Recruiting new talent has come a long way from word-of-mouth strategies and newspaper ads. Nowadays, most recruitment is done through social platforms or digital job boards. If you’re looking to improve your recruitment strategy, social media is the way forward. Social media recruitment is more streamlined and effective with more exposure and better candidate information.
While more than 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn as a major recruitment source, what about other social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Is it possible to create a social media recruitment strategy that includes these platforms?
This article will look into the best ways to find employees through social media platforms. You’ll also learn about platform-specific recruitment methods and how to streamline your recruitment process when using many platforms.
So, let’s get started!
What Makes Social Media Ideal for Recruitment?
Nowadays, more than 92% of recruiters actively use social media for recruitment. This statistic shows that social media is now a mainstream recruitment platform. There are many reasons why recruiters prefer to source new candidates through social media platforms.
Some of the benefits of using social media for recruitment include:
Access to a Wider Pool of Talent
The current generation of employees actively uses social media to look for jobs. LinkedIn has over 756 million users in some form of a business environment. If you factor in the possible job seekers on Facebook and other social platforms and passive candidates, this number rises significantly.
Social media sites give you access to a broader talent pool, making a successful recruitment drive. These sites have job boards to post your jobs and access active job seekers. Alternatively, you can run an advertisement campaign to include people from specific demographics.
More Effective Hiring
Do you struggle with irrelevant applications? Many recruiters do.
Even though you may have specifically mentioned that the post is for experienced candidates, do you get many applications from fresh graduates?
Unfortunately, irrelevant applications are the biggest issue for 30% of recruiters. Social media hiring can help you target job seekers based on their location, experience, and other factors. You can view the candidate’s hobbies and interests to better understand whether they will fit in with your company culture. This allows you to improve the efficiency of any recruitment drive and makes the hiring process smoother.
Hire Quality Candidates
Did you know that close to 60% of recruiters claim that the best candidates were found on social platforms?
Whether you’re running an ad or connecting with individual job seekers, social media gives you more control over your target audience. If you’re looking to hire experienced candidates, their social profiles will provide you with a better idea of whether they’re a good fit or not.
Social Media Recruitment is Less-Costly
As a recruiter, you’ll have to factor in the cost per hire when creating a recruitment campaign. Many popular job boards like Monster or Indeed may charge you a premium fee to be featured in candidate searches. While there are free job boards out there, it will cost you to get your recruitment post in front of suitable candidates.
With social media job boards, organic posts, and job ads, you can target a large candidate pool with less budget.
How to Use Social Media for Recruitment?
It’s clear that social media platforms are ideal for recruitment drives. Yet, the right strategy will help you hire better candidates at a lower cost per hire.
Follow these tips to recruit the best candidates using social media:
Optimize Your Company Profile
Just as companies do a background check before hiring, candidates also do research on companies before applying for any position. While not every company has a reputation like Apple or Google, you can still get quality candidates by improving your company’s social presence.
You can do so by:
- Maintaining a professional online presence.
- Provide detailed company information on your social accounts.
- Maintain a high rating on job sites like Google, Indeed, and Monster.
- Engage with followers on social sites.
- Request employees to rate their experience at the company on social media.
- Post relevant information for professionals and businesses.
By doing so, you’ll be able to attract candidates and pass their screening process!
- Use Social Job Boards
Job boards are a great way to find candidates actively looking for jobs. Many social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn give candidates updates on new jobs that match their expertise.LinkedIn and Facebook have job boards where you can post jobs for free, making this a cost-effective recruitment method. Recently, LinkedIn has even started scraping websites for job opportunities and adding them to their job board! - Optimize Your Job Posts
Creating a quality “we are hiring” post is crucial to attracting suitable candidates. Most professional candidates will judge the company based on the quality of its job posts.So, optimize your job posts, use catchy headlines, and use professional themes to attract the best candidates. - Use Social Media Ads
Job boards are ideal for attracting active job seekers, but what about finding passive talent? For this, you’ll have to use advertising tools. LinkedIn advertising has a range of parameters to help you filter your job searches for recruitment efficiency.Other social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and even TikTok have excellent advertising potential. You can even target candidates based on their groups. For example, if someone is in a group for graphic designing jobs, there’s a high chance they are looking for a similar job. - Encourage Employees to Share Job Posts
As a recruitment agency or business, the best way to leverage the power of social media is through content sharing. Content shared by employees gets an average of 8x more views than that shared by individual creators. It’s the same concept of referrals, but with digital adaptation.
Hiring on different social platforms can become complicated. This is why HireBeat offers a solution tailored for startups and small business to organize your recruitment in one place. With link sharing options and a customized dashboard, HireBeat makes social media recruitment easier than ever!
