Do You Have a Social Media Strategy for Applicants?

Does your social media strategy take into account the sites that your applicants frequent? If not, it should. If you’re scratching your head wondering what your company’s social media strategy has to do with hiring, then this post is for you. For starters, you should check out this article on ERE. In it, social media strategy expert Jean Serio details the importance of having a social media presence and how it impacts the type of applicants you recruit from each site.

Even though HR professionals (and some marketing experts for that matter) tend to lump social media strategy into one all-encompassing group – each social media site functions independently of the others and each draws a very specific “type” of customer, or in this case, a specific type of applicant.

If you don’t know your employees or your talent pool better than anyone else in the company, you’re not doing your job as an HR professional.

Even though designing a social media strategy is a fairly straightforward process when you’re working in the business to consumer realm, things tend to get a little more convoluted when you’re dealing with a business to business transaction – the same can be said when you’re designing a social media strategy that targets a certain type of job candidate. It’s not inherently obvious where you should be spending the bulk of your time to recruit quality talent.

Here are some things to consider…

Knowing your applicants is the key to designing an effective social media strategy to recruit them.

We often preach to our clients the importance of knowing your applicant pool before attempting to build a solid recruiting strategy. The same can be said for building a social media strategy that appeals to talent. The harsh reality is, if you don’t know your employees or your talent pool better than anyone else in the company, you’re not doing your job as an HR professional.

The easiest approach to bridging the understanding gap between you and potential employees is to take a cue from your marketing team. Chances are, no one at your company understands your organization’s clients like marketers, and the tools they use to acquire this information like creating buyer personas, collecting data from the company website, and sending out surveys can benefit employers as well. The more data you collect, the better equipped you’ll be to design a social media strategy that draws awesome applicants.

Breaking down your applicant pool into groups will help you design a solid social media strategy.

Understanding which group of your applicants you’re targeting for a specific job opening will help you narrow down which social media outlet would benefit you the most. In Jean’s article, she shares some statistics based around the individual groups that are most likely to frequent specific social media sites. Based on the stats, it’s also easy to see which sites should always be included in your social media strategy because they target the widest range of potential applicants.

The easiest approach to bridging the understanding gap between you and potential employees is to take a cue from your marketing team.

These data come directly from Expanded Ramblings:

91 percent of Facebook users are Millennials (age 15-35)

34 percent of Google+ users are millennials; 29 percent GenZ users

34 percent of LinkedIn users are Millennials; 39k students/grads; 33 percent are 35-54; 44 percent use LinkedIn’s mobile job app to job search daily; members are evenly divided between male and female

Having this information in your back pocket and understanding which group is most common in the type of job you’re hiring for (customer service, sales, marketing, etc.) helps you build a data driven approach to your social media strategy. If you’re hiring for a customer support position and most of your current employees in that position fall within the Millennial range, focusing your recruiting efforts in social media outlets that appeal to Millennials will give you the best hiring bang for your buck.

Not sure where to start in developing a winning social media strategy for recruiting? Staff member and social strategy expert Brendan Dalley delivers free HR continuing education approved Webinar content, monthly. Check out our Webinars page for more information.

Not sure where to start in developing a winning social media strategy for recruiting? Staff member and social strategy expert Brendan Dalley delivers free HR continuing education approved Webinar content, monthly. Check out our Webinars page for more information.