How social media can improve your recruitment
Social media is ever-growing and businesses need to grow with it. The days of marketing your business through newspapers, leaflets and radio adverts are becoming less common. The new era of digital marketing has taken over. With 86% of job seekers using social media to aid their job search (Career Arc), it’s imperative for the recruitment process to follow suit.
Social recruiting is the act of doing just that. It is the process of utilising social media as a talent pool or to advertise vacancies. Social media can help deepen and diversify your talent pool. It allows you to reach active job seekers and passive candidates due to the volume of people available online.
Benefits of social media
Channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn are great tools for you to advertise your vacancies. They can be a great way to inexpensively increase job visibility. For example, a simple Facebook ad can get you over twice as much visibility than traditional recruitment methods like classified ads in the dailies and job boards (Zippia).
(Plus, unlike on-site events or job fairs, social media doesn’t require travel or organisational costs)!
Social recruiting can be far quicker too. You can reach a wider audience in a matter of minutes, rather than cold calling which can take hours to form connections.
Social media is also a great tool for candidates because it allows them to get a feel for the company’s values and see if it’s a business they think they would enjoy working for. Did you know that 75% of candidates research a company’s reputation before applying for the job (LinkedIn)? This is why it is important that your social media portrays your business in a positive light and represents what your company stands for. This also works vice versa because it can also allow you to gain insight into a candidate’s personality, and values to see if they align with your company’s culture before hiring.
For Example, Kenect Recruitment regularly reposts testimonials. This maintains our brand’s reputation of being a reliable agency. This benefits candidates and clients as they can see how trustworthy the company is.
Actionable steps to increase your social recruiting today
• Be concise – It is important to make your content eye-catching and easy to read. Long-winded pieces of information can overwhelm the consumer and your message can be lost. It is best to keep it short but sweet and include all relevant information without losing candidates’ interest. An effective way you can do this is by using images to help provide information visually. Two-thirds of social media feeds are made up of images. With that, content with relevant imagery reports a 94% higher response than content without (MDG Advertising). Are you already using imagery across your social media platforms?
• Increase engagement – You can ensure your company reaches more of your target audience by following groups, pages or people that relate to your business. Using hashtags can be a great way to increase traffic to your social media from the right people and can also be a way to find more people you can connect with.
• Advertise the company, not just jobs – Although it is important to promote job advertisements, be careful not to flood your page with spam ads. Make your business personable and share posts of current clients/employees, exciting developments in the business and staff involvement. This can give candidates a greater insight into your company and show that you’re about more than just numbers
• Research – Exploring other businesses in your industry can allow you to get inspiration as well as reflect on what makes you stand out as a company.
Try these platforms we’re loving for social recruiting right now:
Twitter is a very popular platform and can be utilised in many ways to grow your brand awareness on social media. It has a character limit which can help you to keep your post concise and easily digestible. This is why images and videos work very well on Twitter to catch people’s attention, whether it’s promoting job vacancies or sharing company insights.
To engage with candidates and maintain a good reputation for your company you should: be active, check your direct messages and respond to queries. ‘Call to action’ links can be added to job adverts to make it easier for candidates to apply or find out more information. Twitter can also be used to promote events, share company updates, highlight industry news or build a community.
Facebook is a great platform to increase engagement and reach a wide audience. Firstly, you should set up a careers page for your company.
You can increase post reach and effectively create a platform for your business by:
• Sharing job ads in relevant Facebook groups
• Asking staff to share company posts
• Inviting people to like the page
Creating ads on Facebook is a fantastic feature to promote jobs due to its targeting feature. This allows you to control what type of people your ad reaches so that it can reach more potential candidates. Again, Facebook Ads are cost-effective and allow you to reach a wide audience.
At Kenect Recruitment, we join many driving forums to interact with potential candidates. This includes sharing funny content or posting job ads. Not only does this improve our brand awareness but also allows us to build relationships with candidates. Drivers can benefit from seeing job vacancies or simply be entertained by humourous content.
LinkedIn is one of the world’s largest professional network and most frequented social media platform for recruiting with 40 million people that look for jobs on LinkedIn weekly (LinkedIn) which is why it is an important tool for your business to invest time in. Three-quarters of workers between the ages of 18-34 found their most recent job via social media. Moreover, nearly 90% of recruiters report that they have hired someone through LinkedIn (Haiilo).
You can easily connect with potential candidates by searching for keywords or qualifications that are relevant to your industry. To increase exposure, existing staff members can repost company posts on their profiles which can increase internal referral processes. Are you making the most of this platform?
Ads are also possible on LinkedIn through the sponsored job function. According to the website, people are three times as likely to apply for a sponsored advert than a normal one. You can also target a specific audience which can reduce the time spent looking for the ideal candidate. Groups are excellent places to upload job ads because you are posting directly to people who already have an interest in your industry. They are also a great way to build your network and interact with people relevant to your business.
New Developments
The shift to social recruiting doesn’t stop there. TikTok has recently rolled out its new resume feature in the US. This enables job seekers to be more authentic and creative when highlighting their experiences and skillsets to employers. It also allows recruiters to get a more personal feel for each candidate. I wonder what we can expect next.
The takeaway
Although social media is one of the fastest and most cost-effective methods for recruitment, it is important to be aware of the challenges. There are many legal issues associated with social media such as:
Copyright – Ensure not to copy someone else’s content or ideas,
Privacy – When looking at someone else’s social media be careful not to discriminate during recruiting,
False Information – Social media can also contain a lot of false information which is why you should be cautious when hiring someone based on their social media,
It can also be tricky to produce the right amount of information that is easy to understand and access. This is why it is important to use user-friendly pathways when sending candidates from the social media pages to the application process. Creating content planners is useful to ensure you have enough posts to promote your company and increase engagement without bombarding followers and losing engagement.
What’s your most effective recruitment tool?
References:
CareerArc – https://www.careerarc.com/blog/social-media-recruiting-statistics
NHS Employers – https://www.nhsemployers.org/articles/social-media-recruitment#:~:text=Share,not%20proactively%20looking%20for%20jobs.
Zippia – https://www.zippia.com/employer/8-advantages-using-social-media-recruitment-advertising-strategy/
Haiilo – Social Media Recruitment: Definition, Importance and 5 Best Practices (haiilo.com)
LinkedIn – ultimate-list-of-employer-brand-stats.pdf (linkedin.com)
