How to use Social Media for Recruitment?

The Social Media platform has immensely changed the way we live our lives today – the ways we get our daily updates about events happening around us, the way we stay connected with our loved ones, well, just almost everything. The use of social media across the world is ever-increasing. Let’s have a look at some interesting statistics -

• Digitalportal says that the number of people using the internet are over 4.5 billion today.
• Globally, internet user numbers are growing at an annual rate of 7 percent, but year-on-year growth is much higher in many developing economies.
• As per another study, nearly 90% of Millennials, 77% of Generation X, and 48% of Baby Boomers are active users of social media.

The arena of Human Resources does not remain untouched by the power and impact of social media –

• Nearly 84% of organizations are currently using social media for recruitment and hiring.
• A study revealed that 73 percent of millennials (18-34 age group) found their last position through a social media platform.
• As much as 82% of companies currently use social media to recruit passive job applicants.

We’ve reached that time where social media recruiting has become vital strategy no company can ignore if it wants to hire the right talent.

Social Media & Talent Search

Social media is a useful channel for sourcing relevant candidates, and also promoting the company branding.

• Don’t miss out on the passive candidates - Social media is the best way possible to connect with passive candidates. LinkedIn becomes essentially useful here, recruiters or hiring managers can screen through profiles across sectors, companies, job categories, etc.
• Get information even before getting a CV – People these days generally keep details about their career and profession updated on social media. This is not only true for LinkedIn; people have career updates mentioned on Facebook to these days.
• Identify the True culture fit - Social media gives you a chance to learn about certain elements that could be difficult to identify while taking an interview. Things like – an individual’s hobbies, interests, personality, behavior, etc. Thus, you get to know if an individual is both, skilled and also a will be a good cultural fit for your organization.
• Save Cost – In the beginning, you can use social media for recruiting at no extra cost – posting on social media is free. Later on, depending on your requirement and how beneficial it proves to be, you could promote job openings through paid campaigns as well, to boost engagement.

The objective of every recruiter or hiring manager is to look for ways to source the most qualified, talented pool of applicants and social media can surely help to achieve this objective.

While most organizations are trying to use social media to source candidates, not all organizations are doing it right. What do organizations need to do?

1. Optimize Company Page

What do you want to people to see when they are looking for organizations like yours. What is the information that you would want to show, at the first go? The text/description you write on your social media page matters. This is what Google also picks up to show in its search results. Therefore, write a brief capturing all the vital information about your company; include keywords that you think people would use to search for businesses like yours.

2. Promote Your Company Culture

You need to portray your company as a great place to work. This helps attract candidates; companies with unique cultures often get a lot of impressions and shares. Your existing employees are the best source for sharing insights on your organizational culture organically. Encourage your employees to talk about the brand they are associated with, share their honest opinions, insights, updates, events, etc. highlighting what’s it like to work with your organization.

3. Keep a Tab

It’s important for companies to not just exist on social media, but also, make people aware of the fact that they exist. Run an audit for your social media page – keep a check on the number of followers, frequency of posts and updates, and the like. The key is to keep your social media audience actively engaged. There are numerous online tools available that can be used to monitor social media presence, try using some.

4. Do you use Instagram?

Today, getting eyeballs for your posts on Facebook, without spending money has become a challenge for many companies. Instagram, the highest user engagement among any of the top social media. On the other hand, it is a great place for building your brand, especially, when it comes to millennials and generation Z.

5. Have you tried an Online Software?

One of the easiest methods to streamline your social media recruiting activities is to deploy an online software program. This software will help sync all social media handles of your company, schedule job posts, automate responses, etc. Some popular online tools are Hoot suite, Buffer, Jobvite, Recruiter box, Greenhouse, etc.

6. Your Employees have Power

There is always some percentage of employees in companies who have a strong social media image and are very active there. Leverage this very power of your employees. Ask your employees to further share job posts and related content from your company page to their pages thereby getting it greater visibility. This will also help increase the probability of reaching out to relevant talent.

7. Be Responsive

Make sure you respond when a potential candidate expresses interest in a job post, additionally, make the conversation engaging. You will need to earn their interest, especially in the case of passive job seekers, who are difficult to attract and engage.

Conclusion

Social media recruiting helps an employer find the right talent who will be a good role fit as well as a good culture fit. However, the strategy that might do wonders for one organization, might not work at all, for another organization. Thus, pick a social media plan that’ll work best for you. Design a social media recruiting strategy that stands true for your company and the roles you need to hire for. Social media recruiting has to be used as an extended arm to your current recruiting process, just to add more support and reach out to people better.

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