Social recruiting proves to be a productive method for recruiting staffSpring is in the air encouraging a period of growth and traditionally, April through to August is a key time for many businesses as budgets are released, next quarter planning takes place and recruitment comes front of mind.
Social media is now a proven way to recruit staff whether you are looking to find temporary workers or to permanently expand your in-house team. Traditional methods such as newspaper adverts & job boards do still have good results, but aren’t working as well as expected and in some cases not at all.
Recruitment agents will do the legwork for you by researching and shortlisting a selection of people who are suitable to interview, in return for a fee. However, you don’t have much control over the process in between.
Social media marketing agencies have evolved and some now offer social recruitment services for businesses to find employees, as well as businesses finding customers. The agency identifies the ideal candidate the company would like to employ, understands who they are, what motivates them and crucially – where they spend their time on social media.
A social strategy is then put into place to advertise roles directly to the ideal candidate pool, via social media. This makes it incredibly easy for them to learn about the company and apply – usually in just a few clicks.
The reason ‘good people are hard to find’ is that good people aren’t looking for work. They aren’t looking at job boards alerts, signed up to agencies, searching the web or looking at vacancies on company websites. What they are doing, is spending their free time (when they are not working hard) on social media – like the rest of the world, like it or not.
Your ideal employee is also smart – they aren’t going to apply for a job without doing their research – so having an informative landing page on your website telling them the story of why the company is a great employer is absolutely key. Candidate experience is a crucial part of an ideal employees’ journey to discovering, understanding and engaging with your company as a potential employer.
Treat them with as much care and attention as you would your customer who buy from you. If you do believe that your employees are your greatest asset, and you are a truly great company to work for – why are you representing yourself online in the form of bland job adverts and job specifications, or as an afterthought to your current marketing strategy and operations?
The days of submitting an application and waiting for a call are gone – now you can talk to potential and current applicants in real time, in their own world. You can answer questions, encourage applications and overcome objections even before applications are made. People (especially good people) are enthusiastic and pro-active – and now you can be too, without them even having to leave their favourite social media app.
Facebook is a great tool to create open days and events for prospective candidates. The page (with all the details) can then be marketed directly to where your ideal people live and work, and hang out online. Create a buzz around an event, maximise awareness and communicate directly with attendees before and after the date and the benefits will be endless.
Some great hires come from recommendations or referrals – now you can watch ‘word of mouth on steroids’ in real time on your employer social media profiles as friends tag friends and friends of friends tag friends of their friends.
Advert not quite working? No worries. With social campaigns you can change minute details or the whole direction in an instant. When you have raw data on what works and what doesn’t, it makes fine tuning in real time simple and efficient. It also makes waiting for the next edition of the local paper seem a million years ago.
Oversubscribed on your applicants? Turn off the adverts and you still have an engaged, interested pool of warm candidates on your social media platforms – and you can communicate with them any time you like.
Social media should be embraced in the recruitment world – It’s time for HR and Marketing to work together to tell the story of you as an employer to your ideal future employees.
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