How to use Social Media in Recruitment

If done correctly, social media oriented-recruitment can represent a major untapped source of quality candidates for which you can profitably market to your clients.  Done poorly, social media-based recruitment techniques can, at best, represent hours and hours of wasted time and resources. At worst, your botched attempts at social media recruitment can actually damage your brand’s good name.

In order to avoid some of these common pitfalls, the team here at Amanda Wright Recruitment has mashed together some valuable social media recruitment tips which are intended to instantly give you an advantage when it comes to recruiting on social channels. 

TIP #1:  Assess the viability of social media as a means of growing your candidate database

Never for a second assume social media will yield a positive return for your business merely because everyone and his uncle are flocking towards it… including your competitors.  For instance, you need to ensure your target candidates are actually participating on the social channel you are investing in, having regard to their particular profession and demographic.   If your target candidates are not participating on your chosen social channels, all of your time and effort is wasted from the outset.

TIP #2:  Challenge the supremacy of the social media ‘Big Three’ 

By the ‘Big Three, ’ we clearly mean Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  You could probably include Instagram and Pinterest but ‘big 5’ doesn’t have the same ring to it!

Anyway… you must challenge the return on investment the ‘big 3’ social channels are capable of yielding for your business, particularly in comparison to lesser-known social channels, which tend to attract a more targeted visitor.  For instance, IT and computer programming professionals flock in their thousands to sites such as GitHub and Stack Overflow.  Although these social channels attract far less traffic numbers than the ‘Big Three’, the quality of traffic these channels will provide recruiters who market to IT candidates will be much better than, say, Twitter or Facebook.  

It is essential you research different social channels from the outset and devise a social media strategy which reflects your research.  Don’t just run for Twitter and Facebook because everyone else does.  This lack of strategy will likely hurt the long-term return of your social media efforts and leave a permanent distain for social media in the mouths of your superiors.  

TIP #3:  Don’t only use social media for advertising purposes

Yes, social media can represent an excellent advertising channel for recruiters, especially given the advanced targeting capabilities of social channels’ native ad platforms.  Heck, it’s what keeps social media companies in business! 

However, the clue is in its name – SOCIAL media. 

Therefore if you don’t want to simply be perceived by your audience as a social ‘spammer’, you must mix into your daily posts ones which have a social nature.  Refrain from simply posting job advertisements as you’ll likely to seen as a ‘spammer’, and your audience will ‘unfollow’, ‘unlike’ or ‘unpin’ you!  Social channels are NOT simply job boards!

At the very least, try to keep 20% of your post social.   This could mean pictures, giveaways, anecdotes or video curation.  Social posts will help you strengthen the relationship you have with your audience and make your audience view you as an approachable and human organisation.   If all you do is spam job adverts, then it is highly unlikely you will foster a lasting and memorable relationship with your audience on social channels.

However, do not take ‘being social’ too far!  Try to keep your posts fairly work-related, and don’t discuss your social life and sporting allegiances on the company's social channel! 

TIP #4:  Track the return on investment (ROI) of EACH social channel

You are well advised to track the conversions that each social channel yields.  Conversions could be a click to your website, a phone call or somebody filling in your website’s ‘contact form’. 

Most social channels will offer you a ‘conversion pixel’ to place on your post-contact form’s ‘thank-you’ page if you sign up for their formal advertising network.  You could even use a service such as Call Fire or Twilio to track telephone calls from your social campaigns. 

Likewise, you could add Google Analytics to your website and use a service such as Google’s URL builder in order to ‘tag’ the URLs you share on social media. 

Google Analytics will then report metrics on the visitors who interacted with your website upon clicking through your social tagged URLs.  

You could even implement ‘event tracking’ on your website’s telephone number so you can see which visitors called your business by clicking on your phone number (note this would only be applicable for mobile visitors).  You can use Google Analytics to see how many click-throughs to your website and the links you shared on social channels received. 

Conversion and website visitor dates will give you hard and fast figures upon which you can base your decisions on.    This data will give you a rough idea of each social channel’s ROI.   If the social channel yields a positive ROI, you know to invest more resources into it.  Alternatively, if the social channel yields negative ROI, you know it could be time to shut up shop and move on to another channel.   This ultimately means you do not waste business resources on a channel which doesn’t return a gain. 

We also advise you to kill your ‘darlings’ such as Facebook and Twitter if the channel does not establish a positive return. Read this story for an example of a major blog that decided to kill off Facebook for this very reason. 

TIP #5:  Ensure social channels’ design matches your overall brand’s design

Don’t settle for the social channels’ default design.  Instead, invest in the design of your social channels so they reflect your website and other marketing materials.  Brand consistency across social channels is vital, and this extends to graphics you post on individual ‘updates’. 

At the very least, you could use a ‘Fiverr Gig’ to make your channel look more professional.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this month’s blog post on social media recruitment tips.

Be sure to check back soon for our latest blog posts.