Did you know that you are shaping potential candidates’ perceptions of you every single day? Every time you post, tweet, snap, like, or share, you tell your followers something about what it’s like to work for you. Whether it’s intentional or not, you are sending a message.

The question is: are you sending the right message?

Consider this: 70% of potential hires are passive candidates—they aren’t actively seeking a job. But they’re still absorbing information about your company, culture, and brand. And they’re open to a new position if the right opportunity presents itself.

Outsourced recruiting services and social media hiring can help you reach those people—but it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

START ON THE RIGHT FOOT: COMMIT TO THE PROCESS

You can’t just jump into social media recruiting with abandon and post whatever, whenever. You need a strategy designed to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. Here’s how to get started:

• Goals—What do you want to accomplish? Do you have specific roles you need to fill ASAP? Are you seeking to network with passive candidates for future opportunities? Showcase your culture? Make a list of the goals you want to accomplish with social media before you start posting.
• Great Culture—It’s not enough to make your culture look great. Your culture must be great if you want to recruit successfully. Social recruiting gives followers a sneak peek into what it’s like to work at your company. If you don’t have a great culture, work on that first.
• Time—Social media requires time and consistency. You have to invest in building your audience, creating a content calendar, analyzing results, and adjusting as needed.
• Experimentation—If what you’re doing isn’t working, try something else. There is no single best strategy that will work for every business, all the time. Be willing to experiment with different kinds of content, different posting days and times, and different engagement strategies. Find what works.

Hit the Ground Running: Plan Your Strategy

Thomas Jefferson famously said, “The harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” Companies that recruit effectively on social media aren’t just lucky—they’ve put in a lot of work to plan a strategy that gets results:

• Know whom you’re trying to reach. What does your ideal candidate look like? Develop candidate personas that include demographics, preferences, job skills, goals, interests, and even hobbies. These things will tell you what social channels they most likely use and what types of content they’re likely to engage with.
• Decide where you want to send traffic. Do you have separate landing pages for each open position? (Hint: you should.) Which posts will send visitors directly to those landing pages and which ones will go to your general careers page? Send candidates to a targeted landing page that will draw them in and invite further interaction.
• Build a posting strategy. Analyze the best times to post for each channel by looking at engagement metrics. When are people most likely to like, comment, and share? When are they most active online? What kinds of content do they interact with most frequently?
• Get current employees onboard. Current employees can be some of your best brand ambassadors. Recruit them to like and share your posts, interact with comments, and tag people who may be interested. If they love working for you, they’ll be glad to help promote your company to their network. And a little friendly competition never hurts either.
• Analyze and adjust. If your strategy isn’t working, find out why. Analyze metrics such as traffic to your landing pages, number of comments or mentions, number of new follows, frequency of likes, shares, and retweets, and number of paid advertising leads. Learn from the data and adjust your strategy as needed.

Stay In the Race: Learn and Grow Across Channels

Over time, you’ll find that you’ve hit a stride in one or more of your social channels as activity and engagement grow. Take what you’ve learned and tweak it across all of your social media venues to reach a wider audience. Remember, Twitter followers engage differently than Instagram fans do. LinkedIn has an entirely different purpose from Facebook. Discover what works best for each audience and tweak your strategy for better results.

And one final caveat: Use the information you find on social media carefully. Don’t open yourself up to discrimination lawsuits by allowing a candidate’s age, marital status, or other private information to affect a hiring decision.

Social media recruiting is a powerful tool that can help you reach otherwise unreachable candidates. Use it wisely to showcase your culture and build your employer brand intentionally—and have fun!

 Women We Admire recently announced their list of Top 50 Women Leaders of Utah for 2022

ProIQ is excited to announce that Sara West, Managing Director, has been named as one of the top 50 leaders in Utah by Women We Admire, a publication dedicated to recognizing the achievements of exceptional women across industries and circulates its content to over 32,000 individuals and businesses.  

In 2021, West launched ProIQ, which focuses on Digital Advisory solutions for HR and Talent Acquisition departments interested in utilizing digital strategies to attract and retain talent. As Managing Director of ProIQ, Sara West leads strategy and solution development as well as delivery for ProIQ’s clients from the office in the greater Salt Lake City area. West and her team partner with companies to implement innovative digital recruiting strategies, like social media recruiting, programmatic job advertising, geofencing recruiting, and recruitment marketing to better position themselves in a fast-paced hiring world. Previously, West was the Director of Strategic Development at Hire Velocity where she helped shape brand strategy to build market awareness, generate sales leads, and acquire new customers.  

All of the women honored on this year's list are recognized for their dedication and efforts in industries including education, healthcare, technology, financial services, and more. “In this state, women were enfranchised 50 years before most American women and were the first women in America to vote under an equal suffrage law. This year's awardees follow in the footsteps of those Utah women who came before them, leading fields that are often largely male-dominated. They continue to eliminate barriers before them and are setting an example for younger generations of women leaders,” states the publication’s website where the complete list of winners is available.  

Please join us in congratulating Sara West on this incredible accomplishment.  

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About ProIQ 

ProIQ is a strategic partner for companies that want to build both great teams and great businesses. By engaging to understand their clients’ unique needs, they create digital and talent strategies that deliver the solutions required to drive success. ProIQ leverages digital marketing expertise to help clients build their employer brand, effectively market to and attract candidates, and identify new talent markets with recruitment marketing, employer branding, and location analysis.

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As Baby Boomers retire, Millennials and Gen Z are becoming the largest demographic in the United States workforce. How can you meet the challenge of recruiting a new generation? The future of job recruitment may lie in using social media and TikTok for recruiting. Social media platforms and apps can be key to attracting younger job seekers. Let us dive in with how you can use TikTok for recruiting. 

What Is Tik Tok? 

Social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. As of 2021, 82 percent of the United States population has a social networking profile, or around 223 million people. The growth of social media has also impacted how applicants find jobs, as 96% of job seekers report using social media to find job opportunities. A social media recruiting strategy is essential to attract the best candidates. So, how do you get started? Try these five best social media recruiting best practices to leverage social media to find top talent.  

1. Determine Your Social Media Goals

Before you can start a social media recruiting strategy, you need a plan. Develop clear goals and metrics that define success and plan what social media recruiting efforts will best achieve those results. Metrics can also track how your strategy affects the bottom line, such as showcasing where you get the best applicants, how long it takes to fill a position and the cost per hire.  

2. Be Seen On the Right Channels 

It can be overwhelming to decide which social media platform will best reach your target job seeker. First, determine what type of candidate you want to attract. Then, tailor your social media recruiting strategy to that group. Choose a platform that will best engage that type of candidate and grow your presence on it. The most popular social platforms include Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, each with its strengths and weaknesses.  

3. Share Engaging Organic Content

Sharing and spreading organic content is one of the biggest advantages of social media recruiting. What is organic content? Organic content is a social media activity that does not require paid promotion, such as consistent posting of content to your company’s page. Regularly posting new content that showcases your company, its employees, and its culture can intrigue potential applicants. The power of engaging content is that it can expand your reach with minimal effort on your part beyond posting.  

4. Invest in Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram provides you with the opportunity to target your ideal job candidate with your job placement. You can hone in on details such as demographics, interests, location, job title, etc. With paid social media advertising, you can tailor your messaging to a specific audience and extends the reach of your online platform.  

5. Develop A Landing Page

Landing pages are an essential part of social media recruiting best practices. Landing pages have a single purpose, a single message, and a single call to action. Their intended purpose is to attract interested prospects engaged with your social media recruitment campaign and provide you with easily trackable metrics. When recruiting for a specific job opportunity, rather than sharing a more varied page, such as a career page, consider a landing page to increase the likelihood of the prospect applying.  

HOW TO GET HELP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA RECRUITING BEST PRACTICES

Social media recruiting has become an essential strategy for recruiters today, as 92% of recruiters report using social media in their job recruitment efforts. In other words, if you have not started a social media recruiting strategy then, it’s time to get started, and we can help.  

At ProIQ, we combine a passion for data and a love for digital marketing to develop solutions for talent acquisition and marketing challenges. Our team of experienced social media experts partners with you to understand your goals and create highly targeted, cost-effective campaigns that attract high-quality candidates. Learn how we can help you today.  

If you want to catch a fish, you have to go where the fish are. Makes sense when you’re carrying a rod and reel, but when it comes to landing the big fish in terms of talent acquisition, many business professionals aren’t in the right pond.

Statistics show that the gap between consumer and professional usage of social media is widening. Businesses aren’t keeping up with social innovations and new networking opportunities, and that’s detrimental for the job force. The good news is that job candidates want to connect; they’re broadening their networks and polishing their online resumes. All you have to do is get them to bite.

Goals for Social Media Recruiting

Social media recruiting isn’t like posting a job on Career Builder. Job candidates expect a more personal, interactive approach when they’re on Facebook. Your social recruiting strategy should accomplish two goals:

• Sourcing—Obviously, your number one goal is finding the right applicants. Social media is a great place to do that because it’s where the largest pools of talent congregate.
• Transparency—Social media also helps job candidates get to know your company and establishes your identity as a desirable employer.

How to Attract the Right Candidates with Social Media

For most businesses, the question isn’t primarily whether they should engage in social media recruitment strategies. It’s how to create an effective strategy in the first place.

• Diversify—Establish a presence on multiple social media networks. Start with the Big Three (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) and then expand from there. The goal isn’t to have accounts at as many places as possible; rather, it’s to establish and maintain a presence on those networks that will bring the most benefit to your company.
• Use Social Referrals—Your job postings aren’t just appearing to your contact base. They’re also being shared with friends of friends, a process known as social referrals. Make the most of this opportunity by remaining in close contact with the movers and shakers at key companies.
• Engage—By interacting with your target audience, you not only present yourself as a transparent company but also gain insight into the identity and personality of potential job candidates.
• Marketing—Sell your company using the same marketing techniques you use to sell a product: brand promotion, target audience, strategy development, content creation, ad development, metrics, etc.
• Follow Up—Social media is becoming an essential tool for identifying desirable job candidates but don’t throw out the tried and true methods. Once you’ve narrowed down your pool of candidates, follow your normal protocol for interviews and follow-ups.

With more than 60% of adults maintaining a social media presence to some extent, social media recruiting places you in contact with the largest available pool of potential talent. It’s a trend you can’t afford to ignore.