Social media can be very beneficial for businesses, especially as it pertains to recruiting new employees. Job seekers today—especially millennials—are looking beyond traditional job boards and career fairs to find work; instead, many are using social media to find job opportunities and get noticed. To make sure your organization is finding the best available talent, consider expanding your recruiting efforts to social media.
LinkedIn is the most popular social media tool for recruiting new candidates. There are paid solutions on LinkedIn, such as the ability to purchase a 30-day job posting, but there are also various free resources available on the site. Use the following strategies to jumpstart your recruitment efforts on LinkedIn:
- Make connections with anyone you know—co-workers, clients, vendors, friends and family. You never know when someone may be connected to a great candidate for your company.
- Join groups where you might connect with potential candidates. For instance, if your company hires a lot of IT consultants, look for a relevant group on LinkedIn and start networking there.
- Post job opportunities as a normal post on your page, for free, in order to alert your connections of new opening at your company. Encourage people to contact you if they know someone who would be a good fit.
- Ask current employees to post open positions on their LinkedIn profiles. Consider offering a referral bonus to employees if their lead results in a new hire.
- Use LinkedIn to research potential candidates. See if anyone has recommended them, how many connections they have and how active they are in their industry. This is valuable information that you likely won’t find on a resume.
If your company is already on Twitter, you’ll want to create a separate Twitter account for recruiting purposes, since you’ll be targeting a different audience with a specific message.
As with your normal company Twitter account, avoid simply promoting your company and its job offerings. Instead, offer information that will be valuable to job seekers, such as:
- Job-seeking tips. Use the knowledge and experience of your human resources department to share helpful hints, such as common resume mistakes, interviewing best practices and more.
- Relevant articles or blogs. Find other materials related to job seeking and succeeding in the hiring process, and share valuable content with your followers.
- Meaningful retweets. Keep an eye on your own Twitter feed, and retweet tips, articles and other relevant information to job seekers.
In addition to sharing helpful content, mix in tweets with your open positions and other relevant company information. You might also share employee reviews about your company, details about your hiring process or any other recruiting information.
Consider these other helpful hints for recruiting through Twitter:
- Use the search feature to find recruiters, industry experts, schools or career centers to follow and content to retweet.
- Ensure your content reaches a wider audience by using appropriate hashtags in your tweets, such as #job, #jobpost, #recruiting, #hiring, #career, #jobseeker, etc.
- Keep in mind that it’s vital to be responsive with your account. If someone responds to a tweet or sends you a direct message with a comment or question, make sure you reply in a timely manner. People searching for jobs are also evaluating your company, so how you respond on social media can shape their impressions of your business.
Facebook can also be beneficial for your recruiting initiatives due to the sheer number of people active on this site. For Facebook, you don’t necessarily need to create a separate account, as there is more opportunity to target messages to a specific audience. Plus, people who “like” your page are already fans of your company, so they might be interested in working for you as well. Here are some tips for integrating recruiting efforts into your company Facebook page:
- Create a custom tab on your page called “Careers” or something similar, so that you can post current opportunities and other information for job seekers.
- Post on Facebook when you are attending a recruiting event, so job seekers know to find you there.
- Post pictures or short videos of recruiting events, new office renovations or other company outings. Highlight your company’s culture, perks and benefits in short videos to generate interest in your company.
Another option is the Facebook Marketplace, where you can post a job for free. Within this post, you’ll be able to include job details and include a link to the external job posting. Job posts are live for 30 days.
In addition, for more targeted results, you can use a Facebook® Ad, which requires a fee, but allows you to specifically target an audience by demographic.
In Summary
As more millennials continue to enter the workforce, posting job opportunities on social media is key to attracting top talent. Use the strategies above to reach more qualified candidates and to make your company an employer of choice within the industry.
