You waste all that time and your resources only to end up with low-quality applicants. Using agencies are expensive. Engaging employees to refer their friends and loved ones is a challenge. Did you know social media is a powerful new medium to recruit these days? Social recruiting is the solution to all these problems.
The What - Social Recruiting
Social recruiting is a blend of skills used to leverage social media as a platform to recruit talent. These skills include:
- Researching or sourcing candidates
- Advertising to candidates
- Engaging candidates
As recruiters, you may be good at all these skills. You can master any one to hire the right candidate using social media. For example, if you are great at engaging candidates. You can then leave the sourcing and advertising to the experts.
Engaging the candidates is what personifies the "social" aspect of social recruiting. If your advertising effort sparks up a conversation on social media, then it can also be social. Otherwise, the other skills like sourcing or advertising are unidimensional.
There are smart ways to use social media though. But first, make sure you understand this:
The Why - Advantages of Using Social Media
Over 1.18 billion users of Facebook are active every single day. There is a similar number of other platforms such as Twitter, Linkedin and Google+. These prove social media to be one of the biggest platforms for active audiences.
According to Mashable, using social media as a platform for recruiting is more:
- Personal. The relationship between candidate and employer seems to be tangible.
- Transparent. Your recruitment activities is out there for all to see.
- Accessible by anyone if you don’t have dedicated HR personnel. Founders, CEO can all use social media to find the resources they need.
- Measurable. Your content, the analytics, everything you need for social recruiting is available easily.
- Striking gold with Social Referrals. Job posts shared by a large network of people gains traction and interested candidates respond.
Using social media to recruit is a powerful trend. You can use it to save time, money, resources and find the best talent while you are at it. Here are the five smart ways to find and hire candidates using social media:
The How - Hiring the Best Talent Using Social Media
Some businesses want to be on social media so they set up an account and start posting. Only to find out later that it is just not working for them. Social media is a medium to get social, to get personal, to browse posts on your break. So how can you use such a medium to hire?
1. Being an Attractive Employer
Think about the world’s best companies to work for. What makes them so attractive? Take Google for example. 97% of their employees agree they have a great working environment. Share pictures and videos of your everyday life at the office. These are the posts that are loved and shared on social media. Before you know it, interested candidates start liking your page and follow your stories.
2. Creating a Personal Connection through Employees
Get your employees to talk about why our company is a great place to work in. Let them evangelize your business. This is an effective way to look attractive to potential candidates. Post your employees’ photos on your website or corporate page. Encourage them to share these blogs on their social media channels.
3. Paying Attention to Fans
When you create that buzz on social media, you will get fans, your potential hires. Fans follow you on twitter, retweet your best tweets or share your posts on facebook. Other platforms like Snapchat, Periscope etc. are used on a regular basis too. Keep a keen eye on these enablers. The most interested candidates will get in touch with you. Like this candidate did for the company HireVue and was considered for a prestigious position.
4. Targeted Social Media Advertising
Social media gives you an edge over job boards because it can point you to your exact audience. But not when you do it on your own. You can pay to advertise to a highly targeted audience. This is the group that is most interested in your brand and company.
5. Engaging Potential Candidate
Once you’ve got your social brand and targeted advertising working for you, zero in on the candidates. Approach them directly via message, or a video call. Your interactions or lack thereof is going to be a deciding factor to the potential candidate. Be proactive and give the candidate a social experience that is favorable toward your offer acceptance.
Alice Clarke devotes her life to marketing and recruiting. Being a writer at Top Aussie Writers, she likes to share recruiting tips with people.
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