Benefits of Social Media Recruiting for Employers: Tips To Get Started

Social media recruiting is the latest trend in modern recruiting. Unfortunately, many companies and recruiters are still unfamiliar with social media as a tool for recruitment. However, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter now boast over 3.5 billion combined users – which means that it’s time to take notice!
We’ll discuss some of the benefits of social recruiting for employers: tips to get started, what you can do on social media channels to attract potential job candidates, and more!
Complete Guide To Social Media Recruiting
Benefits of Social Media Recruiting
Social media is an increasingly important way to attract potential staff. Here are some benefits of social recruitment:
– Lower Recruitment Costs
One of the benefits of social recruiting is its potential to lower recruitment costs. Setting up accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all free and these provide for name recognition for your employer brand. Posting job openings on social media doesn’t involve fees unlike traditional methods of sourcing applicants such as through advertising or expensive job boards.
– Reach Passive Candidates
Many people are still using social media who aren’t seeking a job. You want to make these potential candidates aware of your company and available jobs, in case they change their minds. Social recruiting is used for more than grabbing the attention of passive talent—it also allows you to build relationships with them before they ever begin their search!
– See Candidate Passion
Social media is an excellent place to find passionate professionals and talented people. Many showcase their works, their thoughts, and their interests on social media. You can find the candidates that are a perfect fit for your company culture before they’re even looking!
– Create An Authentic Environment
Social recruiting helps to create an authentic atmosphere of your brand’s desired culture, which is so important when attracting new employees. And remember: it doesn’t stop after you hire someone!”
– See Candidate Experiences
Social recruitment is an important part of any company’s social media strategy because it allows recruiters to reach out to prospects through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Connecting with prospective candidates on these networks gives you the opportunity to view all of their work history and qualifications before contacting them directly.
– Find A Culture Fit
Social networks, like Facebook, allow you to learn what sort of person someone is before even meeting them. You can discover skill sets and a personality that will work well with your company culture. Potential employees who seem like they would be happy working at your business can also be found through social recruitment.
– Learn More About The Candidates
Employers will have to do some research about potential employees before they hire them. In other words, recruiters have to make sure to go through a candidate’s social media history. For example, if you’re evaluating candidates’ LinkedIn profiles, you may be able to learn a lot about their personality and work ethic by looking at the information in their profile, such as what jobs they’ve held or who they’ve networked with online. You’ll also want to look for connections that you might know personally – it would show that person’s ability on networking plus give more specific feedback!
Choosing Your Social Channels
When developing a social media strategy, it is important to figure out which platforms are most relevant for your industry. No one platform is the same – each can be used as marketing and communications tools or a means of sharing company culture with potential hires.
Here are 10 popular social media platforms for you to consider:
1 LinkedIn is best for professional connections
One of the world’s largest social media outlets for recruiting, LinkedIn packs a punch with its vast network of connections. This platform may be active or passive in search level and your company can give them all the exposure they need on their search by utilizing social distribution.
2 Twitter is best for quick updates
As microblogging is becoming more commonplace, Twitter has become a vital site for business recruitment. With its character limit imposed on all tweets, it can often be challenging to sell your corporate brand in just 140 characters or less without detracting from the message you’re trying to convey. Employers who recruit with social media tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter will find that they have the option of creating ‘Twitter Cards’ and attaching rich images, videos, and other media files to their tweets which will give them a stronger presence online beyond what’s allowed by letter count alone.
3 Facebook allows audience targeting options
Facebook has become the de-facto place for people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities to find jobs. Through user retention over time, you don’t have to worry about getting exposure from multiple generations, so it’s a great place to post your open positions. The nice thing is that Facebook offers a ‘Jobs’ tab on its profile home page that will show all the available job openings in that company.
4 YouTube is best for entertainment or event promotion
The video-only platform YouTube allows your company to broadcast its brand and culture more powerfully with a short recruitment video. The study shows that social videos generate over three times as many shares as text posts or images do on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn combined.
5 Pinterest is best for creative industries hiring
Though not typically used for job hunting, Pinterest is a valuable tool when it comes to social media recruiting. It’s an excellent way to show off your company culture and attract new talent.
One way for recruiters to use Pinterest is by creating boards about each position. This might not be the best strategy if your company has hundreds of open positions, but for everyone else, this is a powerful way to showcase everything people should know about that role.
6 StackOverflow is best for engineer recruiting
StackOverflow is an online question-and-answer site for programmers. It’s part of the Stack Exchange Network, which hosts other sites like Programmers and Math over Peer Review. Code fragments are provided since they’re tailored to specific situations.
Asking questions here is a great way to find answers quickly because your problem will be answered by people who specialize in that programming language. It’s also a good website for getting help finding new hires, especially top engineers who enjoy solving problems already at work every day on the job.
7 Dribbble.com is best for designers, photographers, and other creatives
When it comes to hiring a designer, creative work samples are better indicators than resumes. You don’t just want a candidate who shows you what they can do – you want them to show you what they’re capable of producing. Resumes often aren’t indicative of a designer candidate’s potential job performance, and it could be a mistake for companies to ask for one as the first step in their design recruitment process. Proactive “candidate sourcing” through sites like Dribbble is more beneficial than posting jobs and sorting through applications.
Dribbble is an online community for designers to host their portfolios. It allows candidates to demonstrate their real talent and projects for networking, eliminating the need for resume-writing skills.
8 Instagram is best for posting photos and videos of company culture
Instagram is a way to use pictures and videos that grab attention and make your brand irresistible.
Instagrammers value authenticity, so the more you can show what makes your company unique, the better! Try not to use stock photos and make sure your images are sized right for Instagram. Think about what sets your company apart–it could be a volunteer day opportunity, or even that you have a sports team on site. These are all things potential hires will like, which will increase their likelihood of joining up with you.
9 TikTok is best for posting short videos
TikTok is a social media app that’s becoming more popular for job seekers to find work. With this platform, you don’t have to post anything too long or complicated because it only allows one-minute video clips.
The best way to use TikTok as part of your recruiting strategy is to create an account and use the “regram” feature on Instagram so potential candidates can see what they’re in store for if they join your company team. It’s also important not just to talk about how great things are at your company, but to show them by creating content around events happening there! This will give people a better idea of who your employees are and make jobs seem more tangible.
10 Snapchat is best for posting inspirational content
You can use Snapchat to show what life is like at your company. Capturing beautiful scenes of your office space can help illustrate the culture you’re trying to create for employees.
Snapchat’s “live” feature is also useful, as it allows companies to broadcast from an event in real-time and answer any questions that come up live, without having a separate Q&A session scheduled.
How to Use Social Media to Recruit and Hire
– Evaluate Your Company’s Social Media Activities
Are your social media activities attracting the right type of people? Take a look at how many followers you have. Do the majority of them fit into your company’s target demographic or is there too much diversity in backgrounds and interests, meaning that you’re not reaching enough potential candidates for jobs? Evaluate what types of posts are generating likes, shares, comments and whether they can be considered “engaging.”
To attract candidates using social media, consider utilizing all of the following advantages. The first is leveraging posts on Facebook or Instagram that show images of team accomplishments and how members are recognized. This shows candidates that your organization is committed to its employees. Another way to use social recruiting successfully includes brand building through social media channels, posting photos and videos, capturing attention with content (e.g., infographics), and so on.
– Establish Your Brand On Social Media
When you’re recruiting, it’s important that the brand of your employer is conveyed to potential candidates. Social recruitment is a powerful technique for accomplishing this feat by conveying your company culture in lieu of creating career opportunities via Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
The social recruitment landscape involves being proactive and authentic with job seekers to cultivate relationships with them. A strong employer brand sets the tone for business success by attracting candidates and influences their perception of your culture.
– Determine Your Target Audience
You can make it easier for your company to target potential candidates by identifying the type of candidate your organization wants to attract. Doing so will make it easier for you to hone in on cultural fits that align with your company’s core competencies.
Start by creating a Candidate Persona profile to understand your target market. Work across different teams to ensure all aspects of the job are well defined and conveyed in postings.
– Appeal To The Candidates You Want to Attract
In order to get people excited about your company, you need to show them what makes it so unique. A great way to do this is through social media and advertising our open positions on these channels. So don’t be afraid of posting job listings there.
People are more likely to want to work for you if they can see what it’s like on the inside. This means posting photos, videos, and even live feeds of your workplace so applicants get a true sense of your business environment. Showing off your office space, highlighting employee events, or just giving an insight into how things run in general will help candidates form an opinion about whether they would enjoy working at this company or not.
– Continuous Connection With Candidates
Social media is not a one-and-done approach. It’s imperative to constantly engage with candidates, and employers who are doing it right will post jobs on social media sites in addition to their company website.
Recruitment is always changing, so it’s important to stay on top of social media trends and be willing to continue connecting with new people in new ways. It’s also important to get acquainted with the newest social networking platforms that are launching every day since they’ll help you connect with more potential job candidates.
– Key Metrics To Measure
The goal of social recruiting is to build a large and talented pool of candidates. Your company should first create metrics against which they can measure their success:
- Increase traffic to your career page
- Increase engagement on the social media platforms, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn
- Increase conversion rates on social media platforms
- Increase the number of candidates who sign up for your company’s job alerts
- Increase job applicant conversion rates
- Increase the number of applicants who are interviewed and hired
Once you have a set of metrics in place, the next step is to create an action plan and strategy for social recruiting. It’s not enough to just hop on Facebook or LinkedIn one morning and start posting career opportunities without any pre-planning. A comprehensive social media recruitment campaign includes:
- Establishing company guidelines about what should be posted on different platforms (i.e., personal vs professional)
- Creating content that matches specific job postings in order to attract qualified candidates who are looking for work at your organization
- Planning how often you will post jobs
- Considering whether it makes sense to recruit exclusively within certain networks; some companies find they get more traction with their current employees by using Twitter than LinkedIn
In conclusion: Remember, what works for one company doesn’t always work for the next. Create a social media recruiting strategy that makes sense and fits in with your overall recruiting strategy and social media strategies so your entire company can operate seamlessly, like one giant well-oiled machine.