Attracting Top Talent: 5 Social Recruiting Pro Tips

Traditional career sites like Indeed, Monster, and Glassdoor are popular recruiting destinations. But there is a huge pool of quality talent on social media waiting for you to reach out to them.

Social networks not only allow you to build a strong employer brand. They also offer the opportunity to get in direct contact with the ideal candidates - whether they are active or passive job seekers.

Ready to step up your recruiting game as a potential employer? Read on for social recruiting tips to help you attract top talent.

What is Social Media Recruiting?

Social recruiting, also known as social hiring or social media recruiting, is the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and LinkedIn to attract new talent to your company.

A study by CareerArc found that 92% of employers use social media to recruit talent, and 86% of job seekers use social media to search for and apply for open positions. This shows that social media can be a valuable resource for finding passive and active candidates.

So instead of relying solely on traditional methods like job boards and newspaper ads, you can leverage the power of social media channels to expand your search for potential employees.

How does social recruiting work?

Companies create profiles or pages on social networks to attract high-quality applicants using social recruiting. With these profiles, companies can showcase their company values, mission, work culture and value proposition. This way they can attract the attention of potential applicants who want to work with the company and who might be interested in the company.

Each social media platform offers its own section for recruiting. For example, LinkedIn, widely considered a professional network, allows you to create a company profile to share detailed offers (see Hubspot's example below). The platform also allows you to search for people with impressive work experience and skills.

3 benefits of social recruiting

Now that you understand the process of social recruiting, let’s look at some other benefits of social recruiting.

Larger talent pool

Social recruiting gives you access to a large talent pool. While traditional recruiting methods may be limited to local or industry-specific job boards, social media platforms have billions of users worldwide.

Facebook alone has 2.95 billion active monthly users. This allows access to a diverse and global audience, not to mention the number of active users on platforms like LinkedIn and X.

Social media platforms allow companies to find candidates with a wider range of backgrounds, skills and experiences. This can also help find the perfect fit for your open positions.

Cost-effective

Social recruiting is a crucial factor when it comes to effectively managing your recruiting budget. It can lead to remarkable cost reductions and reduce your recruiting expenses by up to 50%.

These significant savings are primarily due to the fact that posting job vacancies on social media is either free or costs much less compared to advertising on specialized job boards.

Research also agrees that social media can be a more cost-effective approach to hiring talent than other recruiting methods.

Increased visibility

If you consistently create engaging and valuable content to strengthen your recruiting employer brand, it's easy to get more Instagram followers, X-shares, or LinkedIn comments. This ultimately makes your content visible to more people, namely the members of the networks of those who have followed, shared or commented on your content.

Additionally, search engines like Google and Bing can rank a well-optimized social media profile. For example, when you search for Starbucks on Google, the company's LinkedIn and X profiles appear in the search results.

3 key challenges of social recruiting

As beneficial as social recruiting can be, there are also some challenges you should be aware of. This includes:

Compliance with legal and regulatory requirements

One of the biggest challenges in social recruiting is adhering to the social engagement guidelines that have been put in place. For example, if you allow applicants to apply for an open position on social platforms such as LinkedIn, you may gain access to your applicants' personal information.

Different countries and regions have their own laws regarding the handling of personal data. In Europe, for example, there is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To ensure compliance, you should inform applicants that the information they provide to you will only be used for recruiting purposes. You must also ensure that the personal information you receive is secure.

You must also comply with the social media platform's community guidelines or risk having your account terminated. Facebook, for example, bans hate speech. You likely have other team members managing your social recruiting platforms. All you need is one person posting something discriminatory (that for some reason they thought was funny at the time) and you can be penalized by Facebook.

To resolve this issue, keep your team members aware of your social media policies to ensure compliance with laws and regulations.

Get the employer brand message across

It can be difficult to convey your employer brand message when you post on the same social profile to two different audiences - potential employees and potential customers. Potential employees will not understand your value proposition as an employer if your social media presence revolves primarily around selling your products and services. On the other hand, if the profile focuses on hiring, customers will have difficulty understanding your brand message.

Let's say you manage to create a balance of posts for each type of audience. There's still a chance that your posts to potential employees (or even potential customers) won't be seen by your audience. After all, they won't take the time to search for your employer brand posts in the flood of posts for prospects.

The good news is that it's pretty easy to solve this problem. Create separate social media accounts - one for your customers and another for your employees and hiring activities.

Procurement of passive applicants

Passive applicants do not announce their search for a job. These candidates either want to change their current job or simply change their career path. They are not actively looking, but they are open to opportunities that they find attractive.

To reach such candidates, you may need to get creative.

One way to appeal to passive candidates is to create a strong employer brand that portrays your company as a remarkable place to work.

Passive candidates may discover your company by scrolling through their social networks. You can attract them by highlighting the benefits of working with you. Why not highlight your competitive compensation and advancement opportunities for a specific position? These benefits not only attract applicants, but can also improve employee retention by showing existing employees that they don't need to look for better opportunities outside the company.

5 effective social recruiting tips to attract top talent

Now that we've discussed how you can take advantage of the benefits of social recruiting and overcome the challenges it presents, we'd like to share five foolproof tips to help you attract top talent.

1.Use the right social media platforms

When recruiting on social media, start by selecting the platforms your ideal candidates are likely to spend time on. For example, if you're looking for tech-savvy people, platforms like LinkedIn, X, or Reddit might be the place to go. If you're looking for creatives, Instagram could be the place to go.

How can you identify the right platform for your recruiting efforts?

You can start by creating a detailed profile or candidate persona for the role(s) you want to fill or for existing roles in your company. Ideal candidate personas typically include details such as the candidate's role, behavior, and social media preferences.

With a persona like the one above, you can better understand which social network you can use to find your ideal candidate.

You can also use social listening tools like HootSuite or Mention to search for specific topics relevant to the positions you have to fill.

For example, if you want to hire a web developer, searching for the term "web developer" on various platforms will help you figure out which social network is the main hub for web developers on the Internet.

You can also search for job offers that meet your needs. This way you can see where other companies are looking for similar talent and reach out to them.

2.Optimize your social media profiles

Show your best side to job seekers. If your social media profiles are incomplete and boring, you could turn away potential employees. Your social media profiles must look their best and show your company as an employer at its best.

This means that you should have a well-organized social profile. You should also include compelling visual content in your social media posts. Increase your social recruiting efforts with compelling employer branding by publishing interesting posts about your company values.

You can also include links to your careers website in your social media bio to make it easy for potential applicants to find. Overall, passive or active job seekers should be able to identify what your company is about and what solutions you offer by visiting your social media page.

3.Leverage employee advocacy

Your current employees may be your best advocates when it comes to attracting good talent to your company.

Therefore, encourage your employees to share job openings on their personal timelines or social media profiles. This increases the visibility of your job posting and encourages candidates who know the employee to apply. According to a Nielsen study, people are generally more likely to trust recommendations from friends or family members. Employees who share job postings are essentially recommending them to others.

4.Use targeted advertising

Use targeted social media ads to promote your open positions. You can target potential applicants based on their interests, demographics, or even previous interactions with your company. This depends entirely on what you want to hire someone for.

If you e.g. For example, if you're looking for a data analyst, you can target a specific audience based on interests like statistics, data analysis, and data visualization. Such targeted ads can also help you attract the attention of passive candidates who are active on specific social networks.

Pay attention to optimizing your ads. Use attractive visuals and ensure your job requirements are clear and unambiguous. Add a clear call to action like “Apply Now” or “Learn More” to encourage interested candidates to take action.

5.Get in touch with applicants

In addition to posting job vacancies and placing advertisements, exchanging ideas with potential applicants on your social networks is also effective. Think of this as cultivating a potentially beneficial relationship.

If candidates respond to your content, don't hesitate to respond and leave a comment. This will help reduce any form of friction that could impact applicants' perception of your company.

Sometimes applicants show interest in working with your company. You can find such posts using social listening tools.

Sometimes you post job advertisements and interested applicants ask for more information in the comments or in a message. Be prepared to give them the information they need.

Additionally, you may come across the profiles of potential candidates sharing valuable content on social media. It's okay to contact them too. You can simply like what they posted or leave a positive comment.

Conclusion

A solid social media recruiting strategy allows you to tap into the vast pool of potential candidates on social media. Social recruiting is more cost-effective than traditional methods such as print advertisements or job postings on job boards.

But you need to know social recruiting tips to get the best results. You have learned these tips in this article.

Use the right social platform. This should depend on what roles you want to fill and how you want to portray your employer brand. Additionally, optimize your social media profiles so that they are attractive to the ideal candidates.

Remember to involve your employees in the recruiting process via social media. Use targeted advertising to reach a specific audience on social networks. And finally, you should get in touch with the applicants. You want to build a warm and potentially productive relationship.

Investing in social media recruiting can yield significant benefits for your hiring process. Learn these strategies today with IceHrm.

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