How to Find Your Best Employees with Social Media Recruiting

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When it comes to finding employees in 2021, the pandemic has taught us that social media goes beyond selfies and dog images, you can now find your best candidates and future employees. Glassdoor states that 79% of job seekers use social media when conducting their job search. Not to mention over 84% of organizations are recruiting via social media.

These numbers sound great in theory but how do you actually position your company in the best social media spaces to recruit employees that fit the bill? 

It’s actually quite easy. All it takes is a bit of planning, content, and the right social media platform. Let’s try to answer your questions related to finding employees with the help of social media in the article below.

Picking the Right Social Media Platforms for Recruiting 

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Choosing the right social media platform for recruiting employees for your company depends on many factors, such as industry, company size, and your expectations of a potential employee.

Since time is also a major factor you want to pick social media platforms that are instant with a reasonable shelf life. 

The top four social media platforms that fit this requirement are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Each has its unique user culture but they’re the top platforms for job seekers regardless of industry or expertise.

Linkedin of course is the platform with the highest success rates with more than 90% of recruiters searching for candidates on Linkedin to fill company job openings and with over 706 million users, this business networking site is a major asset to your social media recruiting strategy. Many also prefer it because you have Linkedin email finder tools and Sales Navigator that allow you to combine LinkedIn with email outreach to find the best employees.

You can figure out the best networks to find employees with an employee engagement survey. If your own employees are active on the networks they are probably spreading a positive brand and potential employees will be easier to recruit.

Develop Separate Strategies for Each Platform

Once you’ve selected your top three or two platforms it’s time to adapt your overall social media recruiting strategy to each platform’s content and culture requirements. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how great your position is, if it isn’t presented properly on social media you can end up with little to no candidates or attract the wrong crowd. 

For example, video content does great across all social media platforms however it does far better on Instagram than it would on Twitter. Why? The culture of the social media app. Instagram is very visual, whereas Twitter is all about the words used in a “tweet”. But you can use images for both platforms! 

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Know The Culture of Each Platform

While LinkedIn is known for connecting industry-specific people with your company, other platforms will help to connect you to passive employees. Twitter allows you to share links to open positions and company news. 

Facebook allows the functionality of sharing media, forming groups, and staying connected with an audience. Instagram is useful for highlighting your corporate culture and showcasing new products and services through photos and videos. These platforms offer advanced search features that are highly beneficial for social media recruiting to help you target the right potential employees.

Understanding the culture of each platform will help you to create content that will attract your ideal candidates outside of your initial job post. But we’ll talk more about that later on. 

Lay the Groundwork for Social Media Recruiting 

Before you start doing outreach for your social media recruiting efforts, you need to clean up a bit. It would be unfair to expect your candidates to show up at their best when you’re showcasing outdated and unprofessional content or info across your social media pages. 

So work on updating your brand image. The future employees don’t want to see photos aging from years ago on the social media account for your company. Here are the best places to start when it comes to refreshing your social media platforms for recruiting: 

• Update your profile picture with your company logo 
• Update company information like location, opening hours, email, etc
• Post fresh content on a regular basis (monthly, weekly or daily)

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Refresh Your Company’s Social Media Presence

Having a social media presence is important when you’re recruiting because it helps to build credibility and trust with candidates researching your brand. Your social media presence can also help to attract new clients and employees who want to learn more about you. 

A lack of social media presence can be a red flag for job seekers, people want to be involved with a brand that is actively known and seen on and offline. 

The best place to start is by sharing content about what your brand stands for and who your brand provides for to give candidates an idea of the customers you serve on a consistent basis. You could also share posts about your employees’ positive experiences at the company. Sharing content about positive employee experience and engagement can enhance new candidates’ perception of your brand.

For example, look at Hootsuite, they cater to social media managers and businesses that want to manage their social media presence so they actively share content like this to maintain their social media presence.  

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Work On Your Website

Similar to social media, your website is your online portfolio and representation of your brand. An outdated or poorly maintained website can punch holes in your social media recruiting strategy because your candidates are most likely to use your website as a point of reference to research your company before an interview. 

Dedicate time to your website’s UX and make it look visually appealing, easy to use and navigate. It is always a worthwhile investment for your business to have professional work on your website. It increases your company’s credibility and helps you stand out in a sea of competitions. 

Don’t forget to add a personal touch to your company, create subpages on your website, and add details about you and your team. Putting faces to names and nameless employees shows that you care about employees and highlights your company culture. 

Take a look at Orbit Media’s “Our team” page. It allows each team member to write their personalized bios. This is also a great way to let each individual personality that makes up your team shine through. 

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Include Your Current Employees 

Your current employees are well aware of what the company needs and also the sources for high performers. 

Encourage them to help out with your social recruiting efforts by being an influencing power for the company. A good example is Mailbird’s front page that features its employees in different lights to promote the brand and the people behind the brand. 

Firstly, it expands the reach of your social recruiting content because your employees are acting as brand ambassadors and reaching an audience you usually would not reach. 

Secondly, and more importantly, it builds connections of your current employees with your possible recruits. You will be creating conditions where candidates might connect with peers and provide an opportunity for colleague connections. 

Let employees talk about topics in their job that they are passionate about to give them a voice and standing in the employer brand.

Share Your Company Culture 

Company culture is something job seekers actively look for, no one wants to work in a toxic environment. Keep in mind that selling your corporate culture is most effective and quick when assisted by employees. 

Organizations are going to try and sell their culture, but candidates know that. However, to see that culture shared or advocated for by employees is potentially a much more convincing sell.

For example, if you have a sales position you want to promote, show off your current sales agents. Let them share their experiences and why they love working at your company. Paycom created this video to share on their social media platforms to show off the sales culture their team loves: 

It’s also helpful to be loyal to your organization’s culture while recruiting, so make sure your recruiting, directly or implicitly, promotes the company culture. 

For this to take effect, you need to be sure about your organization’s core values and culture. A clear and detailed idea of your company’s morals would make it easy to connect these core values and morals to your social media recruiting outreach programs. Additionally, integrating project management software, ATS recruitment software, and a time tracker for work can help streamline processes, optimize productivity.

In other words, how is your social recruitment broadcasting your corporate culture and selling to a broader audience? 

Employee spotlights are a great way to provide insight into the individuals that make up the company and its culture while also encouraging the current employees. 

Join Job Groups to Share Offers 

Job groups are widespread on platforms like Facebook. They are a rich resource for social media users who are linked by a common purpose, skill set, or education or certification requirement. 

Since such groups contain employers and employees of specific skills and industries, they can be the perfect place for you to recruit desirable personnel. Such job groups allow companies to identify the availability for that type of work more precisely. 

There are pros and cons to joining job groups. The pro is that you already have a pool of candidates actively searching for a job, the con is that you can’t always be sure that the group has good or active users who would make good candidates. 

One way to ensure this is to get recommendations from other recruiters, employees, and leaders in the industry. Helping you filter out and find the best ones possible. 

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Use Targeted Social Media Ads 

Organic outreach is great but if time is a factor in your social media recruiting efforts then you should consider using targeted social media ads. Unlike organic reach which is for anyone to see, targeted ads work because you can specify where they should be seen and who should see them. 

Around 97% of businesses use social media for marketing themselves. Still, most are unhappy with how successful their efforts are and don’t invest enough in advertising on social media. 

The best platforms to run social media recruitment ads are Facebook ads and Linkedin ads, you can target your recruitment ads to run for people in the exact demographic of employees you want to recruit. However, each organization or company can determine its social media recruitment strategy tailored to its specific employment needs.

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Social media targeted ads can increase your brand awareness, improve search engine results and help you build brand loyalty. But ads are only effective if you have the following: 

• Target demographic: Be specific about the age, location, and interest they may have that will make them a good candidate for your position. 
• Location: Pick a location that you’d like your candidate to live in, if it’s remote and if you prefer global candidates you can pick countries or continents instead. 
• Ad Copy: Be as informative as possible while selling how great the position is to your potential candidate. Leave all the heavy details for your website link. 
• Image or Video: Ads that have images tend to do better than those without across most social media platforms. 

As social media changes so do best ad practices, so be sure to stay updated with the freshest guidelines and trends that can help to maximize your social media ad reach. 

Use Professional and Captivating Images or Videos

Social media marketing has become highly visual. Brain Rules found that when people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retain 65% of the information three days later. 

With images and video, you draw more attention to your social media recruitment. Many companies use video content to increase traffic to their social media platforms and websites successfully. 

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A post shared by Buster boats (@busteraluminiumboats)

Use Targeted Demographics and Interest to Filter Candidates

Posting content regularly helps to network and directly engage with your audience. Quick responses to people who interact inspires the best of the best candidates (who are usually already employed and not looking to switch) to join your company as soon as a position is available. 

The essence is to make personal connections and encourage applicants to be interested in what you offer. Read more helpful information on how to improve your social media engagement. 

Check the Competition’s Social Media Efforts

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Start by doing market research: what you’re up against, what platforms benefit your competitors the most, and the type of content specifically curated for each platform. You should particularly be paying attention to what creates engagement on each platform. 

It helps to do a SWOT analysis of your competitor’s ads and job posts to determine any weak points in your social media efforts to rival theirs. This allows you to stand out and recruit the best candidates while also learning from your competition. 

Pinpoint this, and you are half set. On the other hand, keep a lookout for possible candidates- often, top sources for hire are coincidental discoveries of the employer.

Measure Your Social Media Recruiting Results 

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One thing that you should be regularly doing is recruitment events. Promote growth through conferences and increase learning opportunities like company-sponsored training as a part of your social schedule. Boost company morale by posting pictures and videos from your events across your primary social platforms.

Tracking recruitment metrics comes before likes and follows. Keeping track of these metrics would ensure your current strategies yield your desired candidates in the shortest period. Amid your research, you’ll find lots of metrics to determine performance. 

• For starters, some key performance indicators are time, cost and source of hire, referral rate, offer acceptance rate, and, most importantly, social media engagement. Pick the metrics out of this list that directly affect your goals, effectively measure them through an Excel sheet, through your Applicant Tracking System (ATS), or on the platform itself.
• Some of the better ATS use trackable links for content, pages, and jobs and then monitor them via your analytics. This ATS would enable you to start measuring the source of hire and, by default, the basic ROI. It’s a good idea to talk to your ATS and onboarding or recruitment software provider if it doesn’t currently include this functionality.
• It also serves to be mindful that this isn’t wholly about measuring applicant numbers. There are also several different measures at play, including follower activity, engagement with postings, and the characteristics of the follower base. 
• It’s essential to keep track of how much time individual recruiters spend on social media doing their jobs; overlooking this might be costing you. Understanding and reviewing social media analytics is an essential tool to have as a recruiter in the current day.

• Use email clients to help you track the numbers of applicants while also staying productive.

It’s vital to periodically sit down with your team and discuss your social media strategies’ metrics, results, and goals. From there, you can go on ahead and brainstorm to find your strengths, remedy your weaknesses and adjust your resources and efforts to meet your goals in the future.

Three Things Not to Do When Hiring through Social Media

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Discriminate Against Candidates 

While it is essential to set out a well-defined target audience, it can be easy to discriminate between applicants. Social media does not offer the whole picture, and many applicants prefer not to have lots of personal information on their social media for security and privacy reasons. 

Thus the guidelines you set mustn’t discriminate and allow a diverse user base to interact on your social pages. Diverse work environments are becoming a critical aspect when considering job offers, according to 76% of job seekers.

Forget to Fact Check 

Social media marketing can feel easy, but as a company, it is anything but. Before posting anything, make sure to research and fact-check a few times to ensure your company’s reputation doesn’t take a hit. Even a tiny lapse in judgment has the chance of going viral on the internet, so don’t make any slips. Also, remember that the internet’s trends and major influences tend to shift constantly, so stay dedicated to research.

Also, go through your current and potential employees’ public social media to fact-check them. Although, keep in mind that specific rules and laws exist against taking action against an employee due to information found from their social media, so stay informed on the current laws regarding this.

Ignore Social Media Regulations and Laws

Understanding the rules and regulations for social media recruiting is vital. The legalities of conventional recruiting can get blurry with social media, but you can always read up to understand recruiting laws better. 

The basic rules for recruiting across the top three social media platforms are keeping your research and background checks on potential candidates legal. Every social media platform and locality may have specific rules on what is considered legal, so the rule of thumb is to wait for in-person interviews before making final decisions on a candidate. 

Also, use the data you acquire lawfully and remember that you do not own that data. According to their terms and conditions, platforms can block your access to their database without notice or begin to charge you for using the site. Some laws may also require you to get a waiver signed from a potential employee that you are about to view their public information on social media.

Final Words

In social media recruiting there’s so much information at your disposal during the hiring process that it can be difficult to prioritize a few points. 

Picking the right platform for your company, refreshing and updating content, and constantly staying on top of the game concerning your competitors are just a few tips to get you started on your own social media recruitment journey in this confusing online landscape.

Once you successfully recruit the best employees using these tips, remember that the work does not end there. Building a brand for your company on social media is a continual process and obtaining fresh employees is how you can improve. 

The feedback from your employees can even help you fine-tune your marketing and social media recruiting strategy for the future. 

If you run your own company’s social media and recruit through it, we’d be happy to hear your thoughts, tips, and success stories. What have you learned from online recruiting this past year?