There’s no doubt that social media has had a massive impact on HR processes. From reinforcing the employer brand to integrating HR and marketing strategies, social media gives HR a high-powered weapon for connecting with key audience segments – especially prospective candidates. In fact, a growing number of companies are leveraging social media recruiting to access new talent pools and boost acquisition numbers. Recent studies show that 54% of recruiters use Facebook and more than 60,000 jobs are tweeted out each day.
Still, there are plenty of HR teams that haven’t tapped into social media recruiting yet, and many are wondering why the tactic is becoming such a big deal. Well, read on to find out why.
You Can Build, Promote and Reinforce the Company Brand
Millions of people are on social media platforms each day, giving opportunistic recruiters access to more prospective candidates than any career fair could ever yield. This widespread access to talent also gives HR teams the opportunity to display their organization’s unique company culture and atmosphere and demonstrate why a candidate should be interested in working there.
Social Media Recruiting Tips for Company Brand-Building
- “Behind-the-scenes” videos of the workplace
- Compelling images that include people
- Tagging popular or recognizable enterprises and professionals in posts
- Funny, insightful or off-the-wall posts and quotes
You Can Galvanize Your Employees on a Public Forum
What better way to entice job seekers into applying for an open position than by showing them just how much current employees love working for an organization? Monster even reported that 65% of professionals are more apt to apply for a job if they learn about it from a personal connection.
But companies should be careful, social media also presents a number of opportunities for employees to share negative experiences. So while encouraging current employees to use social media to provide feedback can be positive, HR teams should be diligent about how they incite that feedback and monitor what type of information goes live.
Social Media Recruiting Tips for Inciting Positive Employee Feedback
- Posting surveys
- Sharing compelling, open-ended questions on company and employee pages
- Promoting employee achievements
You Can Engage with Candidates Directly
Tools like LinkedIn InMail and TwitterChat enable talent acquisition specialists to connect with candidates quickly, simply and personally. InMail allows recruiters to direct message prospective employees after vetting their LinkedIn profile, and TwitterChat actually gives recruiters an opportunity to start conversations and build relationships with candidates more informally.
Social Media Recruiting Tips for Building Relationships with Candidates via Social Media
- Personalize your messaging – browse their profile and mention their achievements or skills
- Don’t just talk about the job – bring up industry news or start conversations about prominent topics
- Be clear and honest – keeping candidates hanging with blurry intentions or open-ended timelines is a fast way to turn off talent
How to Optimize Social Media Recruiting
The benefits of social media recruiting may look great on paper and it may be easy for executives to buy in to a new strategy, but how do HR teams actually execute effective social media recruiting tactics? They can start with a little collaboration.
Read our white paper to learn how some HR professionals are teaming up with marketing professionals to optimize recruitment efforts with compelling, candidate-centric content and messaging.
