How to use social media to seek talent for your business
Social recruiting can be a powerful tool to add to your traditional recruiting process to help find and hire high-quality applicants. Social recruiting uses social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter to advertise job vacancies.
But it has become more than simply sharing job postings on social media platforms.
Many organisations now complement traditional recruiting with a social recruiting strategy to reach and attract potential candidates.
Reach top talent
Many potential high-quality employees may be hidden to businesses looking to recruit new team members. These passive candidates are those who are currently employed and might not be looking to change jobs immediately.
Social media can be a great space to share creative marketing that builds your brand’s reputation and can show passive applicants what it’s like to work with you, even if finding a new job wasn’t their express intention when they started flicking through their social media feed.
Recruitment through social media platforms can also enable employers to conduct data-driven, targeted campaigns that are precisely crafted to reach these picky candidates.
Finding potential employees online
While your potential employees might not be actively looking for a new job, they are however likely to be on social media.
By the end of 2021, 82.7% of Australians were active on social media, an annual growth of nearly 1 million users.¹
Surveys show that as many as 86% of job seekers use social media to search for relevant jobs.² They also apply to jobs directly from social sites and engage with job-related content on social media.
Recruiting in the ‘new normal’ workplace
Recruiting and human resources (HR), like the workplace, are constantly evolving and look a little different in 2022 to what they once did.
One of the top trends that has emerged through the COVID-19 pandemic experience, according to a global study by LinkedIn Talent Solutions³, is the elevation of ‘employee experience’.
Employee experience begins from the point of recruitment through to a way to help retain the best talent in your organisation.
By including social media recruiting in your organisation’s hiring toolkit, it can help meet some of the expectations of potential employees by giving them insight into the business, what it would be like to work for the organisation, and offer an experience that may turn a candidate into an employee.
Through social media recruiting, businesses can highlight their company culture and showcase the company by sharing content such as employer branding, celebratory events, milestones reached, and charitable activities the organisation contributes to the community.
Seen through the lens of an employee, or potential employee, your company may be just the place they are looking to work.
3 tips for social media recruitment
1. Consider establishing your employer brand on social media channels
’Employer brand’ refers to an organisation’s reputation and popularity as an employer. It’s the brand’s value proposition to employees. This is different from the brand the company projects to customers. Ensure your employer brand is active and accurate on social media.
2. Find hidden talent and give them a reason to come to you
You could build interest and trust with potential or passive candidates by publishing high-value blogs, visual content and posts on social media. Showcase your company so potential candidates have an insight into the employee experience.
3. Create a hiring journey that convinces candidates to become employees
Once you have targeted or found potential candidates, make them feel valued throughout the recruitment process. This can be done through a combination of social media engagement and personal touch-points. Technology should enhance, but not replace, the role of the recruiter and hiring manager.
¹We are social, Digital 2022: Your ultimate guide to the evolving digital world, accessed 31 August 2022 at wearesocial.com
²Careerarc, 2021 Future of Recruiting Study, accessed 31 August 2022, at social.careerarc.com
³LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 2020, Global Talent Trends, at www.business.linkedin.com