Leveraging Social Media for Recruitment in New Normal
With the rise of social media also came social recruiting. Social recruiting, also known as social hiring and social media recruitment, is a method of talent acquisition that utilises various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to post job opportunities, find talent and communicate with potential recruits about company culture.
According to Statista’s latest study on online and social media recruiting, job boards that usually double as social media sites for job seekers accounted for almost half of the global applications in 2018. The study also mentioned how a global survey of hiring decision-makers found that over 58% of them regarded social professional networks as a source for quality hires.
“Nowadays, with the ongoing global health crisis turning the world upside down and pushing most, if not all, organisations to operate primarily within the bounds of the digital space.”
This is why it is becoming more and more crucial for human resource professionals to master the ways social media can be leveraged to gather quality hires. Here are some of the ways you can do just that:
Be Empathetic
Times are tough. We are in the middle of a pandemic that continues to make life harder for each and every one of us. Now, more than ever, brands have to focus on being as empathetic as possible. Whether you are trying to gain new customers or entice new hires, all efforts will fail if your company comes off as out of touch, unsympathetic, biased, and insensitive. It is also important to note that before becoming a marketing and recruitment ground, social networking sites were primarily created to enable users to share photos, anecdotes, life events, and opinions with peers, friends, and loved ones.
As a brand trying to work with social media sites you want to be considered as another friend that users would want to engage with. Kayleigh Richardson, a senior campaign manager for Ayima, emphasised on the company’s Twitter account how this can be done by telling a narrative that can evoke emotions, being relatable, humane and responsive, and, most importantly, keeping up with times.
Start With Your Very Own Account
As the old saying goes, change must come from within. And as unbelievable as it may seem, this also applies to social hiring. If you want to attract the right kinds of talents, the first thing you have to do is to make your page as attractive as it can be. For starters, you have to make sure that your page’s metadata perfectly encapsulates the message your brand wants to convey. The next thing you have to do is to create a description that brandishes the keywords that people would most likely use to find your company through search engines. It would also be in your best interest to include the things your company specialises in.
Utilise The Right Channels
Not all social media networks are created the same. Just by looking at the Digital 2020 report by We Are Social and Hootsuite, one can easily see that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have far more users compared to other lesser-known sites. Meaning to say, if you want to maximise your reach, it is imperative for you to tap into these sites. A few years back, Facebook launched a jobs feature in order to compete with LinkedIn.
You can use this to your advantage and post job opportunities on the world’s most popular social media platform. While Instagram is a non-traditional choice for most HR managers, if you are in the field of photography, interior design, and architecture then this platform will be your friend. Although Twitter is rarely used to build connections with potential employees, HR managers can count on it to amplify their recruitment strategies and ensure that their postings are seen by as many people as possible.
Get Your Employees Involved
Ever wondered why ads typically include a lot of people sharing their experiences with a certain product or service? That’s because testimonies such as these are very effective in gaining the attention of customers, and they can do the same for your company in relation to quality hires.
A study published in the Harvard Business Review noted that employers with a bad reputation usually end up spending 10% more per hire compared to those that have fairly good reviews and hence reputation. Get your employees involved and encourage them to share your company’s culture, as well as the experiences they have as employees. In order to help them get more comfortable when talking about your brand, it would be in your best interest to create a social media policy that will encourage honest and authentic testimonials.
As the world shifts into the digital space, social media will continue to serve many more functions and provide more benefits — not just to marketers, advertisers, and HR managers but to a whole lot more people. To learn more about the different ways Social Media is revolutionising HR management, make it a habit to check out our page.
