Social Media has changed recruitment. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter have helped make recruiters lives easier. You can find a plethora of candidates in a flash.

We’ve decided to write an in-depth guide on the different strategies you can use across all your social platforms.

With the average user aged between 16-64 having 7 social media profiles and 98% having at least one, it’s a vital hub of talent to be utilising.

Whilst LinkedIn is one of the most important tools for recruiters, it is one of the least used social media profiles for passive candidates.

When trying to fill more technical roles, using different tactics across a range of social media can be beneficial, and is certainly worth trying.

 

How to use LinkedIn effectively

If you’re posting your jobs on LinkedIn as ads, rather than posting them as an update or only sending an InMail, you need to ensure that you choose the right level of targeting.

With most candidates finding a job through the ‘related’ jobs section, it’s vital that your job ads are designed to find the right candidate.
By testing the four different targeting areas of Title, Job Function, Skills and Groups, you can find out how successful each is for reaching your desired audience.

The more specialised the role, the more important your targeting becomes and would require you to build on the layers of information. For example, if you’re looking for a particular skill set as well as managerial experience, you would need to specify your ad to target both of these and can narrow this down with the location too. It is good to make sure that your ad doesn’t have too large an audience as this will very quickly drain your ad budget.

Quick wins for LinkedIn:

  • Use it to share thought-leadership articles/videos
  • Share slides/tips with your connections regularly
  • Stay in touch with candidates by giving them value-adding content
  • Make the subject line of your InMails personal & target pain points

 

Using Facebook in recruitment

As the largest social network in the world, Facebook is already a good way to get a look at potential candidates. However, unless you have a dedicated & popular company page, posting jobs on here is unlikely to yield results.

One way you can utilise Facebook is to locate potential talent that you might struggle to find on LinkedIn initially.

Facebook can be useful for locating potential talent that you might struggle to find due to its search capabilities. With more users than any other network, it’s a good place to start. Instead of searching names, you can search by job title and location.

If you have a company page without much of a following, it’ll prove difficult to reach people with your job posts unless you pay to promote these through ads. You can build a following by sharing regular content, running competitions and always getting your candidates/clients to leave reviews and like/share your page.

Whilst you should be using Facebook to search and vet candidates, you can also post and be involved in local groups. By interacting with these groups and contributing, you’ll be far more likely to open a conversation with potential candidates.

Quick wins for Facebook:

  • Encourage likes/shares with your content/posts
  • Run competitions & interact
  • Post regularly on your company page with value-adding content
  • Utilise the search bar properly
  • Engage with groups (both local and interest)

 

Getting the most out of Twitter

Recruiting through Twitter is difficult and something you probably shouldn’t invest a lot of time into. As well as making sure your Twitter profile is pretty active, you should follow these quick tips in order to increase engagement. It is likely that potential candidates will check your Twitter profile, so you’ll want to maintain a similar tone and brand identity.

Quick wins for Twitter:

  • Follow industry hashtags and participate
  • Don’t let it become a stream of jobs
  • Use it to find out the interests of your candidates to build rapport
  • For hard to reach candidates, you might be able to get some engagement by replying/messaging through direct messages

 

About The Recruitment Network
This blog article was provided by The Recruitment Network.

The Recruitment Network is the ultimate support club for recruitment business leaders. We give our members an unparalleled level of support, guidance and tools to help them transform their recruitment businesses with the ultimate objective of improving business performance, increasing business efficiency and significantly growing profitability and shareholder value.