More than one billion people check Facebook daily, Twitter users send 6,000 tweets every second and new LinkedIn users sign up at a rate of more than two new members per second, reports Hootsuite. Your next great hire is likely on social media; is your recruiting team?
A social media strategy is no longer only a marketing department responsibility; with users spanning every industry and geography, cultivating a community of engaged social followers is an important part of a modern talent acquisition strategy. Social recruiting helps the recruitment team:
- Cultivate a unique employer brand. While the marketing department may run the company’s social media platforms, its content likely differs from the messaging the recruiting team employs to reach candidates. Build a recruitment-focused presence online to give the talent acquisition team a voice.
- Engage with candidates. According to Nielsen, the average adult spends more than five hours each week on social media. Candidates spend time on these platforms; the recruiting department should, too. Establish a social media recruitment strategy to let candidates ask questions and interact with your content — on platforms they already use.
- Monitor the recruiting landscape. The inherent transparency of social media offers a bird’s-eye view of the recruitment landscape. Monitor candidate conversations and posts to learn how candidates view your organization, understand their job search habits and even gain insight into your competitors’ social recruiting techniques.
Launching Your Social Recruitment Strategy
Launching a social recruitment strategy can be challenging for talent acquisition professionals who may not be social media experts. To get social recruiting efforts off the ground, free tools can help talent teams stay on top of social activity and online interactions. Use this list of five free solutions to help take the guesswork out of social recruiting.
TweetReach
Use TweetReach to find out exactly how many Twitter accounts your tweet touched and how many people see the content you post.
Social Recruiting Tip: Run monthly reports to see how many people your social recruiting efforts reach and how many impressions you gained in a period of time. Track the growth of your social media presence to continue to cultivate an engaged community of followers.
Twitter Analytics
Did you know Twitter offers free analytics capabilities built into the platform? Use Twitter Analytics as a one-stop shop to see profile visits, mentions and follower count growth.
Social Recruiting Tip: Twitter Analytics identifies top-performing tweets and how many impressions these tweets receive. Model future content based on top tweets, to continue high engagement, get the most out of your social recruiting strategy and build your employer brand.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite lets your team manage all social media efforts from a single dashboard. Identify top-performing social content and schedule future posts to ensure your presence on social media is ongoing.
Social Recruiting Tip: Hootsuite allows users to delegate tasks and send private messages to team members. When multiple recruiters manage a social media account, use these features to assign specific team members to answer a candidate question on Facebook or share employee testimonials on Twitter. Use it free for 14 days.
TweetDeck
With TweetDeck, keep track of competitors, candidates and the recruiting landscape to understand what topics are trending and what candidates are discussing on Twitter.
Social Recruiting Tip: During career fairs, use TweetDeck to create searches for event hashtags and monitor topics career fair attendees tweet about. Reach out digitally to encourage them to visit your booth or sign up for your company’s talent community.
Continue Engagement Outside of Social Platforms
After cultivating a group of followers, continue to engage high-potential candidates outside of social platforms. Use a candidate relationship management system to automatically capture a candidate’s resume and contact information from LinkedIn. With the system, establish and run recruitment marketing campaigns to keep these candidates warm and provide additional insight into company culture, leadership, awards and accolades, the industry and open positions.
Social media has created new opportunities for talent teams to build a pipeline of interested followers, cultivate a unique employer brand, establish relationships with candidates and gain insight into the recruiting landscape. With the right tools and strategy, one of your social media fans could become your next great hire.
Looking to enhance your social recruitment strategy? Request a demo to find out how Yello can help.
