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Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay. So perhaps it was inevitable that social media would infiltrate the world of recruitment, becoming a popular tool in the recruiter’s kitbag.
Incredibly, a recent study found that 92% of employers now use social media recruiting to find talent. But if you’re not already using it, or have dabbled in it and aren’t convinced, what is the benefit of using social media for recruitment?
What is social media recruiting?
Social media recruiting is where employers connect with candidates through social media. It’s sometimes known as “social hiring” or “social recruiting”. However, it is more than simply advertising vacancies on social media job boards. Social media recruiting is a more holistic approach towards recruitment that involves the employee experience and company culture as well as job openings.
How effective is social media recruiting?
One of the biggest benefits of social media recruiting is the way in which it allows recruiters to communicate with potential candidates at a range of levels.
1. You can tell potential candidates about your business
It can be difficult for smaller businesses to attract interest from potential candidates. But engaging in social media recruiting allows HR managers to change that. By carefully using social media, companies can humanise their brand and give an insight into the company culture, showcasing their brand and sharing what they do. This in turn will help prospective employees understand what the employer offers beyond a paycheque at the end of the month.
2. You can reach more potential candidates
Traditional recruitment will always be limited by the number of people who are actively looking for a job. Social media recruitment allows you to communicate with passive candidates as well as those actively seeking employment, casting your net wider for a better potential catch.
3. Easy to target specific candidate groups
Social media is incredibly effective at drilling down into user profiles. This means you can easily target people with the right qualifications and interests for a more effective approach. You can also use targeting to ensure you reach people in the right location.
4. It’s a great way to reach younger candidates
Organisations ready to attract new blood into their workforce often find social media recruiting to be the perfect tool. Younger employees are digital natives, using the online world for everything. Unfortunately, this means they may be mistrustful or dismissive of companies without a strong online presence. Having a solid social media recruitment strategy will allow you to actively engage with this stream of new workers, putting you ahead of those without a plan.
5. You can leverage your existing employees
Some of the most effective social media recruiting strategies use existing employees as advocates. And for good reason – it’s said that employees’ social networks are 10x bigger than company followers! From employees sharing their team-building activity to those saying ‘thanks’ to someone who has made a difference to their working day, social media recruiting can leverage this energy and show job hunters that people truly enjoy working for their employer.
6. It’s very cost effective
Although most social media recruitment efforts will involve paid campaigns to target specific groups of people, this can still prove more cost-effective than a traditional recruitment campaign.
7. Social media platforms have tools to help
As well as having laser-focused targeting tools, many social media platforms have native job boards to make the recruitment process even easier.
8. It complements traditional recruitment methods
Social media recruitment reaches candidates at all stages of their job search journey – even when they’re not considering changing jobs. This can ‘warm up’ potential candidates, improving their perception of you as an employer, ready for future hiring opportunities.
How can social media be used for recruiting?
With all these benefits, you might be sold on using social media for recruitment, but less certain on how you go about using social media to attract candidates. The good news is that getting started is easy - so long as you have done the groundwork in building a recruitment strategy.
Any platform can be used in your social media recruitment strategy. LinkedIn is often seen as THE place to go for recruitment, but bear in mind that platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook may be just as – if not more – effective at building your employer brand and encouraging potential candidates to get in touch.
With a more corporate feeling to it, LinkedIn is a great place to attract experienced professionals and individuals for more senior roles. LinkedIn is famed for its very well-developed jobs board that’s easy for applicants and employers to navigate. However, the real value is in the content on LinkedIn. This makes it very easy to engage with job seekers and share information that potential candidates would be interested in, such as company culture and reward & recognition programmes.
As the most-used social media platform in the UK, Facebook has excellent potential reach across a spread of demographics. It also has a native jobs board which makes it easy to advertise jobs and to encourage potential candidates to get in touch.
TikTok
Just the job for reaching younger candidates, TikTok is quickly warming up to social media recruiting with its resume function. The fact that it’s often overlooked by other recruiters means less competition for any employer who does spend time here.
YouTube
Wondering where to put all those company videos? Here’s the place to keep them. Building a company channel with videos about your brand, your culture, your latest away day and so on, is an easy way to share information with potential candidates who are interested in finding out more about your business.
This highly visual platform has very high engagement. The design-led content makes Instagram a brilliant place to engage with creative talent such as designers.
Although it doesn’t have a jobs board, Twitter is a great place for engaging in real-time topical conversations to promote recruitment. Hashtags make it easy to identify people interested in certain topics, and this makes Twitter a great place to find individuals with niche knowledge or interests.
Ready to start social media recruiting?
If you’re ready to start reaching out to prospective employees on social media, all we can say is do it! Remember to keep your content focused on what your candidates want to see and you can’t go too wrong.
Recruiting Talent
