It’s becoming increasingly obvious that social media is the future of recruitment. Not only is it a cost and time effective method, but it can also generate amazing results. However, if you don’t fully understand social media recruitment then it will be completely ineffective, and sadly many recruiters simply don’t know how to use it properly.
Below you’ll find an extensive list of tips which will help you pivot your recruitment process.
1. Accept Your Role as the Company’s Brand Ambassador
One of the key reasons social media recruitment is so beneficial is that it allows recruiters to approach candidates directly. It has always been up to the candidate to approach the recruiter after seeing the job ad; this was not without its faults as more often than not, most of the applications hiring managers received were unfit for the role.
Fortunately, things are changing now as social media allows hiring managers to actively search for candidates, but this also means that recruiters are now the first point of contact for a potential candidate. To make this interaction positive, it’s important for the recruiter to be polite and make the candidates interested in working for the organisation.
2. Create a Full Blown Marketing Strategy
As millennials are more demanding with their expectations in the workplace, companies now need to boost their employer brand to become employers of choice. Generally, this includes offering perks and benefits, but the first step is to make the company more visible.
Millennials need to know how impactful an organisation is and it’s your job as a hiring manager to showcase the company’s potential. The best way to achieve this is to think like a marketer and implement marketing strategies similar the ones used to promote a brand and convince clients to purchase.
3. Treat Different Social Platforms as Different Mediums
People often share the same content across all platforms, but that’s a mistake. To make the most of each channel you need to treat each platform differently. For example, Twitter’s limited character number means that posts should be in the form of quick updates, this makes it ideal for sharing news and events. Facebook, on the other hand, is perfect for approaching jobseekers as it’s more personal and less intimidating than other networks. Linkedin can be used to contact experienced professionals as it’s generally used by people who are interested in their careers and are eager to make connections.
4. Make Your Ads as Targeted as Possible
One of the many advantages of social platforms is that they are technologically advanced and offer tools that can help make the recruitment process much more efficient. You can target your ads and make sure that the people who see them are as relevant as possible. Proper advert targeting can save you a lot of time during the CV review phase, and also help you spot candidates that are right for each role much more easily.
5. Create a Presence Across Numerous Platforms
Many companies believe that they don’t need a presence on more than one or two platforms. For example, some believe that a presence on Linkedin is all they need as it’s a dedicated medium for business. But, millennials are interested in learning a lot about companies, and this is why a presence across many social mediums can strengthen the company’s visibility.
Of course, having an active presence across a lot of social channels can be extremely time-consuming and unless you have a dedicated person on your team to manage these accounts, there’s a good chance your strategy might crash and burn. The key is to focus your efforts on the main social channels (which should include Linkedin, Facebook and any niche social media) and then sparingly update your other social media accounts (eg. Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat).
6. Get Current Employees to Help in the Recruitment Process
Getting employees involved in your social media efforts can help boost the brand and create a positive vibe about the company. Post employee videos on youtube and have potential candidates understand what a normal day in the office is like. Why not ask a few employees to document their day and upload it to the company’s Youtube channel as a series?
7. Use Instagram to Share Corporate Culture
It’s worth repeating that current employees can be crucial in helping boost the employer brand and should be asked to use specific hashtags when posting things about the company or things that are relevant to the workplace.
But that does not mean that you can’t help move things along as well. Posting things on the company’s official Instagram account will increase visibility and help prove that the company is interested in promoting employee stories.
8. Update the Company’s Linkedin Page
Many jobseekers look for opportunities on Linkedin so it’s important to encourage them to send their CVs whenever they come across your profile on Linkedin. Simply edit the 200 first characters of the description and add a ‘We’re hiring’ sign at the beginning to encourage people to find out more about opportunities within the company.
9. Use Facebook’s Audience Insights
Facebook has become one of the most technologically advanced networks on the planet. It offers invaluable assistance to businesses as its ads are extremely advanced and allow business owners to target the right audience. Use the audience insights tool to make sure that you are you’re targeting people in the right industry and the right age group.
10. Use Twitter Hashtags
Twitter hashtags will allow people to find your message and increase visibility so remember to include them in every post. Don’t limit yourself to using hashtags that are only relevant to the company, think of the searcher intent as well. What would someone looking for a job look for? Some of the most common jobseeker hashtags include: #hiringnow #jobs #cityjobs and niche hashtags like #ITjobs and #marketing.
11. Use Social Software to Monitor Social Media
As anyone in marketing would tell you, unless you monitor your campaigns you can’t really gain insight or improve them. To make sure that your social media recruitment campaign is reaching its full potential you need to keep track of shares, mentions etc.
12. Find Great Candidates on Linkedin
The reason Linkedin is such a great tool for recruiters is that it gives you access to a candidate’s employment history before you receive their CV. You can choose who to ask for their CV to avoid wasting time with people who do not fulfil all the requirements. Start by entering the role you’re hiring for (e.g., UX designer, business analyst, etc.) in the search field and have a look at the profiles your search delivers. You can then see who has potential and contact them directly to ask them if they’d be interested in the position.
13. Feature Employee Tweets on the Company Website
Say the company offers free donuts to employees every Friday and this is something that makes people excited enough to tweet about it, why not use it on the company’s website to help boost the corporate culture? Ask employees if they’d be interested in contributing their tweets to the website and ask the IT team to embed those tweets on the website. Make sure that these tweets get updated as often as possible because out of date posts create a sense of abandonment.
14. Build a Snapchat Profile
Snapchat is popular amongst younger millennials and if they are your target audience then investing some time in creating a Snapchat profile will be worth it. Get employees to Shapchat through the company’s account as often as possible and make sure that you invest some time following other accounts to get followed back.
15. Use Social Media to Share Company’s Brand
Social media should support your branding strategies and this means that you need to be able to convey the company’s values and mission through the profiles.
16. Use Hashtag Themes
The internet is a place where people share experiences and to gain visibility you should partake in these activities. One of the easiest ways to do that is by joining hashtag themes like #TGIF or #ThrowbackThursday etc. Make your posts interesting and engaging and remember that the key is to make people curious to find out more about the company.
17. Keep an Eye on Your Competition
Knowing what the competition is up to and ensuring that your employer brand can compete with other businesses in the industry is essential. Monitor their channels and ensure that your profiles are as good, if not better than the competitions.
18. Create a Content Plan
A content plan can help you identify goals and make your posts more consistent and substantial across all your channels. You can use Hootsuite or Buffer to help you plan ahead what you want to share and you can also break down your goals into weekly targets. For example, you can have one week where the focus is on corporate culture; another could be to show the company’s excellence in the industry, etc.
19. Freshen Things Up on a Regular Basis
The problem with social media is that people spend so much time on it ads can start looking stale and old after just a few days. So to stay ahead, you need to try to freshen things up continuously. This doesn’t mean that you need to create new ads all the time, you simply need to schedule image and content editing for your ads every few weeks.
20. Know When to Post
According to reports, a social media post only has a lifespan of a few hours, which means that if you post something in the morning, it will be gone by lunch time, so take into account when you want things to be viewed and post accordingly. During lunch or in the evening are always excellent times, while it’s also wise to post just before, or right after, the clock strikes the hour as that’s when people are going into meetings or coming out of them and are far more likely to be on their phone.
21 Build Relationships With Different Professionals
If you have a good talent acquisition strategy in place, you probably already know who you are going to need to hire in the future. It’s key, therefore, that you start building these relationships so when the time comes to hire, the professionals you’re interested in need minimal persuasion.
22. Have a Great Landing Page
Not a social media tip per se, but, it’s important in social media recruitment to also have a great landing page. Usually, that’s going to be your Careers page, and it’s essential that you make it as functional and as appealing as possible as this will help your brand seem more reliable, which will encourage more people to apply.
23. Know Where to Focus
Although it’s important to have a consistent presence across all social media networks, it’s also crucial to know where to focus for each position. For example, if most of your audience comes from Facebook, then you need to increase your budget on that channel and avoid spending money on other platforms that do not seem to be working for you.
24. Research Key Terms and Keywords
Keywords and industry related terms are as important for social media as they are for SEO. Make sure that before you post a new update you’ve thoroughly researched and identified the keywords that relate to that topic and that you’ve also included them in your post.
25. Offer Useful Advice to Potential Candidates
Apart from posting about company news, vacancies and events, it’s also vital that the company offers meaningful assistance to its followers. To do that you can post informational and educational content like articles etc. Of course, to make this strategy a success you shouldn’t just scratch the surface, rather you need to post something which can truly add value to their experience.
Social media recruitment will take over other forms of external recruitment and to ensure that your company continues to attract top talent, you need to make the most of social platforms ASAP.
Have you ever recruited through social media? Let me know in the comments section below.