How to Build a Social Media Recruitment Strategy

Take your social recruiting of the beaten track and find quality candidates in the alternative places they hang out online. with our comprehensive guide to social recruiting.

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Best social channels for recruiting

There are many different channels you can use to recruit. Generally speaking, the best performing networks for recruiting are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Although, depending on who your target hire is, Snapchat or Instagram could be more effective. To source and attract the best candidates you need to go where your audience is. Here is a brief overview of the three main social sites:

Linkedin: Linkedin makes such brilliant space for sourcing because users share their career history and interests with their network and you can get a real sense of who they are. Usually, LinkedIn users are open to new opportunities so it's the perfect social media site to source candidates. 

Facebook: Almost everyone has a Facebook page. If you can't find the candidate you're looking for on LinkedIn, you may find the perfect passive candidate on Facebook by using paid targeted adverts or getting involved in Facebook groups. 

Twitter: Twitter, like Facebook, is great for finding passive candidates. Unlike Facebook, however, users sometimes have professional Twitter accounts kind of like an extension of their Linkedin where they can share their thoughts and grow a following. You may come across potential candidates by using hashtags. Hashtags increase the visibility of your posts so be sure to use them at the end of each tweet!

As great as these three networks may be, it's important to not overlook the niche social networking sites where your candidate might hang out. For example,  if you look at forum sites like Quora, you may find your next start candidate helping somebody out with an industry related problem. Get involved in the conversation then reach out to the candidate in private messages afterwards. Other niche networks you could look at are GitHub, StackOverflow, Warrior Forum, Moz and you're sure to find the perfect subreddit on Reddit.

Basic Strategies for social recruiting

It's important that you make your social media recruiting strategy unique to your company. Decide what your social media brand will be in order to grab the attention of potential candidates. Here are the basic steps you need to take in order to get started:

• Be in the right place: You're going to have a hard time engaging talent if you're not taking part in the right conversations with the right people. The key to social media recruiting is building relationships and an online presence within your chosen community. Be active in Facebook and LinkedIn groups and participate in discussions. Use appropriate hashtags to reach your audience on twitter.
  
  
• Use targeted adverts: On top of sharing your new job opening across your social pages take a look and targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is a particularly effective way of reaching passive candidates online. All the social sites mentioned have different options for targeted advertising. You can target your ads by location, age, education, interests etc so you're sure to reach the right people.
  
  
• Create shareable content: Social media recruiting isn't just about spamming open roles and sourcing. It's the perfect opportunity to market your brand. Show off what life is like working at your company and employee achievements. Give passive candidates a reason to apply for a role. Create shareable content that fits your brand. Interesting content such as videos showing of office spaces and company culture always get a lot of likes and shares on social media and many people will tag their friends in the comments. Blogs, news articles and fitting memes can make great shareable content too. 
  
  
• Build connections with recruiters: If you have an in-house recruiting team it's becoming increasingly popular for them to have a social media presence. Just like your employees have them advocate for your company by sharing content. The difference here though is that your recruiters should have their own individual brand online. Have them focus on really forming relationships with the people you want to hire. Get to know them by joining groups, taking part in discussions and even by attending meetups and conferences. You can have them be completely transparent with their intentions, being there will also impress any potential candidates.  In a market that puts most of the power into the candidate, taking the time to really build a connection works wonders.
  
  
• Get your employees involved: Encourage your employees to get involved with your social media marketing strategy. Your employees will have a network of like-minded people that could be perfectly suited to one of your roles. Have them share the content you have created and any new job postings. Let them share their original thoughts on working for your company. Indeed are a good example of a company having employees as brand ambassadors.

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Why should you use social media to recruit?

With social media becoming such a huge part of our lives it's no surprise that it has become a crucial space for recruitment. If you're still not swayed here are some of the benefits of using social media as part of your recruitment strategy:

• It's free: Unless you're using targeted adverting your recruiting efforts online are all free.
  

• See their character before you reach out: Social media gives you the power to see how a candidate presents themselves. You can get to know them, their background, what they find interesting, ideas or projects they're working on and more importantly what they see themselves doing in the future.
  
  
• Reach passive candidates: Building relationships with passive candidates online is the best way to grab their attention and earn their respect and interest.
  
  
• Get past the noise: With social media recruiting you can learn quite quickly if candidates are a good fit by the content that they choose to share online. 
  
  
• Find the perfect fit: If your recruiters are building connects with the right people and your employees are sharing content with their network you are sure to reach candidates who will be a great fit for your workplace culture, skills and personality wise.
  
  
• Build your employer brand: You can build on your company brand online, giving potential candidates a window into live working for your company. 
  
  
• Review their CV'S: If you have found a potential candidate online you can use LinkedIn as a way to check their CV before even reaching out to them. Other sites like Facebook, where you can fill out work history can provide you with this information too.

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What tools can you use to recruit across social media?

Now that you're ready to implement your social media recruiting strategy here are some tools you can use to help you along the way.

• Planning and strategy: There's a multitude of tools available online to help plan and schedule posts. You can plan your posts have them post automatically at a chosen time. Some platforms allow you to post from employee accounts too. Some examples are Hootsuite, socialOomph, Buffer and HubSpot. Some of these offer analytics tracking and a range of other features too.
  
  
• Analytics and tracking: If you're not using scheduling tools or the ones your using don't offer tracking you can measure using tools like Google Analytics. This will help you keep track of what's working in terms of clicks, shares and general traffic engagement.
  
  
• Applicant tracking software: An ATS is a great way to keep on top of applicants and they're even better when they can integrate with your social media pages. An ATS like ours will post your job spec out to your chosen social media channels and you can manage any CV's you receive from it's centralised platform. There are also tracking capabilities so you can see which sites are bringing in the most quality candidates. Using an ATS provides a positive candidate experience by personalise your hiring process too.
  
  
• Sourcing: You can use sourcing tools to pull and organise data from hundreds of social profiles to build a database of potential candidates. Recruiting tools put together a list of websites and Chrome extensions to complement your social media sourcing efforts, you can read that here.