Today’s young-age employees (ahem, Gen Z) live on social media. From entertainment and education to job hunts, they use social media for nearly everything they consume.
No wonder thousands of recruiters are turning to social platforms in search of new talents to join their company. But how do you achieve that? Read on as we break down exactly how you can turn your social media engagement into recruitment success in six easy steps (and more).
Is Social Media Recruitment Worth it?
Yes. Social media recruitment is more selective, efficient, reliable, and less spammy than traditional job board postings. Employers around the world are using social media as a passive recruiting strategy.
It’s the perfect way to reach a wide audience, engage with potential employees, and even save up on recruitment costs. Here are three ways how:
Reach: With billions of active users, social media gives you unparalleled reach. You can access a vast pool of high-end talents globally and boost the visibility of your employer brand and job opportunities.
Cost Effective: Posting job ads on advertising channels and job boards is expensive. In comparison, engaging with candidates and promoting open roles on posts, stories, and comments on social media is much more affordable.
Speeds: Instead of screening thousands of resumes, reaching out to the selected dozens, and waiting for their response, you can directly message the candidates you like on social media. This instant communication speeds up the hiring process, letting you promptly schedule interviews, check references, and gather additional candidate information.
Then there are valuable insights and analytics, job promotion, employer brand building, real-time engagement, and much more that make social media recruiters’ heaven.
6 Steps to Turning Social Media Engagement into Recruitment Success
Now for the best part– let’s dive into a six-step breakdown of how you can make social media a primary conversion funnel for high-end talent recruitment. It all starts with a strong employer brand:
Build Your Employer Brand on Social Media
A 2021 Glassdoor study revealed that 68% of Millennials and 54% of Gen-Xers check their social media before applying for a job–which makes building an employer brand on social media a necessity.
Start by defining your employer’s brand message and voice. You and another brand can have the same messaging, but it’s your voice where you will stand out.
Take the example of Thursday and Tinder. Both of them are dating apps with different voices. Where Tinder sounds relaxed and more formal, Thursday’s content is mostly witty, feeling like you are talking to your BFF in a cafe.
A good branding message and voice should match your ideal candidate’s personality. If you are targeting GenZers, for example, you may keep your tone quirky and light-hearted, and you can even feature the latest trends, memes, and pop culture references. For senior candidates, on the other hand, a business casual tone works best.
For brands with an already existing social media presence, you can leverage mobile survey solutions. They’re easy to use and very effective to know the exact taste of your ideal candidate–their preferences, content needs, and areas of improvement.
However, make sure to tailor your branding strategy for each social media platform. Bite-sized content (threads), for example, is popular on X (Twitter). This format is also gaining popularity on Instagram. Short videos are all-rounders since they amass significant engagement on all platforms. Carousels and interactive infographics work great on LinkedIn.
The key is to stay consistent–true to your brand message and voice.
Build Your Social Media Content Strategy
Content that works for enticing consumers rarely works for recruitment. Your content should be crafted to sell the job, not a product/service. It should inspire the candidates to explore your company page and its culture and see themselves as a part of your team.
Therefore, develop your content plan that outlines the following:
- What type of content you will create
- When to post it
- Which platforms will host it
- How you will track and measure its performance
Here’s the type of content mix that can help:
Company ‘WOW’ Factor
What sets you apart–your flexible work arrangement, unique employee onboarding experience, or training program? Whatever it is, make sure to highlight it on your social media. For example, you might want to talk about how you’ve been listed as the best place to work for three years in a row. Promote it in a mix of awards, employee stories, and accomplishments.
Make a “Day-in-the-Life” Video.
Create a real-time story about life at your company. Interview your employees on camera, asking them specific questions about job roles, company culture, and day-to-day tasks. Keep the video short (3-4 minutes) to keep the candidates interested in the process.
Capture Company Photos on Instagram
Give prospects a sneak peek into cool activities and projects your company is working on (behind the scenes). It can include insider pictures of brainstorming sessions and non-confidential meetings. If a few particular candidates engage with your content regularly, mention them in posts and stories to get them even more excited about the company.
Build Thought Leadership
If you want to attract the right candidates, you will want them to view you as a thought leader. Use social media to share relevant industry articles and trends. Engage with influencers and experts in your niche and build relationships to encourage them to share your posts and company blogs on their channels.
Let Your Current Employees in on the Recruitment Plan
Authenticity is a powerful strategy on social media. And what better way to show the authentic working experience of your company than by encouraging your employees to share their personal experiences? Your current workforce can be your best advocate.
Take Adobe’s employee advocacy program, for example, where they consistently share employees’ work experience on social media–you want the same.
Encourage them to share your posts, talk about the company culture, engage with your content online, and refer their network to your open roles.
Your employee’s network is another goldmine for potential candidates. Use professional platforms, like LinkedIn, to your advantage by encouraging employees to share job postings from the company page to their network.
Provide your team with clear guidelines, training, and tools to amplify their reach and engagement, thus benefiting your recruitment strategy. To promote it further, create shareable and engaging content and incentivise your employees to bring in successful new hires through referral programs.
Engage with Potential Candidates
If you apply strategies to your own practices, you’ll soon find greater engagement from your followers. The next step is to identify followers with the potential to become your employees.
Look out for candidates who actively engage with posts–likes, comments, shares, and direct messages. Keep track of interactions with followers who ask questions and express interest in your company. Assess which one of these followers has the skills, qualifications, and experience that current open roles need.
Next, personalise the interaction with these narrowed-down followers. Using LinkedIn message automation, send out personalised messages to all prospects based on their interests, requirements, and engagement history.
After you’ve broken the ice, build rapport by engaging with them and fostering meaningful conversations. Even better, offer value-added content, like career tips, industry insights, and company updates (open roles) to keep them engaged, informed, and interested.
Convert Engagement into Applications
With compelling content and engaged candidates, now is the time for the final step–transforming these prospects into employees.
You can do this by crafting job descriptions that resonate with engaged followers. Highlight your uniqueness, benefits, and company culture in the job description. Be transparent about growth opportunities, benefits, and company culture. This is an ideal space, for example, to include how you maintain payroll compliance. Doing this can help you build trust and a positive employer brand amongst candidates–helping you attract the top talents.
Design targeted recruitment campaigns (targeted ads, sponsored posts, and promotional offers) to help the conversion further.
Encourage the engaged followers to take the next step. It can be applying for job openings, attending recruitment events, submitting their resumes for open roles, or simply scheduling an interview.
Above all, let your followers apply directly through social media platforms (LinkedIn job boards) or company websites–the goal is to keep the process as simple and direct as possible.
Track and Measure for Success
Social media strategies often don’t perform best in the first go. That’s why you need to track, measure, and analyse how your social media recruitment efforts are performing.
Integrate your recruitment technology with social media marketing tools to evaluate how well you are achieving your goals, such as:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Attracting the right candidates
- Improving candidate qualities
Define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your recruitment goals, such as reach, impressions, engagement, clicks, and conversions. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your social media strategy. See which platform and content are performing the best.
Use different sources and tools, such as Facebook Insights, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter analytics, to collect information. Document the format and changes that enable you to communicate your social media performance across departments.
All these insights together will help you make data-driven decisions–ensuring your long-term success.
Your Action Plan Is Ready
Recruitment is not a once-and-done process. As your company grows, you’ll need new employees to hit the goals. Here, social media recruitment comes in as a powerful tool. When used effectively, it can become your primary pipeline of new talents.
Put the above 6-step social media recruitment plan into action and start transforming followers into employees today.
Author: Ciara Byrne – freelance blogger.
Photo credit: Storyset on Freepik.
