Recruitment Blog

Social media recruiting: 5 top tips to refresh your recruiting strategy

Guest Author

Recruitment Expert

The recruiting process has continued to evolve and grow throughout the past few years. Potential candidates have changed the way they are conducting their job search, and employers have started to change the way they look at job postings. One key change in the last few years has been the uprise of social media recruiting strategies.

Employers have started using a variety of social media channels to attract top talent to their job openings. Throughout this article, we’ll provide you with insight as to how you can optimise your current recruiting process and use a variety of social media sites to your advantage as a recruiter.

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What is social media recruiting and how does it work?

Social media is a great recruiting tool to use in order to attract quality candidates to your new job postings. Many companies and recruiters use it in conjunction with traditional recruiting tactics, but it is quickly rising in popularity.

The use of social media throughout the recruitment process has a lot of benefits, like being able to quickly narrow your search for quality candidates. Additionally, social media allows potential employees to find a personal connection to your company culture and employer brand.

Commonly, social hiring is done through platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. This allows employers to reach out to their professional networks, advertise open positions within their company and attract new talent.

5 top tips to refresh your social media recruiting strategy from field experts

We talked to five pre-eminent speakers from a cross-section of industries and asked them to share their challenges, successes and advice about disrupting traditional recruitment methods and best practice tips for social media recruiting.

So, we compiled a list of our favourite tips for refreshing your social media recruiting strategy from these notable individuals:

Shahid Wazed, Team Lead at City of Edmonton | @ShahidWazed
Katy Harris, Talent Acquisition Manager at The Iconic | @KatyTHEICONIC
Tim Hill, CEO & Co-Founder of Social Status | @timhill22
Jessica Tucci, National Employer Brand Lead at PwC | @jessicatucci
Sam Shoolman, ANZ Sales Manager at HubSpot | @samshoolman

Let’s see what wisdom they have in regards to upgrading your recruitment strategies as the field continues to evolve and grow.

1. Value your mindset over strategy

Social recruiting expert Shahid Wazed, Team Lead at City of Edmonton, recommends recruiting through Facebook.

As Facebook continues to dominate all other social media platforms in terms of usage and engagement, recruiters and hiring managers must leverage this popularity to implant their brand into the mind of passive candidates. In doing so, they can ensure that their company is front of mind for current and future vacancies with high calibre candidates.

Also, with the right mix of original and well-curated content, companies can earn free publicity through Facebook. Shahid calculates that when done successfully, candidates attracted to vacancies through social media can save businesses up to $15K per hard-to-fill position. This insight substantiates the fact that when it comes to advertising for job vacancies, the popularity of social media surpasses that of traditional job boards for certain roles, as it can result in a noticeably higher rate of engagement from candidates.

Our favourite tip from Shahid: As a recruiter committed to continuous improvement, mindset is more important than strategy and tactics.

2. Be conscious of time

Previously employed by large-scale enterprises in the UK, joining The Iconic in Australia was a new challenge for Katy Harris. Part of that challenge has been changing the perception of The Iconic as simply a fashion company.

Katy explored the components of Push vs Pull Marketing, pointing out that the right balance of both – with a particular emphasis on Pull Marketing, such as social media, can influence brand perception and attract the right talent.

Our favourite tip from Katy: Be conscious of time as it can be a huge asset. Katy’s example of replacing a traditional sales call with a dynamic video is a great example of a tech-savvy, time-saving solution.

3. Analytics are a valuable metric of success

Recognising a disconnect between the need for accurate analytics and the commonplace habit of using numbers arbitrarily that are unsubstantiated by fact, Tim Hill struck out three years ago to co-found social media analytics company Social Status.

Tim encourages recruitment professionals to assess what it is that their stakeholders care most about and what kind of results they want in order to meet these needs.

When it comes to content and social media, this may be a higher rate of views or shares, unique site visits or new business leads. The outcome of this assessment will help businesses decide what their optimal investment is in paid, owned or earned marketing.

Our favourite tip from Tim: You can’t improve on what you don’t measure, and analytics are the best metric of success.

4. Make your application process effortless

For Jessica Tucci, being faced with the challenge of recruiting 10,000 new graduates for PwC gave her valuable insights into recruiting for the millennial generation.

The solution to this challenge came in the form of PwC’s ‘Do The Extraordinary’ campaign, which was heavily hinged upon social media (and even featured a selfie competition).

As Jessica pointed out, millennials and Gen Z have different expectations of work, so different recruiting strategies must be employed to appeal to them. Social media is also an excellent platform through which companies can voice their values, such as PwC’s inclusive stance on LGBT issues.

Our favourite tip from Jessica: Advertising for roles via social media takes the effort out of searching and applying for jobs.

5. Your company values matter

As the Head of Sales at HubSpot, Sam Shoolman knows a thing or two about optimising talent acquisition strategies through social media. Sam observed that the advent of the internet (and the prevalence of social media) has resulted in a shift of power from the seller to the buyer, empowering them with more choice and options than ever. The same is true of candidates.

The challenge for companies—to attract candidates before they’re even looking for a job—can be solved by fostering a great company culture and promoting it to passive candidates as a unique EVP through inbound marketing.

This has the added advantage of reducing the instance of candidates who don’t share those company values applying for a job.

Our favourite tip from Sam: Culture is to recruiting what product management is to marketing.

Frequently asked questions

What social media platforms and social networks are best for social media recruiting?

With social media recruiting, you want to ensure you’re going to reach a professional audience of job seekers and potential applicants interested in working for your company. Most companies will use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for their recruitment marketing. However, you may also find suitable candidates through platforms like YouTube and Instagram as well.

What is the best way to measure the results of my social media recruiting efforts?

In order to optimise your recruiting strategy, you should aim to measure the success of your social media recruiting efforts by selecting a few KPIs to focus on. While this is going to be personal for your company’s goals, some common success metrics include:

Increased traffic to your company’s career page
Increased engagement for your social media presence
Decreased cost per new hire

However, these metrics should be customised for your recruitment strategy so you can help attract the right candidates to fill your open job opportunities.

What is the difference between talent acquisition and social media recruiting?

The main goal of social media recruitment is to find high-quality job candidates to fill open positions by using a combination of job ads and social media marketing. However, talent acquisition is the process of recruiting specialists, leaders, and potential executives to your team.

While both are important parts of your hiring strategy, the two concepts are very different. However, you can use parts of your social media recruitment strategy to help inform your talent acquisition search.

Streamline your hiring process with JobAdder

Social media recruiting is an integral part of the modern hiring process. Companies use their social media presence to attract candidates to a potential job opening. However, the process can still be incredibly daunting to deal with.

Luckily, JobAdder is a recruitment software developed to make that process easier. From automated job posting to resume skill matching your ideal candidates with jobs, get ready to seamlessly hire new employees and find top talent for your business. Contact us today if you would like a free demo of our recruiting software.