The How-to Guide to Using Social Media as a Recruitment Tool
Social media is often used by businesses to grow brand awareness as well as to promote their products and services in the best light. However, did you know that recruiters are also using social media for hiring? With millennials quickly forming the backbone of the global workforce and Gen Z jobseekers hot on their heels, targeting these two groups have been the focus of many recruiters. And which sites and apps do these people visit in their spare time? That’s right: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
It’s not just them too. Almost everyone in the world right now has at least one social media account. So if you’re looking for another venue to direct your recruitment efforts, your best bet is to stay active on social media.
Don’t know how to recruit through social media? We’ve got you covered with our guide on using social media for hiring.
What is Social Media Recruitment?
First things first, let’s define what social media recruitment is. Social recruiting is the method of using social media platforms as talent pools, or a venue for advertising job positions and openings. It’s the practice of identifying, attracting, engaging, and recruiting both passive and active candidates on Facebook or LinkedIn. Recruiters can check out a prospect’s social media profile to get a sense of their personality and work ethics, and see if they fit certain roles in their organization.
What is the advantage of social media recruitment over other types of recruiting? Social recruiting has a leg up over other types of hiring methods as it allows recruiters to connect directly with both passive and active job seekers. Recruiters can find qualified candidates by engaging with them through posts, videos, shared articles, and other forms of content on social media. You can also reach out to interested people through chat!
Whichever platform or network you use, social recruiting is a great way to increase job visibility, improve brand awareness, and open the door to engagement. Some recruiters who know how to recruit through social media will even tell you that the conversations they make on LinkedIn and Facebook are better than one-on-one interviews.
How to Recruit with Social Media: A Step by Step Guide
Okay, you’re convinced that you need social recruiting in your recruitment strategy. But how do you exactly recruit through social media? We break down the complicated process of using social media for hiring into seven actionable steps that are easy to follow:
Social media platforms fall into various categories. Some are used by casual internet users to communicate with their loved ones or to stay updated on the lives of their friends. Others prefer using social media for company blogging, B2B networking, and other business-related activities.
Choosing the right platform for your specific industry and job description is crucial to finding qualified candidates. For instance, you can look for a photographer or content curator on Instagram, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an electrical engineer there. You’re better off searching for candidates on Facebook or LinkedIn.
The same rule applies to the type of content you want to publish. Blog posts work better on LinkedIn while making a Careers Page is a great Facebook recruiting strategy. Keep in mind that when you’re just starting out on how to recruit with social media, you need to define your goals and expectations first before choosing one or two platforms that will cater to your specific hiring needs.
Here’s how you can use the most popular social media platforms for recruitment:
- Facebook: Create a company page and invite people to “Like” it. As your following grows organically, you can also use Facebook Ads to extend your reach to new audiences.
- LinkedIn: This is arguably the best place to find people who are actively looking for a job. In addition to its paid search tools, you can post different types of content and make connections with contacts all around the world.
- Twitter: Let users find your content by hashtagging your tweets. For instance, you can insert #jobs #hiring #jobsforhire #webdeveloperforhire and other hashtags that will attract job seekers and expand your content’s reach.
- Instagram: As a recruiting strategy, you can use Instagram to share photos of your workplace, fun activities, employee profiles, and job ads for creatives.
- YouTube: Just like Instagram, YouTube is a great place to find creative candidates. You can create a company page, share behind-the-scenes videos, post company event videos, and more.
Searching for job candidates on social media isn’t as simple as it seems. You can have the most attractive and engaging advertisement for a job opening but if you fail to target the right audience — no one will apply for it. Make sure that you and your hiring team are clear about the type of candidates you want to hire.
Do you want to hire fresh graduates, experienced professionals, or executive-level individuals? Do you have special job requirements such as certain technical skills, educational attainment, certifications, and other characteristics? These are all important questions that will help you learn how to recruit with social media effectively and determine the candidates your company really needs.
To avoid downtime, create a candidate persona for each opening and center your hiring efforts on those personas. It will help you publish posts and job advertisements that make unfit candidates pass on the opening while encouraging qualified ones to reach out and send their resumes.
Pro tip: Here’s a checklist of questions that you can cover when making your candidate persona.
- What job title should you look for?
- Where do they currently work?
- What are their skills?
- What is their level of experience?
- What personal traits are you looking for?
- What are your goals and expectations for them?
- Where do you want to find them (LinkedIn, Facebook, employee referrals, etc)?
One of the important things you need to learn on how to recruit effectively through social media is that consistency is key. Make sure that you are ready to create content for your social media pages for several weeks or even two months in advance.
When developing ideas for your content calendar, think of topics that will attract your candidates based on their personas and reasons for making a career move. Things like industry news, company updates, employee testimonials, and “how to” guides are all popular with jobseekers on social media. There are also many great places where you can find content to share with your audience. Between industry resources, thought leaders, groups, hashtags, and events regularly posted on social media — content curation is easy. Just get browsing.
After you’ve created or found content you can post or share, create a content calendar that consists of the exact dates you intend to post or share the content. The more often you post, the better your chances of being spotted and attracting high quality candidates. Sharing content on a consistent schedule also gives off the impression that your brand is here to stay.
Calls to action (CTAs) play a vital role when you’re using social media for hiring. While it’s true that job seekers will naturally respond to interesting or engaging posts, you need to ensure that they actually act on it. When posting job advertisements, don’t forget to include moving or motivational messages.
CTAs such as “Sign up today — land your dream job tomorrow” and similar messages should be included in your social media posts. They’re not only easy to digest, they also inspire people to consider and eventually apply for work.
Additionally, get employees to share your posts or comment on them. Encourage them to talk about what your workplace culture is like, or to share their most memorable experiences working for your company. You can also tell them to tag their friends in the posts for wider reach and engagement.
Pro tip: Offer incentives to the employees who help boost your engagement. For instance, for every 10 shared posts from your company’s Career Page on Facebook, they get a Starbucks coupon.
Another crucial thing to note when you’re learning how to recruit with social media is that it dictates direct communication. Your social media pages easily serve as backdoor support for any potential candidates.
Interested job seekers will likely ask for additional information about your opening, recruitment process, and the company itself. Instruct your hiring team to answer all questions in regards to all the openings. Ignoring these messages will reflect negatively on your overall visibility and social media ranking. Sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn prefer to display pages that answer private messages frequently as opposed to those that don’t.
The platforms also make it known to users just how often pages reply. Pages who consistently reply to messages in a timely manner receive a “Very Responsive to Messages” badge. If you usually reply late, say every few days or so, it might turn off applicants, including your dream candidates.
Pro tip: Host a live Q & A session once or twice a month. Facebook and Instragram allows you to set up live video streams where you can connect with your followers. It’s a great activity that enables you to answer questions and engage your audience. You can also use the live stream session to share more about your company culture with potential applicants or conduct a real-time tour of your workplace.
Once the applications start coming in, make sure you respond to candidates as soon as possible. If your team is constantly busy, create automated response messages that assure candidates you’ll get back to them when you can.
Your company will get flak for ignoring direct messages, especially if it’s something as important as a job placement. The people who send you resumes are in dire need of employment, so show them respect by responding to their inquiries or scheduling an interview appointment if they fit the qualifications.
Also, highly qualified candidates don’t last long in the talent pool. If you take several days or a week to reply, they’ll move on to other opportunities.
Often, the easiest way to using social media for hiring is to utilize social recruiting software like Skillfuel. You can use it to sync all of your company’s social media pages, schedule posts, automate replies, and more.
Interested? Head over to the next section to see just how social recruiting software can help your social media recruitment strategy.
Why do you need automation when it comes to social recruiting?
Social recruiting software provides your hiring team with a number of benefits. For instance, in a traditional workflow, recruiters scan through a pile of resumes before they narrow the list down to the most qualified candidates. At that point, your team needs to scan those candidates’ social media profiles to see if they exhibit bad behavior. With automation, you can weed out candidates with red flags earlier in the process.
Skillfuel is an all-in-one, user-friendly recruitment management platform that features social media automation. With a single click, you can schedule and send posts to all of your social media pages and ensure messaging is consistent across all channels.
Aside from its social media automation feature, Skillfuel is also equipped with other tools that support your entire recruitment process.
Hire faster, hire easier.
For more information and inquiries about our recruitment management software, reach out to us and fill up our contact form.