Whether you’re already savvy with social media platforms or not, it is an inescapable element of modern life that is constantly evolving. Businesses need to adapt and harness the power of these channels to use them to their advantage when it comes to hiring the top-level talent they’re looking for.
At Data Idols we’ve put together a convenient guide for hiring managers and recruiters on how to leverage social media in the recruitment world to connect with potential candidates and build a strong brand reputation in the industry.
According to DataReportal, as of January 2024, there are 56.20 million social media users in the UK – that’s over 82% of the population! Whilst many users use social media for entertainment or work purposes, there will be a huge range of job seekers relying on these platforms to be alerted about career opportunities.
As a hiring manager/recruiter, you may be struggling to reach the desired talent you wish to attract for your open roles. You might feel stuck in a rut with how to showcase the company to potential new employees and inevitably, be missing out on recruitment opportunities by letting those highly skilled professionals slip by. This is where social media can help in your hiring strategy.
Researching where your top-level candidates are frequently active online is key to implementing social media into your early recruitment stages. LinkedIn is a great tool for recruiters to use as it puts you in direct connection to a professional network right at your fingertips.
There’s also an undeniable cost benefit to using free or low-cost social media channels in your hiring strategy. Being able to post and promote job openings to a global audience makes social media platforms in general incredibly accessible to all sized businesses.
Consequently, there are undoubtedly several pitfalls that may be experienced as a business by not jumping on the host of recruitment benefits that social media has to offer. Looking at the wider picture, failing to utilise social media in your recruitment strategies can result in:
All of these elements factor into an outcome that could mean higher recruitment and training costs, bad hires, plus extra strain on internal teams, which are all added unwanted expenses. For extra information on hiring well and keeping recruitment costs low, check out our blog post on ‘How to Make A Good Hire’.
To get you started, here’s how utilising social media can improve your recruitment processes and assist you in successfully making good hires for your company cost-effectively and efficiently:
Using professional networking platforms, such as LinkedIn, requires building a strong brand profile to stand out from the competition and creating authenticity around your company identity. Garnering interest from industry professionals who may wish to ‘follow’ your accounts, interact with posts and engage frequently with the brand should be the goal when planning how to conduct your online business profiles.
So where do you start? Creating consistent content for socials can include sharing company blog posts on industry trends and insights, promoting internal news such as new hires, promotions or business wins, and sharing general updates. Starting a conversation about industry-related topics also motivates engagement in the form of likes and comments from connections which will appear on other people’s feeds thanks to the LinkedIn algorithm. Increasing your company’s visibility online will rely on this type of engagement, and being intentional about what you post is vital.
Remain true to your brand messaging by considering the tone of voice of the copy, imagery and the type of content that you are posting, as these should all align with the company values and correspond to the official business website. A strong brand profile on social media will in turn aid your recruitment processes as you’re building a reputation that potential candidates can refer to or be attracted to, even if it is more passive on their part rather than seeking out your business. You never know who your posts will reach!
Being consistently active on the business’s social media accounts will encourage current employees to share company achievements, job postings and their own experiences of working at the business. This in turn amplifies the day-to-day culture of the business to a wider audience, expanding reach and it also adds more authenticity to the company brand profile that you are working hard to build organically. It’s a relatively easy way to boost employee advocacy and the power of this should not be underestimated.
According to research by SproutSocial, the type of content that employees are most likely to share from their company accounts are ‘educational posts and updates about employees’. Furthermore, LinkedIn has also stated that when brand messages are shared by existing employees, they get a whopping 561% more reach than from the initial post itself on the brand’s social media account.
By encouraging existing employees to share posts and their career updates to their professional networks, you’re also supporting employee referrals. These posts can be a signal of trust to any potential new employees, and even open the lines of communications between them and your company.
The first thing that most people do when searching for a new job is to check out the social media accounts of any companies they could see themselves working for. This demonstrates several things, such as how the company identifies itself in the industry, how it conducts itself in comparison to competitors and the overall culture of the business as a workplace. How the company culture is showcased via these channels can be a really important deciding factor for many candidates – and it can be an immediate turn-off if not done well.
Great company culture is a key driving force behind employee performance, engagement and productivity. Being able to showcase the culture is a genuine and transparent way to attract the right employees that you wish to bring into your organisation.
Use your social media platforms to bring attention to your company values and mission statement, highlight individual employees to recognise their contributions and successes, post videos that show ‘behind the scenes’ of what it’s like to work at your company. Post about your diversity and inclusion practices, any events or webinars that employees have recently attended and showcase the benefits of working at the business, such as wellness initiatives. You should also post about your successful data projects, highlighting the success of your Data Engineers, Data Scientists and Data Analysts.
It may be obvious but social media is the perfect tool to promote your latest job openings and encourage applications from a wider pool of talent. This can also be your immediate action point to start with when using social media in recruitment. Sharing job listings or adverts in real time across social platforms allows the opportunities to be shared within various networks, from current employees, industry professionals and the social accounts of job sites.
To do this effectively, you can curate your job posts to reflect the branding style of your company by creating eye-catching visuals and copy that will attract attention. Including brand colours and the company logo is another way to raise overall brand awareness via post shares. A strong visual will encourage sharing, resulting in a much wider online reach. Simply posting a link to your job advert and calling it a day is not going to capture the attention of the talent you want to attract!
Another element to posting job openings on social media sites is the option to use paid advertising to target specific demographics and broaden your reach. Include paid advertising in your recruitment budget, or trial it and then review the performance. By using targeted advertising, you’re able to reach your desired audience and hopefully make successful hires as a result.
The instantaneous nature of social media means that any time-sensitive job openings can be posted as and when required. The value of this is that as a recruiter and to your business operations, you can fill a position as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. Plus, you’re able to schedule reminder posts about position openings to encourage further applications from your target talent pool before the deadline, reducing the risk of missing top-level talent.
If you’re looking to report on a recruitment campaign’s effectiveness, by successfully using social media as a tool in your strategy, you will be able to take into account the reach of your job opening posts and the engagement each receives.
Most social media platforms offer account access to an analytics suite which will provide the user with metrics to measure the success of their posts. Having this data can be extremely useful when reviewing and improving hiring processes. You’ll be able to see what type of approach works best in terms of engagement and implement the most successful method with future posts.
The value of LinkedIn is that it can report on how many impressions a post has made, plus how many profile views you’ve achieved in a certain time period. If you’re on the Premium version, you’re able to see exactly who has been viewing your profile, which can essentially give you an idea of people to target with your recruitment campaigns.
Lastly, social media can be a key tool in terms of building and nurturing your existing or growing talent pool of high-quality potential job candidates. Being active in attending and hosting events, either online or in person, can be promoted on your social media channels to reach your desired audience. Advertise your events to possible new employees, utilise the event as a way to gain further key information on prospects and follow up with a round-up blog post to further boost engagement.
Using social media effectively means that you can learn more about your target audience to improve your recruitment strategies by nurturing your talent pool. A way to do this is to celebrate the professional milestones that they share online and take an interest in their career development. Adding personalisation to make the individual feel valued will go a long way in adding authenticity to the communication.
To conclude our focus on how to take advantage of social media in your recruitment campaigns and how it can help you to meet your hiring goals, we would recommend that hiring managers and recruiters initially build a strong brand profile as a starting point. Remain consistent and be mindful of company branding to drive the brand message forward and attract the talent that you wish to attract for your open roles. Encourage current employee advocacy and proactively showcase company culture through carefully planned online content to reach your desired audience.
Post job openings and actively engage with comments, thinking about how to boost engagement with attention-grabbing visuals and enhancing the chances of shares to reach a wider audience within your preferred demographic. Always review your previous job opening posts using the metrics in social media platform analytics to see if any changes can be implemented next time. Finally, see the value of social media in nurturing your existing talent pool and how you can expand your search for good quality candidates for your company.
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