How to Use Social Media in your Recruiting Strategy?

Did you know that over 70% of recruiters use social networks to screen job candidates? And, if you’re not using them in your hiring process, you’ll start lagging behind your competitors. Social media networks give you the opportunity to learn more about your candidates, promote your job openings to wider audiences, and connect with the right people.

Here is how to get the most out of them.

Learn More about your Potential Hires

Have you ever posted something embarrassing on Facebook and immediately regretted your decision? We all have. Today, we treat our social media profiles as digital diaries and share our thoughts and photos openly with the public, without considering the consequences they may have on our online image. Namely, our digital footprint stays online forever. And, the majority of your potential hires are not fully aware of that fact.

For you as an employer, social networks are a great opportunity to learn more about your candidates. This is a great opportunity to learn more about their age, personality, experience in the industry, education, and values. The content they share and comments they leave also reveal a lot about them and can tell you whether they’re the right fit for your organization. Most importantly, you can see if there is a reason not to hire them. For example, have they shared an offensive piece of content that may hurt your brand? This is definitely something worth checking before you connect with a potential candidate.

Promote your Job Opening with Social Media

Social networks give you a great opportunity to connect with a wider audience and inform them about your open positions. Apart from the organic search, you can also invest in paid ads to extend the reach of your job post. As your main goal is to put your job posting in front of the qualified candidates, here are a few rules you need to follow:

• Be specific. Did you know that your candidates spend about 30 seconds on each job post? Precisely because of that, you need to highlight the key takeaways in your social media post, including your location and the target job title. On the other hand, a detailed job description should be provided on your dedicated landing page.
• Keep it simple. Even though the candidates are probably familiar with the basics of your niche, industry jargon and big words may discourage them from applying and make them think they’re not qualified enough for the position.
• Make your job post unique. Is there anything special that sets you apart from your competitors? It could be your collaboration with disability employment services, exciting events, team building activities, career development opportunities, or flexible working hours. Highlight these perks to attract top talent and get your candidates excited about working for you.
• Add an image. Visual content works perfectly on social networks, especially when it comes to publishing job posts. A behind-the-scenes photo of your staff in a relaxing setting would show the human side of your brand and let your future employees meet the people behind your company name.
• Simplify the process of applying for a job. Even if your ideal candidate gets attracted by your job post and decides to submit the application, they don’t want to navigate through your site endlessly to find the information needed or fill out lengthy forms.
• Instead of some uniform CTAs, come up with an attention-grabbing and informative one.

Leverage LinkedIn for Targeting Employees Easily

As the largest professional social network, LinkedIn provides both employers and their candidates with highly personalized experiences. For you as a recruiter, this means it will pull in the candidates with resumes that fit your job description. Your potential will also get the “We found jobs at Your company name that you may be interested in” notification and be able to immediately review the job and apply.

Get your Employees to share their Experience

Today’s online users are more demanding and they don’t trust the promotional self-serving content. As they rely on other people’s experiences, you could encourage your employees to share their experiences with your company on social networks. They could write reviews and testimonials or share the photos and videos from the office. Your goal is to republish this content on your official social networks and make it visible to your potential hires.

Use Different Networks to Present Different Aspects of your Organization

Each social network targets different groups of people. For example, Facebook is great for targeting wide audiences and expressing your corporate culture and values. Instagram lets you humanize your brand, while Twitter is great for building an authority as a relevant online resource. LinkedIn is invaluable when it comes to connecting with the people in the same niche and validating your authority by posting relevant comments and content.

Over to You

If implemented strategically, your social media strategy gives you the opportunity to make your job post visible to the right people, show the human side of your business and, above all, learn more about your hires. And, I hope these tips will help!