Social media recruiting is on the rise – there is no doubt about it at this point. If your organization is not yet recruiting with social media, you will soon.
A study by Jobvite, a social recruiting platform, showed that 94 percent of recruiters use or plan to use, social media in their recruitment efforts, and 78 percent of recruiters have made a hire through social media.
Forbes magazine predicted a few years back that 2014 will be the “Year of the Employee.” This turned out to be a fairly accurate forecast, as even in 2019; employers are still competing to get the most qualified candidates.
Social Media and the New Age of Recruitment
Over the past few years, sourcing and recruiting talent has become a top priority for organizations worldwide. However, the recruitment playing field has been changing drastically for the past decade.
In just a few years, newspaper classified ads have been almost replaced entirely by social media. The days of generic job board postings are gone. Active recruiting at job fairs has now met its match with social media.
Social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn have now become the second-largest source of new hires for companies. It has even surpassed company pages and job boards.
Information on salary structures, work-life balance, promotion processes, and workplace culture are now readily available online.
Savvy recruiters are taking a page out of a marketer’s handbook as they try to attract candidates by building their own online talent pools. With the help of social media, recruiters today now have their own personalized, micro-targeted approach to identify, screen, and evaluate potential hires.
Candidates are also getting on board with social media recruitment. Top-notch applicants know how to market themselves on social media.
Candidates today are consciously polishing their online profiles to highlight specific projects they have done that might catch the eye, or the search algorithms, of recruiters. Jobvite showed that 41 percent of job seekers landed their current jobs through an online social network or job board.
Reach out with the best talent online
Operating in today’s highly transparent and dynamic candidate-driven market tends to pose challenges and risks for organizations that are just starting to venture into social media recruitment. To get your organization started on their own social media recruitment strategy, it must contain these eight elements:
- Create a rich user experience on social media.
Always keep in mind that social media recruitment would only work if users find it convenient to use. Set up a Facebook page for your company with a specific tab for recruitment. You can also establish a Twitter account for your company’s recruitment team. Make sure to include links to your firm’s corporate web page that feature-rich and inviting content for potential applicants.
- Make your social media pages transparent.
You need to make it easy for applicants to learn about your organization. You also have to make the look and feel of your social media sites consistent with your corporate branding efforts. Make your Facebook page inviting enough to show prospective applicants what it is like to work for your organization.
- Open a conversation with your audience.
Use your company’s Facebook page and Twitter account to converse with potential employees. Post vacancies on social media and keep it light, honest, and welcoming. Allow people to comment on your recruitment efforts and learn from them as you go on.
- Build your network.
Nothing draws fans and followers to social media sites than sharing great advice and expertise. Provide tips on the current job market, good resumes and networking advice to enhance your chances that top talent will engage with your content and eventually apply for a job with your company.
- Leverage on the web, but don’t rely on it entirely.
The Internet, including social media, is a great way to find quality people. However, it should not be your only source of candidates. The cliché of not filling your eggs in one basket is a good analogy for this case. Make sure that you have a variety of networks to source top-notch applicants, not just from the Internet but from your own sources in the industry as well.
- Move fast with the hiring process.
Top candidates don’t like wasting their time waiting for a drawn-out hiring process. Delays will only cause your organization to end up with second-rate hires. Monitor your social media sites daily and take time to reply to follow-ups and queries online.
- Ask for help and partner with seasoned recruiters.
When you tweet a new job vacancy or post it on Facebook, encourage fans and followers to tag their friends who are qualified for the role. You can also partner with seasoned recruiters to help spread the word about your vacancy.
- Measure your results.
Always look for new ways to refine and improve your social media recruiting presence. You can do that by setting benchmarks and KPIs for your recruitment efforts. Find out which recruitment method quickly generated the most qualified slate of candidates.
Social media is an invaluable recruitment tool. Here are six key steps to help companies maximize their social media recruiting presence:
STEP 1: Define your social media engagement approach.
You can start by understanding your organization’s philosophy and policies regarding the use of social media. Find out what level of monitoring and engagement you can commit to your recruitment efforts. You can create the right social media recruitment strategy by creating opportunities for your fans and followers to engage in the community and provide comments and feedback.
STEP 2: Meet your audiences where they are online.
Whether they are executives or fresh graduates, it is crucial to think about the type of positions you are trying to fill for your company’s vacancy. Tailor fit your social media recruitment strategy to your target audience. Go to forums where your candidates engage in and give them a reason to interact with you. To appeal to your audience’s professional interests, you can participate in relevant online discussions and share practical thought leadership conversations.
STEP 3: Promote your company’s employer brand.
As your company’s professional working environment becomes more transparent online, establishing a good employer brand is also becoming more and more critical. Proactively highlight your company’s employee value proposition and prove what makes your organization a great place to work. This can include posts about your corporate culture and values, inspirational or prominent leaders, a strong commitment to social causes, entertaining work areas, and other unique employee perks.
STEP 4: Keep it fresh.
Staying engaged and engaging with your target audience is crucial to effective social media recruiting. You need to regularly refresh content and creative elements to your posts. Consider replacing detailed job descriptions with infographics or short-form videos. Remember to always provide value-added content to give potential candidates a compelling reason to keep on following you.
STEP 5: Activate your employees.
Employees remain to be one of the most trustworthy sources of information about a company’s work experience. Tap into that resource and empower your own employees to become one of your most influential brand advocates. Encourage them to talk about their own experiences inside your organization and to support your marketing team’s social media campaigns all the time.
STEP 6: Know your channels.
It’s important to understand the popular social recruiting tools that are available for your company to use. Leverage on their unique strengths and strive to create compelling content for each. Here are four of the most popular:
This is the world’s largest professional network. Targeting candidates on this site allows your company to share specific and tailored content to find the best candidates by location, current employer, job function, experience, and more.
Twitter audiences are vast and highly engaged. Recruiting via Twitter should be about building a community of followers that represent the kind of talent you are looking for. Once you have created a community of engaging talent, it would be easier to identify candidates who would best fit your vacancies.
- Glassdoor
While companies use LinkedIn to check out resumes, Glassdoor is where candidates go to get information about their potential employer. Glassdoor provides ratings and candid employee reviews on everything from organizational culture, interview questions, to compensation.
As the world’s largest social network, this is the place where most candidates spend most of their time. Facebook does not limit the content length and provides greater freedom of expression than other sites. You can also use their free analytics to provide detailed insights into the effectiveness of your content.
Need help recruiting? Let’s talk!
Recruitment today is certainly different from what it was a decade ago. Sysgen RPO can help you navigate the new age of social media recruitment. Our decades of experience in recruitment and our expertise in information technology allow our teams to devise and employ modern recruitment strategies. Gone are the days when we rely only on classified ads, job listings, and cold calling among others.
If you need help recruiting top-notch candidates, let’s talk!
References:
GALAGAN, P. (2014). Finders Keepers. (Cover story). TD: Talent Development, 68(12), 32–35. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=99595897&site=ehost-live
Kot, A. (2015). Recruiting Goes Digital. Public Relations Tactics, 22(4), 17. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=108922229&site=ehost-live
Zielinski, D. (2012). Find Social Media’s Value. HR Magazine, 57(8), 53–55. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=78415599&site=ehost-live
