Social recruiting is currently one of the biggest buzzwords in talent acquisition. The use of social media to attract and convert talent has proven to be an immensely popular trend for Fortune 500 firms as well as tech recruiting firms.
So what exactly is social recruiting, and how can you use it to your advantage? Let’s take a look.
Social recruiting is using social media networks – most commonly LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter – to advertise jobs, connect with potential employees, and recruit suitable candidates. It is also referred to as social hiring or social media recruiting.
By posting relevant content about your company, work culture, available positions, and potential career benefits, you can generate more organic interest in your brand and access the best talent.
It is a proven fact that social recruiting can help businesses identify, connect with, and hire quality candidates. According to research, 86 percent of job seekers use social media for job searches. 71 percent of hiring decision-makers agree that reviewing social media profiles is an effective way to screen applicants.
Here are some benefits of Social Recruiting:
There are several useful social media platforms available, with advanced search features that can help in social recruiting. These features enable you to have an in-depth grasp of the current audience of your social recruiting and help you target the right people moving forward.
This is the most business-oriented social network. LinkedIn is targeted specifically towards employers, job seekers, and professional networking. It offers wide-ranging functions such as Advanced People Search which helps organizations find candidates with specific skills and experience. LinkedIn Recruiter allows users to employ advanced search filters, receive smart suggestions and integrate with a company’s applicant tracking system.
This platform allows you to share links about available positions, company updates, and industry news. Its Advanced Search feature lets you search for candidates with specific keywords, phrases, and hashtags.
Facebook has similar tools to Twitter with the added functionality of sharing videos and pictures. Facebook’s Graph Search helps to scan different variables of a user’s profile like interests, location, education, etc. It’s highly effective to scout for local talent with specific academic requirements or interests. Job postings can also be shared on Facebook business pages, which employees can share on their timelines. Using the paid boosts feature, it’s possible to connect with targeted audiences by targeting metrics like location or work experience.
In 2021, TikTok launched TikTok Resumes, which allows companies to post job openings through their pilot program. Interested candidates can respond with short videos which take the place of traditional resumes. This unconventional approach provides a lot of potential in reaching out to young prospects who are avid TikTok users.
This is an ideal platform to share photos and videos that highlight a company’s employees or corporate culture, showcase new products and services, share recent accomplishments, etc.
Simply spamming your audience with a bunch of job listings is not how social recruiting works. It’s important to build up your online reputation and create a high-visibility company brand that people will be interested in and want to work for. Highlight your organization’s positives, company initiatives, and workplace vibes, and consolidate your online corporate reputation with consistent branding and messaging.
Optimize your social media profiles and job listings so that active job seekers can find them easily. Include keywords, key phrases, and hashtags in your profiles that are relevant to your industry, location, and job requirements. When you’re putting up a job listing, mention the job title and location in the post text along with a relevant link or graphic, so it’s easier for candidates to find you.
It may seem effective to post all kinds of content on every platform out there, but that isn’t an efficient strategy. In social recruiting, you need to meet your candidates where they are. Choose the right social media platforms based on what content you need to prioritize and what position you’re recruiting for. If you’re looking to fill a design role, for example, post on more visual platforms like Instagram or Dribbble. For LinkedIn, a combination of text, images, videos, and links is your best bet.
Empowering employees is a great way to drive successful social hiring, as it expands the reach of your campaign. Create an employee advocacy program and encourage your teams to share job openings and posts about the organization on their social media networks. Employees are the face of a company and the most trusted resource for information about the business, so having them advocate a company’s values and culture creates a highly positive impact on job seekers.
You won’t know if your social media recruiting efforts are effective unless you set benchmarks that align with your company goals and hiring needs. Keep monitoring your recruiting strategy to see how it performs against set KPIs, and adjust accordingly. Common metrics include social media engagement, cost per hire, time spent per applicant, offer acceptance rate, employee referral rate, and clicks from social media to your hiring page. Test out new content, formats, and platforms and figure out what works best for your hiring targets.
At Employvision, one of today’s top information technology recruiting agencies, we know that as millennials and Gen Z constitute more of the workforce, social media will become increasingly valuable for recruiting and HR heads. Our expert team helps you harness the power of social media to access a wider candidate pool, showcase your company, and connect with great talent.
Contact Employvision and start hiring the best IT talent today!
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