Millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce and Generation Z is also entering the job market. Recruiting teams across the world are adopting the common rule of marketing and media; “meet your audience where they are”. In other words, reach talent with the right message, in the right place, at the right time.
If you are still posting job ads in newspapers or creating job profiles on career sites, you may want to start using different platforms in conjunction with older methods of job advertising to attract top talent.
The goal of any recruiting team is to attract, engage and hire top talent, sometimes drawing that talent away from competitors. These are candidates who aren’t actively searching for jobs, or ‘passive candidates’.
Where can we find passive candidates?
On social media of course!
Social media has evolved over the years from being a purely social tool to better serving businesses. The recruitment sector is one of the main industries to have benefited from social media, taking advantage of features that can help to attract top talent who are passive in their job search but are part of the high potential group in their current companies.
Social recruiting works and the statistics back this up:
- 73% of Millennials found their last position through a social media site.(Aberdeen Group)
- 59% of recruiters rated candidates sourced through social media as ‘high quality’.(Jobvite)
- 21% of candidates said they found their dream job through social media.(Jobvite)
- 89% of recruiters say they have hired someone off of LinkedIn.(LinkedIn)
- 69% of active candidates are more likely to apply for a job at a company which manages its employer brand. (Glassdoor)
What are social recruiting best practices?
We’ve compiled the top 5 best practices to leverage social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram for proactively searching for potential candidates, building a relationship with them and encouraging them to apply to your vacant job positions.
Communicate your culture
Show the world why you are unique and why your company is a great place to work. The best way to do this is to get the visuals out there – post pictures of events, company nights out, award ceremonies – anything that conveys the message that “this is THE COMPANY people love to work for”. A live video showing how employees feel challenged and emotionally fulfilled at work can do wonders. Job posts get 36% more applications if accompanied by a recruiting video.
Use relevant hashtags
The key to recruiting on social media is to cut through the noise and find the right people. Remember to use relevant hashtags in your stories such as #funatwork, #hiring, #developerjobs; this can help you reach the right candidates. Also, include a location hashtag for the city or town of your business – this allows your post to be noticed by potentially employable eyes that live locally to your business.
Use niche networks
While the big six – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram Pinterest, and Snapchat — are still fundamental to many employers’ social recruiting strategies, you can also explore the myriad niche social networks to build loyal, highly engaged audiences with more focused interests and skills. For example, discussion forums like Quora, designers showcasing their portfolio on Dribble, developers sharing knowledge on GitHub and StackOverflow, and Marketers debating ideas on Moz and Warrior Forum.
Involve employee advocates
Employees have extensive networks of friends, followers and connections on social media, and there is a good chance a high number of potential candidates already exist in their networks. The average employee advocate has approximately 400 LinkedIn contacts, 420 Facebook friends and 360 Twitter followers. On top of that, the content shared by your employees has an 8 times higher engagement rate than the content shared by brand channels. Let your current employees get involved with your social recruiting efforts by posting and tweeting their thoughts, images and videos.
Measure the results
Most companies measure rising followers and engagement scores to assess their social recruiting efforts but this could be misleading. You must dig deeper to see how your efforts are impacting your business goals. For example, discover what networks are driving the most traffic and focus your efforts on the ones that perform best; find out how many of those landing on your application page were referred from social media?
With the right social media strategy you can harness the power of a myriad networks and engage with both active and passive candidates. Alongside posting jobs and content on your own recruitment website and roles on job boards, reaching out to social media widens your net and allows for more opportunities to attract top talent.
