Job recruitment isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the days when hiring managers could rely on newspaper ads, cold calls, and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth to attract new job candidates. Instead, social media is now the dominant way that professionals network, find job opportunities, and highlight their skills and accomplishments.  

Before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the process of finding and securing job candidates was still relatively simple. Recruitment options included:  

• Posting openings on a digital job board. 

• Encouraging individual candidates to apply via the company website or job page. 
• Calling or emailing potential candidates and scheduling them for in-person interviews  

Now with online career fairs, video interviews, and virtual networking events added into the mix, the recruitment game has become much more nuanced and multi-faceted. Social media plays a key role in the new hiring process. 

What is social media recruitment? 

Social media recruitment refers to the process of using social media platforms to advertise jobs and identify candidates. With platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter boasting over 3.5 billion combined users, social media holds exciting potential for companies interested in recruiting skilled and unskilled talent.  

Recent studies have found that over 90% of surveyed companies already report using social media as a resource when hiring. Want to know if your candidate has any embarrassing photos out in the digital netherworld? Search for their name on Facebook and see what comes up. 

Similarly, Facebook and LinkedIn are the two dominant platforms that job seekers use for networking and portfolio-building. Candidates consistently post on job boards and in social groups when they are in the market for a new position or recently completed a certification. Taking your open job listings directly to these prospective hires is critical in an era when constant ads and updates threaten to overwhelm the average user. 

Social networks are a hub for the largest online repository of talent in the world, which is why it’s important for you as a recruiter or talent acquisition manager to not let them go to waste. For companies looking to navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of social media recruitment, here are some tips to keep in mind.  

Cast a wider digital net 

Most people in the market for a new job today are active on social media. If you want to get as many eyes on a job posting as possible, listing it on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter can increase visibility and candidate applications by up to 50%. 

In addition, social media recruitment can also help you connect with a pool of higher-quality candidates. This is because job seekers who engage with employers via social media are likely to not only be tech savvy, but also up to date with the latest digital trends. For roles involving a fair amount of computer work, this skill is critical. 

Putting some dollars behind “hot jobs” on Facebook can also be an effective way to generate applicants quickly. Boosted posts and strategically targeted ads can get your job in front of the audience most likely to respond. It also helps you gather valuable information on the demographics and behaviors of your ideal candidate. 

Forge a personal connection 

When candidates apply for a job, they are not just searching for a way to pay the bills. They are seeking to build a relationship with their prospective employers before even accepting a new role. They want to get to know you as a person and determine if your organization is the right fit for them.  

With this insight in mind, you can use social media to resonate with candidates in a way that helps you stand out from other employers. Show them who you are and what makes you unique. Even if those candidates do not turn into actual employees right away, you will still have access to a community of talented people that will help your organization fill future roles.  

Get a 360-degree view of your candidates  

Selecting a candidate after weeks of vetting and interviews only to find out later that they weren’t right for the job is every hiring organization’s nightmare. While these missteps are bound to happen every once in a while you can avoid them by looking at your candidates’ Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles to get a better idea of who they are as an individual and employee.  

This strategy has proven successful for recruiters in the past, with 61% of hiring managers finding information they didn’t like on a candidate’s social media account and 55% reconsidering the hire based on what they found.  

Running paid ads on social media gives you direct access to candidate accounts. Applicants will often use their personal social media profiles to apply (think LinkedIn “Easy Apply” options) and may even engage with a hiring ad via comments and likes. Tracing potential new hires back to their accounts in these cases is simple and a no-brainer for companies interested in long-term candidate retention. 

Develop your company’s workplace “brand” 

Regardless of the job description, candidates are more likely to accept a job (and stick around for a while) if they align with your company’s mission. Over the past few years, job seekers increasingly prioritize personal fulfillment and value alignment in their employment. In fact, a driver of the Great Resignation was the lack of perceived purpose candidates felt while at work.  

As such, it’s important that you harness the power of social media to build up your brand and create awareness of your organization as a fulfilling workplace whenever possible. Just like when marketing to customers, potential employees want to know what they’re getting by committing to you. That could include: 

• Employee benefits like strong healthcare plans and 401(K) matching 
• In-office rewards (i.e., free lunches or “take your dog to work” days) 
• Remote or hybrid working opportunities 
• Office culture and the ability for workers to network 
• Volunteer initiatives and monetary donations supported by your organization 
• Political stances and election support 

By making your brand’s mission statement, benefits, and values visible and top-of-mind to candidates, you will attract quality talent that tends to retain for longer periods of time. 

As hiring demands increase and competition for high-value talent skyrockets, forward-thinking companies are wisely planning staffing and recruitment strategies. This is the moment to act by connecting with high-quality candidates via social media recruiting.  

For more information on how to develop a social media recruitment strategy, contact ProIQ today. 

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!

Recruitment marketing is like running a race for talent. Planning your strategy positions you at the starting gate, executing your plan sends you off down the track alongside your competitors, and measuring the results of your efforts helps you clock your time so you can fine-tune and improve your performance. The prize in the winner’s circle is finding and hiring the candidates who are ideally suited to your role and culture.

Using many of the same techniques as traditional marketing, recruitment marketing can help you reach candidates in the awareness, consideration, and interest stages of talent attraction. The ultimate goal is to see a desirable candidate hit the submit button on your application and become a valued member of your team for the long term.

But first, you need to understand how candidates decide to apply for a specific role in the first place.

The Funnel: How Marketing Intersects With Talent Attraction

Recruitment marketing uses many of the same strategies as traditional marketing, and it follows a similar path. Marketing begins by casting a broad net with awareness campaigns and narrows down through the consideration stage and finally the interest or decision stage. At each stage, the target audience becomes smaller and content focuses on answering the specific questions people in that stage might have.

Recruitment marketing follows a similar funnel-shaped process of creating awareness, providing information for consideration, and prompting candidates to take action. Think of recruitment marketing as the pre-game show before recruitment starts in earnest. The goal of recruitment marketing is to secure an application, while the goal of recruiting is to secure the hire. When structured and executed effectively, recruitment marketing should segue into the recruiting process, as demonstrated in the funnel graphic below.

Recruitment Marketing vs. Recruiting

These broad stages can be broken down into more specific actions, but they are all part of the talent acquisition process, as shown in the graphic below.

For example, the recruitment marketing stage will include employer brand awareness for passive candidates, direct response advertising, retargeting, and direct sourcing leading up to the application. After the candidate has applied, the recruiting process will kick in with screenings, interviews, offers, and the eventual hire.

You can see how each stage progressively narrows down the field of candidates and leads into the next stage.

Why Job Postings Aren’t Enough

But why put in all that effort? Why not just post your job on your favorite job boards and social media sites?

The reason is that a candidate’s path to your company is not as straightforward as it once was. A 2018 CareerBuilder survey found that 60% of employers have experienced longer time-to-fill over the past year due to a fiercely competitive hiring landscape. Candidates expect employers to be proactive and personal, and 31% expect personalized messages from recruiters. Three out of four candidates want to know what it’s like to work for a company before they apply, and half will check you out on your website and on social media first.

The bottom line is that candidates are taking charge of their own job seeking experience. If employers don’t meet their expectations, they can kiss those applications goodbye.

Recruitment marketing gives you the edge on attracting the best candidates, because it changes the recruiting equation. By stepping into the recruiting experience with personalized outreach, target audiences, and carefully crafted messaging, you can reach the best candidates at every stage of the job search.

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? 

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.

HOW TO WIN THE RACE FOR TALENT AT EVERY STAGE OF THE JOB SEARCH

Recruiting in a job seeker’s market gets complicated quickly. In addition to stiff competition for quality candidates, employers must consider cultural fit, engagement strategies, and talent attraction strategies that reach beyond the job board. If recruiters don’t zero in on hiring the right person the first time, recruiting costs will skyrocket as retention drops and turnover escalates.

In December of 2019, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 6.4 million job openings. That’s down over 10% from the same time last year, but it still outpaces the 5.9 million hires that took place during that month. These numbers often play out in favor of candidates, especially those with high-demand skills. Candidates can afford to be choosy about the positions they accept, and employees don’t have to stick around in a job that isn’t a good fit. With online reviews and social media at their fingertips, they can make decisions based not only on the specifics of the role, but also on what it’s like to actually work for a specific company.

Employers, meanwhile, must compete with hundreds of other companies for qualified talent. People with the right skills might be few and far between. The best candidates will likely receive offers from multiple employers, especially in high demand fields like technology or healthcare. To compete, employers must be more strategic about the ways they find and attract talent.

The stakes are high, and the right hire could make the difference between success and failure in the marketplace. So how can you boost your chances of securing the talent you need?

It starts with recruitment marketing.

Table of Contents: Recruitment Marketing

• What is Recruitment Marketing?
  • The Funnel: How Marketing Intersects with Talent Attraction
  • Why Job Postings Aren't Enough
• The Starting Gate: Position Yourself for Success with Candidates
  • Candidate Personas: Get to Know Your Ideal Candidate
  • SEO / SEM: Find Your Candidates Online
• Run the Race: Plan & Execute Your Strategy
  • Awareness
  • Consideration
  • Interest
• Clock Your Time: Recruitment Marketing Metrics & KPI's

Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, ProIQ serves clients across the country in their efforts to market smarter, Hire Smarter, and grow stronger.

Every company faces unique challenges and ProIQ believes that they should be met with innovative solutions. Their approach combines a passion for data with a love of digital marketing to develop solutions that drive results for talent acquisition, sales, and marketing teams. As a new division of Hire Velocity - an industry leader in Recruitment Process Outsourcing based in Atlanta, Georgia - ProIQ serves as a full-service digital marketing agency with a focus on attracting candidates using digital recruiting strategies.

Managing Director, Sara West, will be leading ProIQ in focusing on Digital Advisory and Talent Advisory solutions. Previous to her new role, West was the Director of Strategic Development at Hire Velocity where she helped shape brand strategy to build market awareness, develop inbound and outbound lead strategies to acquire new customers. Before joining Hire Velocity, Sara served as an Investment Banking Financial Analyst for Signal Hill Capital Group (now DCS Advisory) in New York, where she specialized in the IT services and IT security software sectors. There, she played a pivotal role in researching, evaluating, and executing major deals, completing extensive due diligence for both buy-side and sell-side transactions.

“I’m excited to help companies implement innovative digital strategies, like social media and programmatic job advertising, to better position themselves in a fast-paced hiring world. In today’s candidate-driven job market, it’s important for companies to implement strategies that will not only attract candidates but also position them as an employer of choice,” explains West, “What makes ProIQ different from your typical agency is that we’re laser-focused on quantitative results. Yes, we’re creative but at the end of the day everything is about the numbers.”

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. Its digital advisory solutions will support clients’ digital marketing strategy with social media marketing, website development, content marketing, search engine marketing, and email marketing. By employing a team that has decades of experience in talent acquisition, marketing, sales, operations, data analytics, corporate strategy, and finance, they’ll be able to develop unique digital, data-based solutions that address even the toughest human capital and digital marketing challenges.

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. Its digital advisory solutions will support clients’ digital marketing strategy with social media marketing, website development, content marketing, search engine marketing, and email marketing.

About Hire Velocity

Hire Velocity designs talent strategies that build great teams and great businesses. They are a proven leader in Human Capital Solutions and trusted by companies for customized Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), Search, and Talent & Digital Advisory solutions. Hire Velocity partners with clients across nearly every industry to solve recruiting challenges and achieve sustained outcomes. Consistently recognized as a partner that goes the ‘extra mile’, they are devoted to delivering outstanding customer service.

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