6 Best Practices for Using Social Media as a Recruiting Tool

Benefits of Using Social Media for Recruitment

What’s so great about using social media in recruiting? The following are just a few reasons social media is a promising avenue for finding job candidates.

Many People are Active on Social Media

Brands use social media for marketing their products to customers, so why not use those same platforms for marketing your business to potential hires? According to 2020 stats, 90% of Americans between 18 and 29 use social media, and 82% of 30- to 49-year-olds.

That’s a considerable portion of the population you can attract with your recruitment efforts!

The Majority of Job Seekers are Turning to Social Media

It’s no secret that social media can be a treasure trove for job opportunities, and job seekers know it.

The same 2022 study revealed that 86% of those looking for a job used social media for leads, while 73% of job seekers between 18 and 34 landed their latest jobs thanks to social media!

Passive Candidates are on Social Media, Too

It’s important to realize there’s also something called “passive candidates” on the web.

These social media users seek something other than a new gig but may stumble across your job posting or feel drawn to your social media account. The beauty of using social media as a recruiting tool is that you can capture the attention of those who didn't even realize they were open to exploring new positions.

Social Media Gives Your Company the Chance to Shine

More traditional ways of advertising your business and open positions tend to be lacking. After all, you can’t reveal your company's great aspects in a few blurbs, and it might be tricky to define what you’re looking for in a brief job description.

However, with social media, you can create a more detailed business account, giving insight into your company culture and initiatives. On your social media platforms, you can share industry news, wins in your company, employee spotlights, and descriptive job postings to give potential hires a complete picture of your business.

How to Create a Social Media Recruitment Strategy

The best social media recruiting strategies involve a holistic approach. Instead of only being active on social media when posting new job listings or searching for new talent, we recommend creating an online presence that makes you an engaging and attractive business at all times.

Define Your Goals

Enticing job candidates is likely your number one goal, but you can also incorporate other goals into your strategy. For instance, you should create more awareness around your business, which would involve gaining new followers. In addition, you may want to attract a pool of recent college grads.

Once you have some parameters, define some SMART goals to help steer your approach.

Identify Your Ideal Candidates

Regardless of whether you have positions open, it's crucial to understand the candidates you want to hire. For example, does your ideal hire have a specific skill set, degree, title, or educational background? And are they located in a particular region or have niche interests?

Identifying these characteristics and demographics is helpful when writing your job description, but you can also use them to better market to those individuals. Some platforms, like LinkedIn, let you search for candidates using certain filters, while others, like Facebook, allow you to create ads that target certain attributes.

Select Your Social Media Platforms

With a better understanding of those you want to market to, you can decide which social media platforms best suit your initiatives.

LinkedIn is dubbed the world's largest professional network platform, so it's ideal for users actively looking for new positions. This is likely one of the first places job hunters will seek job postings.

However, if you want to cast a wider net, you may put more of your efforts toward a platform like Facebook. You can get many eyes on your posts and even create specific job listings through the platform.

And as for piquing the interest of those passive candidates, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok are prime places to harness brand awareness.

Age ranges, interests, and the nature of your industry may be other telling factors that help you decide what platform is best for recruiting. But if you're still unsure which platforms to use, research to learn more about each platform's unique features.

Post Your Job Listings

Now it’s time to start crafting your job posts. Be sure to provide a detailed description of the position, including the following elements:

• Explanation of the position
• Main requirements
• Work location
• Work hours
• Pay and benefits
• Information on how to apply

Once you've posted, watch it and promptly respond to any questions, comments, and inquiries. This is also a prime time to encourage your employees to share the post to help spread the word.

Tips for Social Media Recruiting

In addition to following our social media recruiting strategy above, incorporate these tips and tricks into your marketing efforts to help boost interest in your job listings.

Create Separate Pages Designed for Talent Acquisition

If you have a social media account for your business geared toward your customers, it might behoove you to create a separate one specifically for potential hires.

So instead of advertising your goods and services, you can use this space for marketing your company culture. This is where you can post photos of your company retreat, participate in industry-related conversations, and share news about company and employee achievements.

Engage

Engaging with others is among the most important recruiting social media best practices. Comment on responses, reply to questions and ask questions of your own. After all, the point of social media is to socialize, so focus on creating genuine connections, building relationships, and nurturing leads.

You never know; a connection you make today could turn into your star employee down the road!

Encourage Your Employees to Get Involved

The power of social media is that a little effort can go a long way. And employee engagement can be your key to success.

Three of your employees repost your job listing to their accounts. Of course, this will help get it more exposure, but it also comes with its seal of approval bonus. Their connections may be more inclined to apply for your position because it's based on the recommendation of someone they know and trust.

Aside from asking your employees to repost your listings, encourage them to start conversations on your social media pages. For instance, they can reply to questions about the company or provide positive feedback about working for your business.

Honing these communication skills helps build authenticity and credibility around your company.

Use Hashtags

When it comes to social media recruiting, hashtags are your friends!

Many job seekers will search for hashtags for job-related posts, such as #jobposting, #recruitment, #hiring, and #jobhunt. Similarly, some job seekers will create their posts using certain hashtags to draw attention to themselves, like #hireme and #opentowork, which you, as a recruiter, can search for.

It’s also a good idea to experiment with industry-related hashtags that could provide more niche results.

Incorporate Relevant Imagery

Finally, incorporate relevant visuals with your job listings!

Marketing industry experts have found that imagery-generated social media content gets 94% more views than those without. In your case, this could mean an eye-catching sign that says, "We're hiring!" Or maybe a video clip that illustrates the position you're trying to fill.

Feel free to get creative. The more eye-catching your posts, the more likely you'll get responses.

Incorporate Other Strategies

Social media isn’t the only recruitment tool out there. For example, SMS messaging provides another excellent way to connect with potential candidates and nurture those relationships.

For more information on how an SMS platform could help your recruiting efforts, contact EZ Texting today!