How Recruiters Can Use Social Media7 min read

According to Clutch’s survey data, 62% of companies spend more than $10,000 per year implementing recruiting strategies. When it comes to recruitment, interviews and online posting top the list for the most effective ways to attract candidates, but social media is not far behind. In fact, during the COVID19 pandemic, where more than half the world’s population is under lockdown, social media has become the most obvious choice for advertising and recruitment. With so many people at home, either remote working or filling their time with indoor activities, more and more people are connected. This is an opportunity for companies to share information about how they are handling the outbreak and what recruitment plans they have for the post-lockdown period.

Furthermore, unlike the interview and the job board job offer, social media sheds a different light on the company, and the candidate. Whether you are promoting your qualities or looking to learn more about the candidate’s character, your social media use will vary. However, it’s important to remember that social media changes depending on the country, the purpose and the trends. Some roles, age groups or locations won’t use the same platforms and certain networks will not be relevant.

Keep reading to learn about how your company can optimize their social media activity.

Different networks

As we mentioned before, there are a number of different networks and the first thing for a recruiter and community manager to assess is which ones are relevant for their company and potential recruitment campaign. To do this, you need to have a clear candidate persona, which means a semi-fictional representation of your ideal candidate based on market research and real data about your existing employees. For instance, if you want to hire employees for your Asian branch, you will use local social media. In China, the popular networks include Weibo, Zhihu, Line and so on. To determine which sites to use based on the country, you can use SimilarWeb.

If your product is something you can feature through images, you will want social media, which focuses on photos, like Instagram or Pinterest. When you have videos to share, YouTube, Instagram or Facebook could all be suitable options to start your recruitment campaign. Here, the audience will make all the difference: Facebook can be used to target families, and Instagram to target a younger generation. Furthermore, both YouTube and Instagram have a strong influencer presence, which can we utilised to promote offers, products and opportunities to a wider range of clients and candidates. This is especially useful if you don’t have a large following (yet!).

Passive advertising

A part of recruiting is promoting the company. In addition to advertising jobs, you can always advertise the company on a daily basis. As far as time investment goes, each type of social media has its own “perfect dose”. On a site like LinkedIn, one or two posts a week is enough for your company activity updates. However, your posts need to be detailed: aim for a long post, which will encourage users to click on the “read more” button for more info; include photos but no links because the site’s algorithm will share the content less.

Then, there are sites like Twitter, which need a lot of attention! You’ll want to have an average of 3 tweets a day, which can be retweeted content, gifs, links, surveys, etc. It’s all about showing how “up-to-date” you are on the latest news of the industry and sharing your own expertise!

Even without a company profile, you can also pay for advertising, if you know who you want to target. Instagram is particularly efficient for this, because the short videos, which appear in-between stories, can really captivate viewers. With the sharp rise in TikTok use, it has become yet another good platform for advertising.

So remember to research your social media tendencies before you start posting about your company.

Interaction with employees and candidates

A big part of social media is interaction. By posting articles, comments and statements, you can show what is important to the company and what you have been working on. But that’s not all! You can also interact with the content of others; you can show interest in their achievements or thoughts. This can spark a conversation and lead to a candidate wanting to learn more about you and your company. Just like the passive advertising, your strategy will vary depending on your social media!

To start with, you might find it easier to interact with people you know. This can be partner companies and employees. By doing so, your staff can have an exchange with the company in a public manner, which will let candidates see a less formal side of the workplace. Anyone and everyone can get a glimpse into the type of relationship they might have with those in HR or management when working in the company. Most people spend almost half their time at work, so it’s important to know you’ll be surrounded by people you actually like and respect.

Company insight

As we send before, social media is also a place for sharing your research and current projects. This information is usually present on a company website but attracting the right readers can prove difficult without the right outreach. Here more than ever, your choice of social media is going to make a huge difference. To ensure more people visit your website, it really helps to have a direct link so the LinkedIn algorithm can work against you unless you have a very active group of followers. That said, some of your research can be published directly on the social media page! LinkedIn encourages companies to create blog articles on the site, and content like Infographics do not require exterior links.

If you have videos and audio, like a webinar or a podcast, you’ll want to use social media, which lets you upload “heavy” content. This can include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and so on.

In any case, when it comes to sharing knowledge, this is the best way! Whitepapers, blog articles, guest posts and infographics can all be featured on the social media pages.

Background checks

We have mostly talked about how social media helps show the inner workings of the company, but it can also be used for background checks on candidates (and employees). In today’s day and age, most people have social media and those who don’t could actually be rejected for a job position because it is so unusual. It also means that companies cannot find a trace of the person online.

It’s important to remember that you aren’t using social media to find negative information on a candidate. You want this to be a positive tool too! When checking out a potential employee’s profile on different sites, look out for content, which shows their soft skills, their hobbies, their humour. All of this can help figure out if you have found the right fit for your company.

Candidate targeting

In addition to posting on specific networks, you can actively target candidates, who you think could be a good fit for your company. When checking out different profiles for instance, you can learn about people you only know in a professional way.

For instance, you can look for candidates with the right hard skills for your company on LinkedIn, since it is a database of CVs. Then you type the names of appropriate candidates in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and discover a different side of the professional people.

You can also send out targeted job offers through social media, which will slip your offers into the newsfeed of relevant users. It’s one of the best ways to get your adverts seen by people both on and off the market.

Referrals

Thanks to a solid following on social media, you can even promote job offers for those outside of the network. To do this, you can offer prizes for people anyone who recommends promoted job offers or you can simply attract referrals with interactive posts, like posts and games. “Tag someone who would love this job and win a chance at 100 dollars!” for example.

For referrals, you want to use social media, which encourages strong connections between the different members. Do you want people to recommend family and friends? Try Facebook Do you want the referrals to come from colleagues and employers? Then post on LinkedIn.

We hope this article on how to recruit through social media has been helpful! Need more info or have some suggestions for our blog? Put them in the comments!