These days when we talk about change, the primary response is to blame the pandemic, lockdowns and all that brought with it. However, though all of the above has affected the job market, companies have become more innovative in the ways they find the talent their clients need out of necessity.
What is social recruiting?
Considering the talent shortage that companies are currently experiencing, using every resource they have at their fingertips is not only smart but essential. In addition to a skills shortage, businesses require new skill sets and different types of talent as they adapt to the increasingly digital emphasis in business.
To help plug the gap, recruiters are turning to social media to find the candidates they need.
As millennials transition into leadership roles and a digitally savvy generation enter the workforce, using social media to recruit takes on a new importance. 25% of all job seekers now use social media to search for their next opportunity; social media and recruitment have become synonymous with innovative talent acquisition.
Utilising employee advocacy and referrals on social media allows companies to uncover previously untapped sources of high-quality talent. In fact, 9 out of 10 brands have already successfully gotten involved in the social media recruiting game and used it to attract and engage with new recruits.
Millennials who are used to and enjoy social media reach higher levels of influence in organisations; it’s natural that they’d use social media to recruit and socialise. This extends to recruiters, where 94% use social media as part of their talent acquisition activities.
Why traditional recruitment strategies are no longer enough
The move away from traditional recruitment strategies is happening for a number of reasons. Firstly, the traditional approach to recruitment relies on strategies that are both time consuming and expensive. The result is that they are less efficient than using social media to recruit and significantly more costly.
Consider this: some job sites recruiters use to source candidates charge on a cost per click basis, anywhere between £0.25 and £1.50 per click. At first glance, this doesn’t seem excessively expensive unless your job advertisement attracts 2000 clicks, then the costs can mount up very quickly.
The traditional approach is still alive and kicking but is expensive in terms of money and labour. Whereas using social media to recruit, you already have a pool of potential candidates who are happy to identify their next job opportunity using social media
The benefits of social recruiting
Potential talent can simply look for your company and your jobs. More than this, though, is the opportunity to build your employment brand using social media to convey your company’s culture in a way that will attract the candidates you want to attract.
You can brand your social channels by hosting videos and post photos and encourage job seekers to engage and customers to get involved in discussions and ask questions, ensuring an employee is tasked with replying to comments and providing the answers to the questions.
With 67% of job seekers using social media to gain insights into your company, according to recruitment agency Robert Walters, it shows how powerful social media can be when talented candidates are assessing companies they may be interested in working for.
Job hunting on social media is on the increase, and a survey by Jobvite showed that 48% of candidates used social media in the search for their most recent job, rising to 73% for 18-34-year-olds. This interest shows the importance of investing in multiple social media channels for brand building and recruitment.
Social media is also an effective way to expand your pool of potential candidates by incorporating the personal element. It’s easy to keep in touch with people and to use as a way of encouraging them to refer their friends or colleagues. In fact, 59% of recruiters rated candidates sourced through social media to be the highest quality. Additionally, social media is an effective way of screening candidates prior to an interview, allowing recruiters to view prospective candidates’ personal qualities. It is worth noting that caution should be taken when you look through someone’s social media profiles without their consent. However, the inclusion of social links on resumes is becoming increasingly common.
Finally, if you encourage potential recruits to get a feel for your company culture and values, you are more likely to get a candidate who is a good fit.
Getting started with social recruiting
With LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter now having over 3.5 billion combined users, 94% of recruiters are leveraging this plethora of potential candidates to recruit for their jobs; only 39% of employers use social media for recruiting, though this is up 37% from the previous year.
All social sites are different, and the strategies used for Facebook recruitment or LinkedIn recruitment may not be as effective on Twitter.
Here’s a brief breakdown of these three top channels.
Twitter is a microblogging site with a relatively small, imposed character count that requires creativity to minimise your words without detracting from your message. Selling your corporate brand with a small character count can be far harder than it seems.
Alternatively, you can create Twitter Cards so you can attach photographs and videos and have more space to pack a bigger punch.
The easiest way to recruit on Twitter is to tweet jobs you have available and are searching for candidates for and to make them stand out, add hashtags (#hashtag). Hashtags are like a filter, so it becomes searchable if you include a hashtag and a keyword in your tweet.
Considered to be the world’s largest professional network within excess of 730 million users and is the most frequented social media platform for recruiting. With such a vast, active network, it is an ideal way for your company to maintain high-profile relationships with candidates who are actively looking and also passive talent.
You can actively search for candidates among LinkedIn members, searching using keywords of the skills and qualifications required. Once you have a list, send them an InMail, or if you share a connection, you can request an introduction.
Alternatively, LinkedIn Ads allow you to target a specific audience by job title and function, industry, and company size or seniority. LinkedIn recruitment is popular and works, with 89% of recruiters saying they have hired someone through LinkedIn.
Though many hesitate to use Facebook for recruitment, 83% of job seekers prefer Facebook over any other social network. It spans all age groups, genders, and ethnicities, so diversity isn’t a problem and is the perfect place to engage with job seekers and post all of your open positions.
Don’t just use your company page as a way to advertise vacancies but encourage interaction and likes; encourage your employees to get involved by posting comments and ensure all comments are responded to, good or bad. Your page is the place you can boost engagement and keep people interested.
If you need a more precise approach, Facebook ads let you target the exact audience you want to reach, whether by location, skill set or seniority.
Facebook recruitment is popular with job seekers, so by default, it is essential you use it to attract the candidates you need.
With social media being a large part of people’s personal lives, it’s only natural that they’ll want to extend that to job-hunting when they’re thinking about making a move. Recruiters using social media to source talent makes sense; you’re talking to your candidates in a space they feel comfortable and safe, so they are likely to be happier to engage there than they would to a cold email or call.
