Social Recruiting: Are You Doing It Right?

Social recruiting is no longer a nicety, a cool thing to have that makes your organisation stand out from the rest. It’s a necessity. An ever growing number of job seekers are finding their next role through social media channels, particularly younger jobseekers.

HR is making good use of social media too. A report by e recruitment specialists Konetic found that 80% of HR professionals are now using social media for hiring and sourcing new employees. In fact, the Jobvite Recruiter Nation Survey 2015 found that only 4% of (American) recruiters were not using social media in their recruiting efforts.

So, pretty much everyone is doing it, but are they doing it well? The report ‘Recruitment Marketing: Fad or Future’ by talent acquisition company, iCIMS, that we talked about in our post last week, outlines some strategies for ensuring successful digital recruitment.

First off – and this is highlighted in other pieces of research too – HR, employers and recruiters need to really think about the employer brand and how best to promote it online. It’s so easy to think social media recruitment is just about pushing out jobs on LinkedIn and checking candidate profiles. It’s not. It has to go a lot deeper than that, with employer branding being a top priority.

The iCIMS report found that 90% of HR professionals think having a strong employment brand is more important today than it was five years ago. Almost as many (89%) said a good brand gives companies an edge over competitors, with 79% saying that a poor employment brand makes it difficult to attract the top talent.

The research shows that job seekers are doing their homework on potential employers, checking out their websites and digital presence when deciding whether or not to apply for jobs. So, it’s important that they like what they find and can see themselves working for and progressing their career at your organisation.

A good careers site is really important, something that is easily accessible to jobseekers and gives them a strong idea of what your organisation is about, what it is like to work for you and what the working environment looks like. Of those taking part in the iCIMS research, 42% maintain a career-specific site or sites that exist to promote the employment brand and advertise open positions.

Promoting a good employer brand is more than that though – organisations have to proactively promote themselves and get the message out there to all who need to hear it. This means tactics such as being active in online forums and discussions where potential candidates are active. Organisations need to have a prominent, positive and current brand identity, prompting candidates to come to them. This helps to create a talent pipeline, a pool of candidates that know a lot about your employer brand and already think of you as a potential employer, even before any relevant positions are available.

HR and recruiters need to think about what social media channels best suit their needs and candidate demographics. Are your potential candidates active on LinkedIn? From Facebook? From Instagram? LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have dominated the online recruitment marketplace, but that doesn’t mean they are the only or best channels. Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat are increasingly popular, for example.

The trick is to know where the best talent is and then reach them in the best way possible.