A key part of talent acquisition is making sure that you’re finding job seekers in the places where they’re searching for jobs. This is why social media recruiting tools are useful in helping reach both active and passive candidates. In fact, according to The Muse, 29% of job seekers are using social media as their primary search tool, and that doesn’t only include LinkedIn.
Most potential candidates generally use a variety of recruitment platforms such as Indeed and LinkedIn. However, jobs can also be shared through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to name a few of the more popular social media platforms.
Not only that, but candidates also research brands on social media before deciding whether to interview or accept a job offer.
If you're not using social media to actively promote your company and recruit talent, you might be missing out. Continue reading to learn more about how to use social media recruiting tools to "fill up" your candidate pool.
Social media platforms are a great way to show off your company culture to potential employees.
Whether it’s sharing aesthetic pictures of your office space, inspirational quotes or photos of employees and their pets, it all shows potential employees what it’s like to work for your organization. Essentially, it invites employees to picture themselves at your organization.
Decide what you want to share about your company and create posts that align with that. If you want people to know that you have a flexible and fun working environment, make posts showcasing it. If you want to emphasize your work perks and benefits, highlight those in your posts. Simply put, your posts should reflect what you—and the candidates you are trying to attract—find most appealing about your company.
Using social media actively also makes it easier for candidates to learn more about your company and determine if they’ll be a good fit before applying.
Your social media strategy doesn’t have to target job applicants specifically, but social networks are a great place to promote your job openings to try and attract both active and passive job seekers.
Social media recruiting tools are only effective if you know how to use them.
Learning how to recruit on LinkedIn is quite simple. To post jobs to LinkedIn’s job board, you do have to pay a fee, but you can also post jobs as status updates or in groups. On Facebook you can post jobs directly on your business Facebook page, and boost them if you choose to show them to more potential candidates. For more visual-heavy platforms such as Instagram, you can create posts using images and link to each job description or to the careers page on your website.
Aside from posting on job boards or social media sites, you can also ask current employees to share your open roles. As Sprout Social found, “the average employee advocate has approximately 400 LinkedIn contacts, 420 Facebook friends and 360 Twitter followers. On top of that, the content shared by your employees has an 8x higher engagement rate than the content shared by brand channels”.
When deciding how and what to post to social media in an effort to attract talent, there are a few things to consider:
- Your open roles can determine which social media recruiting tools can best help you find the right candidates. For example, if you're searching for a graphic designer, try posting more on Instagram (a visually inclined platform) instead of Facebook.
- Consider using a link shortener, such as Bitly or Hootsuite’s Owly, to reduce your character count and also track how many people click on your links.
- Boosting posts help with visibility and engagement, but isn’t necessary if it doesn’t fit into your budget.
- If you're not able to put a lot of time into your talent management strategy, social recruiting tools can be a quick, cost-effective way to boost your recruiting efforts.
- Don’t share only job postings on your social media channels. Keep it interesting with a combination of relevant and engaging content.
In the 1970s, 90% of applicants were internal candidates. Today, as the Harvard Business Review reports, only 28% are internal. Hiring has changed, and it now requires a variety of strategies.
Although some applicants may prefer to use social media to find a new role, not all do—which is why you should “canvas widely” and use both social media recruiting strategies and traditional hiring methods such as recruiters, job boards, and referrals.
