady truce over tariffs and trade, with chip controls a key sticking point.
The countries agreed to the framework of a second trade agreement in London days ago after relations soured following the initial tariff pause in May.
The U.S. issued several chip export changes after the May pause that rattled relations, with China calling the rules “discriminatory.”
U.S. chipmakers have been hit with curbs over the last few years, limiting the ability to sell advanced artificial intelligence chips to China due to national security concerns.
During its earnings report last month, Nvidia said the recent export restriction on its China-bound H20 chips hindered sales by about $8 billion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told investors on an earnings call that the $50 billion market in China for AI chips is “effectively closed to U.S. industry.” During a CNBC interview in May, he called getting blocked from China’s AI market a “tremendous loss.”
Read the full WSJ report here.
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