Great recruiting is a lot like marketing. You have to sell your open roles much like you would a product or service — communicating why your jobs are better than those of competitors to the right audience on the right channels. An effective channel to incorporate into your recruitment marketing efforts is social media.
Because social media is a part of people’s everyday lives across all age groups, it’s a great way to reach people passively. Your content might show up in the feed of someone who isn’t necessarily searching for a job but might eventually become interested when they see your message. Plus it’s another way to give added credibility to your organization. Interested job seekers will look at your profiles to see what you might be like as an employer; with the right content you will be able to sway them to choose you over another offer.
Social media should be used as an extension of your career site — any information you include on your site to entice job seekers should also be shared on social media. Examples of shareable content include your open roles, any awards and recognitions, benefits and perks you offer, diversity efforts, and an overall look at your company culture.
However, social media can be tricky to get right.
For one, these platforms are crowded with all kinds of marketing messages. And some, like Facebook, have algorithms that make it tough to maximize reach as a brand. To stand out and maximize reach on social media, you need to have a cohesive strategy in place. Here are our best practices for using social for your recruitment marketing:
Choose the right channels
First and foremost, pick the social media channels you want to prioritize in your strategy. Your decision here should be based on your target audience.
Of course LinkedIn is the obvious choice for companies targeting office workers. Surprisingly though, even folks who you might not think spend much time on LinkedIn do have profiles there and regularly log in — like experienced auto service technicians. This is why having a LinkedIn profile and strategy in place is important, regardless of your industry.
Facebook is another common platform to include — but remember to think about your target audience. If you’re looking to expand into a younger crowd, you can’t rely on Facebook alone because the platform’s usage among younger generations is on a sharp decline. You might need to consider newer platforms like Instagram and TikTok. When creating content for Instagram, note that the platform tends to prioritize reel content.
Post regularly and consistently
Although algorithms vary drastically from network to network, they each share one similarity: regular and consistent content is prioritized and thus reaches more users. That means you want to have a consistent voice, a standard look and feel across any imagery shared, and a regular posting schedule. The easiest way to do this is to create a monthly calendar that includes all of the copy for the month — planned down to the date and time each post will go live.
Use more visuals
Visuals matter more than you think. In fact, one study found that content paired with relevant imagery drives a 94% higher engagement than content without. So outside of TikToks or Instagram reels, anything you share on social media should always come with an image. That might be actual photos of your team, company, or culture or it could be designed graphics used to visualize data or other bits of information.
Experiment with paid social
Paid advertising allows you to reach a much more specific and granular audience that you might with organic. You can pay to target users based on all kinds of information — job title, location, interests, and more — making it really easy to narrow down your audience. Additionally, social media ads tend to be much more affordable than sponsored jobs on leading job boards like Indeed.
Ask employees to participate
It’s also important to motivate your existing employees to engage with your content. Social media algorithms tend to prioritize posts that receive higher engagement, such as likes and shares — so their participation really makes a difference. Plus, most people tend to trust recommendations from friends and family over marketing and promotion directly from companies. To incentivize your existing employees to like and reshare your posts, offer prizes or rewards like gift cards, free lunch, or company swag.
You can even incorporate social media into your employee referral program. Using tools like Hireology’s built-in employee referral platform, EmployUs you can actually create personalized social media links. These links let you track exactly where applicants come from and give your existing employees bonuses or other rewards for the candidates — and eventual hires — they attract from their posts.
With a great social recruiting strategy in place, you set yourself up to connect with and attract more top applicants. Once you do, it’s also important to have a great system in place to track these candidates and get them through your hiring process — fast.
That’s where Hireology can help. Our all-in-one recruiting, hiring, and employee management tool empowers you to keep track of candidates, run a seamless hiring process, and get new hires onboarded quickly, all from one centralized system. To learn more, schedule a 1:1 demo today.
