As a business owner, finding quality candidates can feel overwhelming and time-consuming. However, there is a route many employers fail to take – recruiting through social media. As we adapt to living in a digital era, employers can leverage this within their hiring practices. Using social media to recruit top talent is now more valuable than ever. Whether you are hiring for junior positions or leaders for your senior roles, implementing a social media strategy will take your recruitment process to the next level.
What Is Social Media Recruiting?
Social recruiting is the process of finding and hiring candidates through social media. Through social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook, employers can advertise open positions, source professionals, and connect with quality candidates. Social media allows employers to reach far beyond the typical job board posting.
Social recruiting enables employers to create a diverse community of individuals through specialized groups, direct messaging, employee referrals, and more. By using social media to recruit talent, employers have access to both active job seekers and passive ones, too. While organizations thus far have used social recruiting to support traditional recruiting methods, this idea places the focus solely on the abilities of social media. As a younger, technologically enhanced demographic enters the workforce, social recruiting will continue to dominate the recruiting field.
Benefits From A Recruiting Standpoint
Using social media for recruiting purposes allows employers to find candidates with the experience and skills they are looking for. Social media allows recruiters to build an online community within the industry. Not only will this bring in an influx of candidates, but you will be able to do the following:
- Create brand awareness
- Demonstrate company culture and values
- Find candidates that seek employment within your industry
- Create alerts for open positions
- Engage in a more personable way
Highlighting your recruitment process on a public forum allows current employees to share job posts and comment on their experience with the company. Employee reviews and testimonials allow candidates a clear view of your organization. In the past, individuals found open positions through job boards and company websites. However, as young professionals have grown up with technology at the forefront of their lives, it is no surprise the social media realm is their native territory.
How To Utilize Social Media As A Recruitment Tool
As a business owner, you want to take the proper steps when developing your recruitment strategy. These steps are vital to the success of the new era of social recruiting. Continue reading to learn how to build a successful plan for your business.
Step one: Identify your goals
Before you begin recruiting candidates on social media, identify your goals. These goals may vary based on the positions you intend to hire. The following are the most popular social media platforms business owners use to implement social recruiting:
- YouTube
- TikTok
Step two: Consider an audit
As you begin to scope out your social media platforms, consider completing an audit. This will give you an advanced view of how your social media habits affect your brand. From there, you can make effective changes to discover your perfect candidate. The audit will allow employers to answer questions such as:
- Which social media platforms are being utilized?
- What type of content is posted, and where?
- Would the content entice candidates?
- Where do you see the most engagement?
- Do your pages have a strong voice?
- What audience demographic is present on each platform?
Step three: establish your online brand
What makes your company stand out amongst the competition? Does your brand consistently shine through your current social media content? It is essential to feature your company culture and brand in a unique way. Social recruiting goes further than the typical job posting. Begin reviewing the key areas on each platform:
- Brand voice
- Hashtags
- Profile and cover images
- Update your bio
- Working URLs to website or landing page
- Page verification
Step four: Build your target audience
Now that you have built your online brand, it is time to identify your target audience. Start by deciding the type of employee your organization desires. When company culture is clearly shown on social media, it becomes easier to target the candidates you want to join your organization. This also allows employers to directly appeal to applicants who directly align with the company’s core competencies. The key factor in this step is ensuring your target audience aligns with your current audience demographic on each platform – if they do not, consider a different platform that does match.
LinkedIn For Recruiting
Organizations and recruiters often find candidates through their LinkedIn profiles. This platform makes it easy to attract, recruit, and hire candidates. LinkedIn allows employers to establish a clear picture of a candidate’s capabilities. Employers can view not only resumes, but one’s past and current experiences, education, certifications, and even recommendations from other LinkedIn members. Consider LinkedIn a dynamic version of one’s resume. Viewing the connections within your professional network allows employers to seek potential referrals. There is no better referral for your organization than from your own team.
Candidates on LinkedIn are often recent college graduates, corporate professionals, or freelancers. As a business owner, you can create an entire page for your business. This allows candidates to view organizational updates, videos, insights, and more. Job seekers may view workplace executives, and potential team members to gain a feel for the organizational culture. By placing job advertisements on LinkedIn, employers can streamline the timeline of the hiring process.
Facebook For Recruiting
Facebook allows employers and recruiters to interact with a variety of diverse individuals. High user retention makes Facebook the perfect place to engage with job seekers, offer industry insights, and post your open positions. On Facebook, employers can create a company page. From this page, employers can send out organizational updates, industry trends, and more.
Facebook currently has almost three billion active users per month. While Facebook no longer has a tab on the direct page to view open positions, this platform is still vital to the recruitment process. Jobs can be shared via a status update and linked to wherever your formal job posting is. While this platform is popular amongst both younger and older age groups, it is the perfect space to attract job seekers across a wide demographic.
The Bottom Line
Social recruiting streamlines the recruitment process. No matter what platform you utilize to assist you in finding talent, you can trust you are getting the most out of your recruitment strategy. Consider tracking the following key performance indicators to track your successes:
- Top sources of hire
- Sources for high performers
- Time to fill
- Cost per hire
Where GMS Steps In
As employers enter a technology-driven era, it is time for business owners to make a change. That is when social media recruitment can be an undeniable asset to your business. Social recruiting is a tool available to every employer. Are you not seeing success? Do not fret, GMS’ HR experts are here to help. Our recruitment experts make it simple, allowing you to save time while finding top-tier candidates. Contact GMS today to learn more.