Social media and recruiting have one major thing in common: they’re all about connecting people. As social media continues to dominate the internet and marketing, companies are realizing that social recruiting is a must-have.
According to the SHRM 2017 Survey, 84% of organizations use social recruiting and 9% are planning to do so. If you’re not, it’s time to get started. Social media recruitment is here to stay.
Benefits of Social Recruitment
Social media is not just another place to post job listings -- it’s a tool to streamline your hiring process, and a way to promote your brand. Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are great for organic growth and are also powerful targeting tools. More than ever, people are networking through social media.
One of the top reasons to use social recruiting is to reach passive candidates. As we’ve said before, social recruiting successfully draws passive candidates. With 75% of candidates not actively searching, many organizations are turning to social media to draw passive candidates.
Social recruiting can also be a more efficient way to hire. 71% of employers reported that it was effective to decrease time-to-fill for non-management salaried positions, and 67% effective for non-management positions.
The key to social recruiting is finding the right people. Use hashtags, targeting tools, and find communities that match your ideal candidate. Because we share about ourselves on social media, it's a great way of finding people who are passionate about what they do and who will fit your company culture.
The Best Social HR Platforms
LinkedIn has always positioned itself as the premier professional social network, but there are changes afoot. In the past few years, LinkedIn has grown as a content platform, with around 100k articles posted every week. Content marketing and social media recruiting merge successfully on LinkedIn’s platform. Responding to questions in the answers section or writing content posts is a great way to showcase your company and gain familiarity in your field.
To successfully recruit with LinkedIn, maintaining connections is key. You want to build relationships with other recruiters to create referral chains and stay in touch with people, you’ve successfully worked with in the past. Make sure that your profile has up-to-date keywords so that job seekers can find you.
Facebook is another major player in social recruiting. Many job seekers aren’t on LinkedIn, but they are on Facebook. To reach active and passive job candidates, create a career FB page in addition to your company FB page. The reason for this is simple -- with the latter, you speak to your customers; and with the former, your prospective employees. These different audiences merit different content.
Any post you make on Facebook can easily be “boosted” to reach more people as a part of Facebook advertising. You can target these posts to reach people who match your candidate profiles.
Unlike LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter isn’t designed for job listings; but it’s still a useful tool to reach your candidate audience. Twitter is a very popular search engine, and when people search for your company they should find an account that reflects the brand and company culture. You can also use Twitter to easily find who is talking about your company.
Sky | CareerArc
You don’t need to be a social media expert. Social recruiting is easier than ever with Sky | CareerArc. You can automate your social media and web job distribution with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The platform makes it easy to showcase your employer brand to a wide audience, and manage your social content. You will also be able to grow your talent community with tools and support.
You can get a free demo of Sky | CareerArc to understand this powerful toolset.
