It seems that social media has become the standard method of communication, marketing, and even maintaining relationships. We shop through social media, we make friends through social media, we use social media for many aspects of our lives.
To keep up with the times, it’s a good idea to have a few different social media pages for your company, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and especially LinkedIn. So if you’re already on all of these social networking sites, why not start recruiting potential talent through them?
If you’re interested in learning a bit more about this method to the recruiting process, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to recruit employees through social media.
Why Recruiting Through Social Media is the New Norm
Before we get into the how, let’s discuss the why. Why is social media recruiting the new way to go when it comes to talent acquisition? Isn’t it good enough to just use the typical recruiting websites and software or just check resumés and references?
You could go the traditional recruiting process route and trust that you’ll be able to find a good candidate and you may be right.
Or, you could be more proactive with your recruitment process through the use of social media and find the perfect potential hire.
Benefits to Recruiting Online Through Social Media
Why even recruit through social media in the first place? Using social media for recruitment can be a bit difficult to get started since it is a new way of recruiting and of course there’s a learning curve with that, but once you strategize, it can be a gamechanger.
You Have the Option to Seek Out and Match Your Favorite Candidates
Social media recruiting allows for you to engage in both passive candidates and active candidates. Through both brand strategy and recruitment marketing, you can make sure that your employment ads will only be shown to your target market for recruiting.
You can get hyper-specific with what sort of potential employee you’re searching for and you can also create a lot of content to market open positions within your company to stay in the front of their minds.
You can Vet Them Before Contacting Them
Social media recruiting will allow you to have a larger number of applicants or possible future employees. This gives you the option to see more of them without having to actively seek out qualified candidates all of the time.
This allows you to narrow the pool of applicants to only the top few prospective candidates who you believe will be a good match. Doing the work on the front end will save you extra work on the back end and make you only spend time interviewing the right people. instead of wading through unqualified resumés that will waste your time and theirs. Learn what questions to ask when interviewing someone so you can even further narrow down your qualified leads.
How to Recruit through Social Media Successfully
Just posting a couple of things on any social media channel isn’t going to cover it. To recruit successfully through the use of multiple social media platforms you will have to do a bit of research and learn how to use each platform to benefit you and your company the most. Here’s how you can do that.
Make Yourself Look Good
If you were in the position of searching for a job, consider this: would you be more likely to apply for one with a well-formulated brand that also looks aesthetically pleasing, making you enthusiastic to work there?
Or would you rather apply for a job at a company that you know little to nothing about whose employment ads are bland, vague, and uninteresting?
Chances are job seekers be more drawn to the former of the two. Make your recruiting efforts and advertisements well-designed and interesting but still organized and professional. That is a bit complicated, but with proper employer branding, it can be more successful than any traditional strategy you’ve tried before.
Showcase Your Current Employees
Let your potential candidates know who they’ll be working with. Having a photoshoot of team meetings or events for you and your current employees to incorporate in advertisements can naturally pique the interest of your prospective candidates and let them know what sort of energy your team has.
Have professional photos and short biographies of your current employees easily accessible on your social media pages once your advertisements drive traffic to them. When you’re as open and transparent as possible upfront, letting potential candidates know who you are and what you’re about, it begins a relationship based on trust.
Your current employees will also be a good barometer for which candidates will fit best, and you should consider encouraging your employees to even bring in possible candidates through an employee referral program themselves.
It also just makes your company look welcoming and fun. Who doesn’t want to be on a successful team?
Get Specific
It’s important to remember that when we say social media, we are referring to multiple social media platforms, each with its own unique flair. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn all have different markets and different energies. Make sure you know how to create a LinkedIn business page that drives significant engagement.
The benefit of this variety and the algorithms each platform uses means that you can target a specific type of candidate. If you want to get specific candidates, you will have to be just as specific with your advertising.
This means you will need to make your ads for that website fit the format of the social media platform. Yes, this does mean creating a bit more content, but it will all be worth it in the end when you get the perfect candidate on your roster.
Interact Regularly
The key to retaining attention on your social media recruiting ads is to keep them coming. Make sure to continually turn out fresh advertisement ideas and keep up with your own business’s social media page for when they decide to check your page out.
Much like with your advertising, edit your social media account’s content to fit the vibe of the social media platform you’re posting to. Specificity is key.
Once You Have Your Eye on a Candidate
Once your advertising and social media posting has attracted your perfect candidate, make sure to keep in contact with them regularly. Keep lines of communication open even if you don’t have a position open for them yet, as you never know when they could be seeking a job just as you have one open up.
Meet the Perfect Candidates Where They Are
By making your presence known on social media you can attract the best candidates and it will allow you to spend more quality time with those candidates who deserve it. To learn more about the business strategy surrounding social media recruitment, check out Maui Mastermind.