How to use social media as a tool for recruitment
Social media is a powerful tool for recruiters to find and engage with potential candidates. Gone are the days when you’d have a yellow pages kind of book on the local experts in your area. Nowadays, networking and brand awareness are very high on the list of how to recruit compared to the adage of sending CVs into the office. In this blog, I will explore different ways to use social media as a recruiting tool and how it can be beneficial as we move into a more social media dominated world.
With so many social media platforms now being available, recruiters can now reach out to a wide range of candidates from all over the world. From platforms like LinkedIn to Twitter, recruiters can access a huge pool of talent and find the candidate for their needs, and vice versa. According to Smart Insights, 4.8 billion people now use social media – that’s more than half of the world! By adding social media to your recruitment process, you can access more candidates than you could have ever imagined. Here are some ways that social media can benefit you as recruiters:
Searching on Social Media
Social media makes searching for candidates so easy. You can find people anywhere. For example, you want to find someone to work in the Greater Manchester area. An easy yet effective function you can use is hashtags and posting your jobs directly on social media. You can put out job adverts or posts for the specific role, and #GreaterManchester or the area you are hiring in. Doing this allows people who are job searching to see jobs in their desired area. Your job vacancies will come up for everyone searching in that specific region. Furthermore, your employees will be able to share the job posts, expanding the reach to their networks and more people in your locality.
Additionally, you can search that hashtag yourself to find candidates seeking a job in that area. Similar to hashtags, filters are also a great function to help refine your search for candidates on LinkedIn. You can filter all sorts, ranging from location, sector, job role and more.
Secondly, social media sees a huge range of diversity. Therefore, enlarging the talent pool that you are opened up to, which you can resource job candidates from.
Quick Interactions
The recruitment process is made much easier when using social media. Candidates can submit their CVs and job applications online, instead of interrupting office hours in person. At interview stage, Microsoft Teams or Zoom are great platforms to set up online interviews which again saves time. Emails can be sent out at any time to let candidates know updates on their recruitment process.
By connecting with job candidates you are interested in on LinkedIn, you can quickly message them if you need to. Also, once a job offer has been accepted, you can show interest in your new starters before they join your company by interacting with their posts and messaging them in LinkedIn.
Boost your Employer Brand
By having a strong marketing team making your social media and online presence visually appealing as well as relevant and up-to-date, makes attracting candidates even easier. If your social media is hard to read, dark, and gloomy, job hunters are likely to give up trying to find roles to apply for much quicker than if there is an aesthetically pleasing social media page that’s easy to navigate. Creating a fun but professional brand image on social media can increase your visibility to potential candidates. Visually appealing profiles and content can motivate candidates to follow you. As a result, they will stay up-to-date with your activities and be more likely to want a job when you next hire.
Furthermore, when researching potential employers many job seekers will check out companies on social media. Again, proving the importance of companies being active and engaging on social media for when hiring.
Brand Ambassadors
An effective way to boost your presence on social media is to have employees be brand ambassadors for your company. They will promote your content and boost brand awareness. Making your company more visible and recruiting easier as a result. Additionally, candidates trust a company more, the more that they see reassurance from existing employees. They are able to talk about company culture, why they like working for your company. Your employees could connect with potential candidates themselves to make that extra effort on the recruiting side. Doing so can really help show your brand’s personality.
Reduced Costs
A great reason for social media being used as a recruitment tool is the little to no cost of it. Nearly all social media platforms are free to set up an account and post. As well, as social media is much quicker than human processes, the recruitment process can be sped up, further reducing costs. Recruiters therefore can have a much cheaper process.
So, why is recruiting on social media the way forward?
Mainly, social media can help employers reach more candidates faster than ever before. By leveraging social media to its fullest potential, recruiting managers can find the right employees that fit their company’s needs and culture. Here at the Eventus Recruitment Group, we demonstrate a good understanding of how social media can be used as a recruitment tool. We have a large following of legal and finance professionals on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. This helps us to promote your jobs, find suitable candidates and raise our company profile. As recruiters, we are able to advise professionally on ways to enhance your social media platforms to get the best recruitment strategies out of it. Contact us today for a confidential discussion and to get direct support with recruitment. We’re always happy to advise.
Written by Sam Heraghty, Resourcing Consultant for Legal Roles across the North West, Wales, and South West.
