Are you fully capitalizing on the value of social media to source and recruit top talent? Because your competition most likely is. Social media can expand your pool of applicants and yield valuable information on candidates that you may not find elsewhere. Especially among Millennials, you’ll be out of the competitive loop if social media is not an integral part of your hiring strategy.
- In a recent study of 1,855 hiring managers, 93 percent of respondents said they used or planned to use social media in their recruitment efforts.
- According to survey respondents, leveraging social media increased candidate quality by 44 percent over the use of only traditional techniques, such as phone screens.
Benefits of Social Media Recruitment
Social media provide not only information on applicants’ experience and skills, but also a glimpse into their lifestyles, values and cultural norms. This is crucial as you seek to hire the right talent and ultimately build robust retention rates.
- Eighty percent of hiring managers surveyed said the use social media to assess candidates’ potential cultural fit.
- Social media is ideal for broadcasting your social mission. You must sell your culture, especially to passive candidates, in order to influence their decisions about where to work and to attract like-minded talent.
- Use social platforms to advertise your open positions. It’s a highly effective strategy for reaching broader segments of your industry in hopes of luring in potential employees. You also should utilize social media for job postings.
More Tips for Success
Keep these additional tips in mind as you plan to optimize your social media hiring plans:
- Use LinkedIn’s Skills section. You’ll find candidates with highly specific skills, delivering connections up to three degrees removed from your own network. This is great for finding people who can introduce you to promising prospects.
- Add career offerings to your company Facebook page. By integrating job postings into your Facebook page, you make it more likely that candidates who don’t visit your website will still see your listings.
- Be interactive. Participate in conversations where you can meet prospective candidates, such as #HireFriday on Twitter. Use tools like HootSuite to follow relevant threads. In your company’s profile description, use keywords such as “careers” and “jobs” to connect to job seekers.
- Cast a wide net. Don’t put all your eggs into the social media recruitment basket. Continue to use job boards, newspapers, job fairs and other traditional methods as part of your comprehensive strategy.
For more tips on the benefits of social media recruitment, read our related posts or contact the experienced Modesto, California recruiters at PrideStaff Modesto today.
