We now live in an age where social media plays a significant role in everything we do in our personal and professional life.
Businesses resort to social media in order to promote products and services in a bid to engage customers and generate a relationship with them.
In the world of recruiting it really is no different, as recruiters you want to reach people as potential candidates and as we know, everyone hangs out on social media.
However, being on social media just to promote and advertise isn’t the only objective. As a business you want to create a brand that your audience will relate to and engage with, to build trust and credibility.
To build an effective social media presence, you want to have a strategy to stand out above your competitors.
Benefits of social media for recruiting
So why social media? What are the benefits of using social media to engage with recruits?
Social media allows you to target certain candidates and get to know them at a more in-depth level other than just from a resume.
Some of the key benefits of social media include:
- - Allowing you to connect with candidates directly and see their talent and passion from more personal experience, it allows you to develop more of an understanding of the person.
- - Giving you the ability to see if their culture aligns with the business, you will learn their hobbies and what they express interest in, this will give you an indication of what they value and if it fits in with the business.
- - Money-saving, social media will give you access to candidates without paying for it.
Where to begin with social media
Even if you already have social media, you can have look at what you are doing with the platforms and how you can improve what you already have.
Here is a starting point for launching or reviewing your social media:
- - Who do you want to reach?
- - What platforms resonate best with this audience? You can do this by researching your target audience through data.
- - When posting jobs, what information should I have? This can be generated from your client research, what do they engage in?
- - What are you going to do to engage? Is it video, blogs, quotes, and photos?
Look at your goals and what you want to achieve using social media, look at what competitors are doing, what your audience is engaging in and if you already have social media accounts, what is tracking well and resonating with your audience.
Once you have established your social media strategy and defined your goals, it is all about maintaining those pages.
Sustaining social media accounts
The first thing you need to do when posting to social media is to be consistent. Be consistent with your posts but also be consistent with your brand. Ensure your colours are within the brand, your logos are present and your message is the same across all your different profiles.
But when it comes to consistency, don’t fall short on quality, yes you want to consistently post, but make sure you aren’t posting too much content that will annoy your followers and candidates.
Taking the time to think about your post so they are creative and relatable will build more brand awareness rather than bombarding your audience with job post after job post.
When it comes to your social media profiles, in order to get the most out of it, make sure you always engage and communicate with your followers, remember these could be the people you fit certain jobs. So make sure you reply back to comments and interact with the community you have created, it is all about two-way communication.
Social media is also a great way to showcase your leadership, team members and to be open and transparent. Your followers will engage more when they know the faces behind the brand as well as the open conversations the brand is having with other followers.
Recruiting on social media
Once you have built the brand and composed the strategy as a business, you also want to use social media as a recruiting platform, because after all, it is where your potential candidates are spending most of their time.
Although each agency will create its own recruiting strategy using social media, here are a few to help you out:
- - Encourage team members to promote: ask your team members to share job listings, this creates more awareness and engagement
- - Look at all social media platforms: try looking at smaller platforms, especially for very niche jobs
- - Share community-based content: don’t just post jobs on your pages, add some engagement by promoting business culture, these include using video and photos
- - Play smart: taking part in the right elements to social media will see better results. Join LinkedIn groups and use the right hashtags to filter down the millions on social media
Using LinkedIn
As you know, LinkedIn is a great professional platform, so for recruiters, it is the best option to tap into. It can be a great site to attract candidates to job listings and the company as a whole.
So we want to give you some tips to help you make the most of LinkedIn.
- - Have your brand page completed with all the information to showcase company culture so when job searchers find your page they have all the information they need.
- - Use the filters on LinkedIn to find the right candidates, you can do this by filtering it down to location, years of experience and other factors you need to focus on such as skills.
- - Create creative and unique messages to reach out to potential candidates. Some get loads of messages so you need to stand out above the rest, don’t just copy and paste.
Overall, social media platforms are a great, cost-effective tool for all recruiters to use in order to connect with potential candidates. Before you jump on every platform, make sure you do your homework and pick the platforms best for you to reach the right audience.
In addition to social media platforms, Talentwolf is another great way to connect with potential clients and candidates. Create your profile to be discovered and be contacted quickly
