About 91% of employers(1) use social media to recruit top-talent worldwide. At the same time, about 55% of job seekers who find it difficult to get hired traditionally use social media to find potential job opportunities.
The modernized era we live in has made every day routine quite easy. Through the internet, you can now get help for your course, chat with your overseas friends, order food, get an online job and even promote your company or brand. The trend of using social media for recruiting has brought many opportunities that are beneficial for both, the employers and employees.
What Is Social Media Recruiting?
Social media recruiting is simply using the platform of media to attract candidates through advertisements. The recruitment is done with different websites, blogs and other social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. These networks also provide the database to seek information about the candidates seeking jobs.
Why Use Social Media for Recruiting?
Following are some reasons why social media recruitment can be a game-changer:
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Awarness of the vacancies
One of the greatest benefits of using social media for recruiting is that your company or brand is advertised on the media which increases visibility. People are more trusting towards the brands that have more social media involvement.
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Saves money
Hiring through social media is rather cheap as compared to other methods. A simple Facebook ad can attract two times more people than classified ads.
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Better candidates
A number of active individuals use social networking platforms. This makes the process of identifying and recruiting rather easy with the information provided online.
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Brand visibility
For the newly emerging brands gaining popularity and trust of the clients could be a tiring job. Â Such struggling brands can be benefitted from social recruitment. This opens a new door for gaining an audience, engaging followers and attracting potential employees.
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Less time consuming
Your vacancy can be filled in a short time with the help of social media. This takes lesser time than one on one interview and other traditional methods. It is easier to communicate with interested candidates and create a healthy working relationship.
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Boost recruitment marketing efforts
Social media has the potential of taking marketing efforts to the next level. Even though there are some interesting tactics to hunt down young talent such as advertisements and newspapers but they are not scalable. While social media helps you to reach hundreds of skilled candidates on online platforms.
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Tailor marketing efforts
By using social media, you have myriad ways to reach specific audience or skilled candidate most suited for the roles in your firm. Narrowing down the candidate pool would help you focus on hiring the best applicants.
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Let people know of job openings
Social media recruiting is the simplest way of telling people that your brand needs an efficient candidate for the open positions or roles. This would lead you to create and share enticing information about your employees as well as brand. This could encourage the candidates to apply.
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Personalize communication efforts
Social media recruiting creates a direct communication channel between the employer and the candidates. You could start by having direct conversations with your employees via messaging. This could help your brand to stand out in taking out time to know the candidates personally.
How to use social media for recruiting
Every company has a unique social media recruiting strategy but if you are looking for a basic one to start with, keep moving forward:
- Contact personally and take part in the right conversations on the right forums.
- Promote your business culture by taking a soft approach.
- Pursue niche networks as Gen Z and millennials both generations use them.
- Involve everyone for your workplace and encourage them to share any openings on social media channels.
- Encourage your social media recruiters to grow social media presence.
Social Media Recruiting Sites
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Linkedin
Nearly everyone who has a career or looking for a job vacancy has a LinkedIn profile. It is known as the world’s largest professional network. Not only can you reach out to active candidates but contact passive ones as well. However, you need to filter for the right candidates, fill out your company page completely and reach out personally.
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Facebook
Apart from a messaging and social app, it is also known as the biggest platform to search for employees, interacting with your customers, telling people about job openings and introducing your services and goods.
If your brand has high user retention on Facebook, you can engage with a lot of job seekers and post all the open positions available in your company. In fact, it is so widely used by the recruiters that Facebook has recently introduced the ‘job openings’ tab.
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Twitter
Even though explaining a job opening in 140 characters can give recruiters a hard time, the Tweet would be seen by millions of job seekers. Moreover, your tweet spreads like fire if you use appropriate and right keywords like #jobopening, #hiring and etc.
Strategies to Use While Recruiting Top-Talent
Confused about how to get started? Here are some proven social media recruiting strategies to employ in your recruitment process:
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Building an online profile
With the online world progressing daily, it is essential for a brand to create an online reputation to keep up with the increasing competition. The existing clients and employees can be helpful in promoting the brand to their followers.
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Choose the right social network
Before starting the recruitment, the process makes sure to have a clear idea of what you have to create and what type of individuals you would like to work for you. This is how you can choose the right platform. The right platform also sets the goal of what you want to publish.
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Connect with people
Another social recruitment strategy is to connect with the right people. Communicate with business leaders in order to meet up with their interests and demands. Their response depends on your efforts, offers, and social etiquettes.
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Linkedin profile
LinkedIn is the leading social network for finding interested candidates as it is used by about 80 percent of recruiters. Creating a profile of your brand and participating in groups is important to gain an audience.
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Social media advertising
Another way of communicating with the audience is to use paid ads on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in a similar way to that of Google ads. The paid ads on LinkedIn are more expensive than those on other social networks. However, these ads are usually cheaper than the traditional methods of attracting individuals.
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Hashtags
To establish a relevant online following creating a hashtag will be in your greatest interest. Focus on meaningful content and informative posts that can get you trending.
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Getting help from your employees
Your employees can help you in the recruiting process and this is the best strategy in terms of gaining a trustworthy and potential following. One needs to set the scope of the vacancy, employee guidelines and social media policy to get a viral potential. This makes the best of social media recruiting.
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Content calendar
Once you create a recruitment calendar you can focus on other things such as company policies and content creation. Â The calendar helps in keeping people updated about the vacancies and other advertisements. The more you post the more likely it is for you to gain public attention.
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Candidates engagement
After gaining enough followers it is essential to keep them engage through direct messages, live video call sessions, answering their queries and keeping them updated with regular content. Do not wait for the individuals to approach you. Approach them first and tell them about your offers. Interacting with the candidates improves the recruitment process and gives a positive experience. This should be the primary goal for every company and brand.
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Choosing the right candidate
You can use the power of social media to run a background check on the candidates interested in working with you. People using these networks provide enough information to learn about their professional abilities. It is rather easy to select the right individual who can sensibly polish your brand or company.
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Conduction of interviews
Evaluate your candidates by conducting interviews. Tell them about the opportunities, the goals of your company and rules and regulations. You can also try to conduct group interviews.
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Building brand’s online reputation
Let everybody know what your brand or business is worth. Do not target customers only. There are people who are ambitious enough to work with you. If a wide base of an audience is invested in your brand online, you have a high probability of finding the right candidates for the growth of your company.
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Learn about Facebook audience to improve
You can use Facebook analytics tools to see what’s increasing your traction on Facebook for employer branding. This would help you give data of people genuinely interested in your employment rather than the general audience.
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Using videos for engagement
Once you have built a reputation for your brand online, you can move on to creating videos for engaging with passive candidates. By using visual content, you can spread the word 50% times faster.
Social media recruiting tips
Now that you are aware of the strategies that can help you in recruiting, there are some tips that can aid to achieve the desired goal.
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Set the rules
It is essential to set the rules and regulations prior to the process of hiring. In this way, individuals can have a view of what they are signing into. Making the rules simpler and easy to understand can be helpful as it eliminates the chances of any miscommunication among the employees.
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Friendly interviews
When you are interviewing your candidates, they are also evaluating your company. It is more likely for an individual to be interested in your offers when the interview is conducted in a friendly and comfortable environment.
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Unique hashtags
Make sure that the hashtags you are creating are unique. Do not create similar hashtags that can’t make your content stand out.
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College recruitments
By recruiting college students you can introduce your company to new skills and strategies. These skilled youngsters can be recruited by online ads, public speaking events, the online board of college campuses.
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Passive candidates
You can raise awareness of your brand by reaching out to passive candidates. These are the people who are not looking for a job and are employed. These are the most qualified individuals that can offer prosperity to your work.
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Use social recruiting software
Sometimes, to reach out to potential candidates, all you can do is simply the process by using social recruiting software. You can use it for syncing social media accounts, scheduling posts and automating processes.
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Attract candidates on Instagram
It’s pretty hard getting employment response on Facebook if you are not paying for it. However, Instagram helps you get 10 times more engagement in the form of likes, shares, comments, reposts, stories and etc.
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Creating branding videos
While checking out large enterprises, you must have seen a lot of videos. You do not have to hire a professional for it. In fact, you can accomplish creating videos on your own mobile phone. You just need light and creativity.
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Monitoring opportunities and brand issues on social media
There is some software that can help you monitor recruitment opportunities, brand issues and your brand’s presence on social media platforms. One software that you can invest in is Hootsuite. It gives you numerous opportunities to connect with the right candidates and highlight main brand issues as well.
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Encourage employee to share
Encourage the current employees to share your brand’s culture as much as possible. You can even create a social media policy as it would help the employees to use the social recruiting tools efficiently.
Social Media Tools for Recruiting
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Linkedin
It is the largest recruiting platform in the world. It can be used as a screening tool with a number of people looking for jobs. Through this, a brand can communicate and gain the attention of both active and passive candidates.
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Hootsuite
This tool is used for monitoring the brand posts and tags. It notifies whenever someone mentions your brand on the social network. This way you can reach out and communicate with many people who are interested in your work. The free version offers monitoring on three different networks whereas the paid version monitors on different social apps, blogs, forums, and websites.
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Salesloft
It is a great tool for recruiting development representatives. Since most such representatives are passive candidates the tool is of great importance. With this tool, you can create a list of interested candidates with their email addresses and phone numbers and set them on one platform.
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IFTT
It is a free tool that manages simple tasks like a job promotion, creating connections between different sites. IFTT can connect over three hundred online channels.
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Whatsapp
WhatsApp can provide a free platform to communicate in a modern way. Through this app, you can check whether your text has been delivered or read even when your clients and employees are in different time zones. This tool is easy to manage and can be available on your mobile phone around the clock.
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Feedly
Through Feedly, one can create a customized newsfeed from different networks and websites to get ideas about their own content. The news from different blogs, sites, forums, and other channels can be provided on the app so that you can come up with your own ideas in a structured way.
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Twitter search
This tool searches for the mentioned email addresses on one’s Twitter account. You can search for the email format of the company your candidate works for by using twitter search for free.
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Facebook
We are all familiar with Facebook being the most running social network. But this has become a leading tool in the process of social media recruitment. With more than two million active users, this app can provide a great platform for promoting your brand, attracting candidates, engaging them.
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Hire rabit
Through this tool, you can create your platform where you can organize your data, which can be used on different social networks.
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Sourcehub
It is a social tool that needs little data to come up with the searches. All you have to do is enter the type of vacancy, your location and the skills of the candidate you are looking for and source hub can search about 15 different social networks including LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Simply measured
The platform of simply measured is widely used by a number of corporations for analysis of social media performance, activities and conversations among the audience. It also monitors and notifies when there is a mention of your brand. This does not only helps your company to reach its respective goal but also guides you on how to cope up with your competitors.
Social media recruiting best practices
Even though recruiting through social media is the most cost-effective and efficient way, you need to keep in mind recruiting social media best practices for targeting the right candidates for open vacancies.
Here are some best practices you can use social media for recruiting
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Creating and Editorial Calendar
An editorial calendar could help you to curate content consistently. By an editorial calendar, you can refer to various themes every single day and spice things up for your followers and job seekers out there.
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Encourage the Team to Engage
You are not a single person running the brand. So, get every member of your team involved. Encourage the team members to curate content to skyrocket the recruiting process.
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Direct Communication
Job seekers usually give out their own thoughts. So, it’s a good opportunity for you to get in touch with them directly.
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Participate in Group Discussions
Facebook and LinkedIn have thousands of job forums and groups in which you can be seen as an active recruiter. It’s a great opportunity for you to come across hundreds of proficient candidates.
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Engage Through Content
If a candidate or passive job seeker has left out a comment or query, do not be afraid to reply to that. Responding directly increases the chances of meeting the right candidate.
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Give A Shoutout To the Right Candidates
Giving shoutouts can not only bring traffic to your brand’s page but can also help you to reach efficient candidates’ profiles.
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Hold Online Conferences or A Livestream Events
Livestream from your office and answer all the queries and questions dropped by passive candidates. Moreover, host questions and answers online events to share your brand’s perspective.
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Use the Power of Hashtags
Relevant hashtags have the power to have you connected to a good audience. If you want the right candidates to bump into your brand’s profile, use industry or job-related hashtags.
Social Media Recruiting Dos and Don’ts
Social Media for Recruiting Dos:
- Use multiple platforms to target the right candidates.
- Curate an attention-seeking recruiter profile.
- Participate in various social groups.
- Use visual content, that is videos.
- Optimize your job ads for mobiles.
Social Media for Recruiting Don’ts:
- Do not send spam messages to the candidates.
- Post frequently but do not over-post on your recruiter profile.
Benefits of using social media for recruiting
Some benefits of social media recruiting are:
- You have numerous opportunities to connect with passive job finders.
- You can create a credible brand reputation online.
- Employers can represent their workforce.
- Your search narrows down to higher quality candidates.
- It reduces recruitment cost.
- It increases job-openings visibility.
- You get to interview more proficient candidates.
- It helps to screen your candidates efficiently.
Frequently Asked Questions about Social Media Recruiting
Q. How do you recruit using social media?
A. By using social media channels as recruiting platforms, you can attract high quality candidate and screen them by industry-specific recruiting strategies.
Q.Why is social media good for recruiting?
A. Social media recruiting has many benefits for recruiters. Not only does it help them to reach out to passive candidates but also saves hiring cost.
Q.What is the role of social media in recruitment?
A. As social media channels outpower everything on the internet, it holds importance to internet users. Messaging apps like Facebook help the recruiters to initiate conversations with the candidates directly.
Q. Are smaller companies using social media for recruiting?
A. Yes! As it cuts down hiring costs, large enterprises as well as small ones are looking up to it.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking for candidates for your vacancy or promoting your newly emerged brand through social media recruitment, it is essential for you to come up with the greatest strategies since there is a tough competition in this field. Gaining an audience through other methods can be time and money consuming.
A number of applications and tools these days are providing platforms to achieve desired recruitment goals. However, if you are looking for employment through social media you have to make sure about the company and watch out for online frauds.
