Recent reports show that 84% of companies are now recruiting through social media, which is no surprise when you consider the number of potential candidates that are active on the likes of Facebook and Twitter every day! Sadly though a LOT of companies just aren’t getting it right and are failing to attract the right people. If you want to ramp up your social media recruiting strategy then consider these 4 things:
Use it as a place to showcase your company culture
Almost 80% of millennials consider how they fit into the company culture before taking a job, so if you want to attract more candidates with the right cultural fit you need to promote it! You can post photos, showcase employee stories, share news about your company and even create videos to share to your social profiles. It might be that your company offers international travel opportunities, hosts a weekly office bake off competition or enjoys after work beers every Friday – these are the things candidates won’t always learn from your careers page / job descriptions!
Separate your corporate brand from your recruitment brand
What your customers may find interesting doesn’t necessarily appeal to candidates so it helps to create a stand alone presence for your recruitment brand. That way your live jobs or content that highlight your company culture won’t be buried away under promotions / news aimed at your customers! Depending on your business you may find that your social media profiles can become a public space for unhappy customers to vent their frustrations! So unless you want your candidates reading angry complaints when they land on your profile then we suggest building out a separate careers presence!
Don’t be annoying
Recruiters and marketers alike often get a bad reputation for spamming their candidates / customers, which is usually the case if all you post is advert after advert or a big long list of jobs with no real content to back it up. Sure you want to advertise the vacancies you have – but to get the best engagement you’ll need to mix it up with some interesting (and fun) content. Survey your employees – find out what sites / content sources they find interesting and start persona mapping based upon the roles you recruit for. Once you understand your audience you’ll know what type of content you should be posting – it may be thought pieces from industry leaders, or funny Buzzfeed articles! Make sure you measure your analytics and engagement, noting down what works well to help you plan going forward!
Empower your employees to be advocates
Your employees are your biggest assets when it comes to increasing content reach and building trust in your brand, yet only 33% of employees say they encourage their employees to use social media! If you’re one of the companies guilty of holding back for fear of something negative being posted then I’m afraid to say you’re wasting your time. You can never control everything your employees say online so it’s better to encourage the happy employees to share content on social media, so that when you do have the occasional disgruntled employee post it will be watered down with the streams of happy employees! With an average of 400 network connections per employee (many of which are local, like-minded and even working in the same industry) means you can easily reach a huge number of people (100 employees = 40,000 average reach) without paying through the nose for advertising! Plus people are more likely to buy into a recommendation from a friend rather than some carefully curated content from the marketing department!
If you want more advice on how you can hire smarter through social media – then contact the JobHoller team at [email protected] / 01244 567 967.
