Social Media Recruiting 101

If you play a role in the hiring process at your organization and you don’t have a solid social media recruiting strategy, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful resources available to access qualified candidates. Forbes states the because of Social Media “We’re All Marketers Now“. We are all adapting to the modern world by tapping into a powerful resource and HR should be doing the same – enter social media recruiting. And while many HR professionals shy away from utilizing social media recruiting to target quality applicants because they have a fear of bias, that fear is not only unfounded, it is extremely detrimental to hiring in our tech driven biosphere. The key to maintaining healthy boundaries relative to social media recruiting is knowing how to execute it effectively and to stay within compliance limits. Let’s discuss some of those parameters in today’s post:

We are all adapting to the modern world by tapping into a powerful resource and HR should be doing the same.

What should your social media recruiting activity include?

The primary purpose behind investing in social media recruiting is to have access to individuals that you otherwise wouldn’t, some of which are likely quality candidates. With the national unemployment rate dipping below five percent, chances are these candidates are “passive” and probably already employed. Spoiler alert: it’s likely that the top tier job seekers are already going to be employed because they’re in high demand.

So, when trying to establish a better defined social media recruiting strategy, your first goal should simply be to build a presence online. Build your connections, expand your sphere of influence, nurture your network, and grow your potential referral network. Put more simply, if you build it, they (job seekers) will come.

Creating a social media recruiting strategy will reinforce your employer brand.

Even though your primary objective when creating an effective social media recruiting strategy is to draw qualified applicants to you, another benefit of your social media presence is fortifying your employer brand. The more you’re able to get yourself in front of people promoting who you are and the type of culture that exists at your organization, the more likely it is that you’ll draw job seekers to you that are a great cultural fit as well. The key is to design your social media recruiting strategy to include items that communicate to your audience who you are as a company and the vision that you hold.

What are the potential barriers of entry to social media recruiting?

As we discussed earlier, it makes a lot of HR professionals uncomfortable trying to use social media recruiting to seek out quality applicants and remain unbiased, but the key to balancing this process is to focus on building your brand versus simply using it to track down specific applicants. That’s not to say that you can’t, but if the focus of your social media recruiting strategy is networking and establishing a solid referral network, your connections will do a lot of the engaging for you once you get your platform built. That being said, you can’t just build the bare minimum social media recruiting platform and not engage with it or use it and this can be a potential hang up for HR professionals as well. People use social media multiple times a day to engage with friends and connections. If you’re not active with your network, your connections will lose interest. If you want your social media recruiting strategy to prosper, you have to view it as a long-term commitment.

Concerned that your social media recruiting strategy lacks the necessary components to attract quality applicants? Let us our hiring experts help! Give us a call for a free consultation, today.