Did you know…
- Approximately 96% of job seekers use social media when conducting a job search? (source: CareerAct)
- About 49 million people use LinkedIn to search for jobs each week? (source: Hootsuite)
- 84% of companies are currently using social media recruiting? (source: SHRM)
Over the past several years, social media has evolved into a powerful tool for job recruitment. It’s no longer enough to just optimize your careers page and call it a day. That’s why you are missing the boat if you haven’t yet implemented social media into your job recruiting strategy.
Social media recruiting lets you go way beyond traditional hiring methods by quickly and efficiently finding top talent to stand out from your competitors in an increasingly competitive landscape.
To find the best job candidates for your available positions (especially millennials and Generation Z), you need to make your presence known on the social sites they frequent every day such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok. In fact, according to GWI (GlobalWebIndex), the average number of social media accounts held per person has risen to 8.4 (up from 4.8 accounts in 2014).
Today many companies have separate social media accounts devoted just to recruiting and hiring. For instance, Marriott International features separate careers social media pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. The hospitality giant frequently utilizes employee interviews and video content in their posts to showcase their corporate culture for potential job candidates.
Use social media to show what it is like to work at your company as in this example from Marriott International.
According to Forbes, “Social recruiting can be the ultimate efficient approach for managing your people needs – as long as you play the game with empathy, strategy and style.”
Benefits of Social Media Recruiting
Social media recruiting (aka social hiring) benefits your online hiring practices in a variety of ways, including:
- Increases Job Visibility and Gets Better Quality Job Candidates
- Effectively Attracts Both Active and Passive Job Candidates
- Directly Targets Your Specific Talent Pool
- Boosts Employer Brand Awareness
- Informs Potential Candidates About Company Benefits and Culture
- Saves Time and Money on Hiring Efforts
Discover the Optimal Ways to Utilize Social Media Recruiting
- Create a Detailed Social Media Recruiting Plan: Do not haphazardly implement your social media recruiting without a definite strategy. Instead, focus your attention on the best social media platforms to find your ideal job candidates.
- Modify Your Recruiting Approach to Fit Each Specific Social Media Platform: Since no two social media platforms are alike, you will need to adapt your job recruiting strategy to each one to maximize your recruitment efforts.
- Make it Easy for Your Employees to Get Involved with Your Social Recruiting Strategies: Let your employees use their own social media platforms to spread the word about your job recruitment efforts so you draw an even wider audience. This is the new employee referral program.
- Monitor and Update Your Social Media Recruiting Strategy Regularly: Continually measure your results to gauge the impact of your social media recruiting and update your approach accordingly.
- Show Your Company’s Soul: Social Media is visual. Show potential employees behind the black curtain. What’s it like to be a team member? Share team member accomplishments.