Social recruiting is a technique that uses various social media channels to find potential candidates. It enables companies to post job listings and solicit job seekers to apply.
Social recruiting or social hiring can help you fill permanent positions and hire high-quality candidates more quickly than traditional recruiting methods like using job fairs or local job boards.
Social recruiting efforts also allow you to reach out to a larger candidate pool who may not be actively looking for work at the moment, also known as passive candidates.
This blog post will show you how your brand can leverage social media networks for hire.
1. Build your employer brand
Your employer brand drives how people think of your company as a place to work. It is created through the company’s marketing and communication efforts. Your employer brand showcases your company culture, values, and employee experience. In other words, it is the brand story that attracts top talent and differentiates an organization from its competitors.
Effective employer branding communicates the unique selling proposition of an organization as an employer. Building an employer brand involves developing a clear and distinct message about what makes your organization a great workplace. This includes emphasizing the company’s strengths in culture, employee engagement, career development, and benefits.
For example, Apple is built on the idea that they’re a company that values creativity and innovation and did not hesitate to include this on its careers page.
So, here are three ways you can build your employer branding—like Apple has done—on social media:
- Practice social listening and engage with potential candidates.
- Be consistent in your messaging across all social media profiles.
- Share content that aligns with your brand’s ethos. Also, share images or videos that help convey your employee value proposition.
- Frequently share career opportunities and the benefits of working with you.
Aside from that, when creating your social profiles, be sure to use accurate and up-to-date information. Also, use a tone that is positive, authentic, and engaging.
Finally, determine the social networks best suited for your employer brand. And when posting relevant content, provide valuable insight that will interest them. This allows you to attract ideal candidates and hire the best freelancers, or full-time employees, as the case may be.
For example, if you’re targeting passive job seekers, you’ll want to focus on social channels like Facebook and Instagram. But, if you’re targeting active job seekers or mid-to-senior-level professionals, you’ll want to focus on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.
These social networks offer opportunities to share news and insights about your company and easily connect with potential recruits.
2. Engage your audience on social media
Social media platforms have grown exponentially in the last decade. And according to Smart Insights, social media is presently used by 4.70 billion active users worldwide.
To maximize social media engagement in your recruitment process, you can create job postings with your social media profiles and create buzz around the new opportunities your firm offers. You can also share enticing photos from your workplace or corporate events.
Here’s a Web fx social media post highlighting its current employees’ experience and feedback.
Like IBM in the image below, you can also highlight specific projects that current employees are working on.
Lastly, go beyond posting job opportunities and ongoing projects with your social media accounts. Start conversations and share resources that enlighten your ideal candidates.
One social media tool that can help with this is live streams. Live streams allow you to broadcast content directly to your audience—this could be through a Q&A or an educational video on industry-related topics.
Facebook groups are excellent channels as well. For instance, you may join a GitHub community to network with talented app developers.
In a nutshell, social media is a great place to engage your audience. Engaging with them allows potential applicants to learn more about your company.
3. Use advanced search options
The advanced search option on social platforms helps you find specific information and narrow down your results when looking for candidates. Advanced search filters are especially useful when you want to connect with ideal candidates and notify them about your job post. These features work differently on various social networks.
Facebook job posting—With Facebook, you can use advanced search capabilities to filter prospective candidates by location, education, and work experience, as seen in the image below:
You can also set up a job alert to be notified when active candidates apply for a position you posted or when a potential candidate meets your specific requirements.
LinkedIn—Using LinkedIn Recruiter, you can search for qualified candidates by filtering their results based on several factors like industry, location, and current company. LinkedIn has a video meeting solution that you can use for 1:1 conversations with potential employees. There’s also a feature that allows you to run an interview where applicants can share a video introduction.
Twitter—Twitter’s Advanced Search feature allows you to search for a specific person based on their hashtags. You can also narrow your results by location if they are relevant to your job post.
TikTok Resumes—TikTok resumes are in video format, unlike traditional resumes. Users produce content highlighting their primary skill set, prior experience, and future professional objectives in 60-second short-form videos. These videos assist them in obtaining interviews with potential employers.
With billions of social media users worldwide, the advanced search options help you streamline your search so that you can get the best fit for your company’s vacant position.
In closing
As we have seen, you can use social recruiting strategies to find new talent, like building a strong employer brand, engaging your audience on social media, and using advanced search options.
However, it is also important to remember that it is just one part of the hiring process. There are many ways to leverage social media presence for hire.
As you build your social media recruiting strategy, think about your company goals for each platform and decide how best to apply those recruitment strategies.
