Attracting top talent is harder than it used to be, especially as we come face-to-face with a candidate-driven market. Top tier candidates are no longer fighting for a position, but are instead focusing on what is a ‘good fit’ for them. This shift means that 72.8% of companies are now struggling to attract top talent, as their most qualified candidates are often already employed (not actively looking for opportunities) or are often unaware of organizations like your own.
With a myriad of job choices and ways to apply for positions, it’s even harder to capture a potential employee’s attention. Job boards being the go-to in the past have seen a substantial decline in the last decade with many candidates leaning on their personal networks to find jobs that have the cultural specifications they crave.
Job seekers recently rated social networks as the most useful resource compared to job boards, ads, employee referrals, recruiting agencies, and recruiting events when looking for a position. Marketing where candidates are spending most of their online time is now essential to capturing their attention.
What is social media recruitment? It involves the entire company getting involved in usual social media as a channel to connect, engage and hire potential candidates.
Why Social Media?
Social Media outreach is a low friction way to reach out and engage with candidates. According to a study by Jobvite, most recruiters feel the best medium for growing an employer brand is social media (47%), followed by company website (21%) and marketing and advertising (12%). It allows you to plant the seed earlier with top tier candidates so when they are ready to make a move, they will think of your brand.
Here are three ways of recruiting on social media helps you attract the right candidates:
Attract Passive Candidates
Many “best-fit” candidates are not actively looking for a job post from your organization and won’t be aware that there is a job out there that would be a great fit for them. A survey showed that 82% of organizations currently use social media in order to successfully recruit passive job candidates. This is because unlike a job board, where a candidate has the intent to change jobs, passive candidates are scrolling through social media for entertainment purposes – often times, they will stumble upon your content (out of shared interest) and feel compelled to apply. These candidates usually make a better fit, as they are moving jobs because they want to and not because they need to leave a toxic situation.
Attract Culture Fit Candidates
Social media does more than just facilitate contact and communication. Brands can use their social pages to showcase their culture, corporate values, and job posts. According to Glassdoor, 69% of applicants will not take a job, even if they are currently unemployed if the company has a bad reputation. Building strong social media pages allows your organization to ‘pull back the curtain’ and give an insider view to the culture, people and all the great work your organization does. Candidates research before applying for jobs, so providing them with a realistic view helps to cut down on bad-fit candidates, further motivating good-fit candidates to apply.
Attract Millennials and Gen Z
Many Millennials and Gen Zs live on social, so why not recruit where they spend a good chunk of their leisure time? Unlike generations past, Millennials and Gen Z tend not to see a problem in blurring the work/life lines, especially on social. Reaching out and engaging with candidates on social media allows recruiters to take a less formal/more authentic approach to recruiting that better resonates with these generations.
Employee Influence
Employer branding and recruitment on branded company channels are essential, but depending on the company size and ‘buzz’ in the industry, it can be somewhat limited. The next step to help further spread your social media recruitment efforts is to leverage employee influence through Employee Advocacy programs. These programs can simplify the social media referral process by providing employees with the right messages, captions, and links to share about a specific role. This strategy also increases the viewership of your company’s content within your employees’ networks, giving you more access to passive candidates. Coupling this effort with an employee referral bonus program will further strengthen success in this outreach. Currently, half of all employee referrals are sourced through social media. This has lead to the vast majority (9/10) of companies using social media in some way to attract, source and engage talent and/or showcase their brand.
Social recruiting is powerful because it presents an opportunity to engage with candidates on a 1:1 basis in a more personalized way. This helps candidates feel like they are cared for and valued and not just another numbered applicant. In a candidate-driven market, meeting prospective employees where they are is key to amping up your recruitment reach.
