There are many different reasons why HR and recruitment teams are increasingly using social recruiting as part of their plan. It might be to reduce agency costs, to increase the number of applications you receive or to raise awareness of who you are as an employer. Social recruiting is a lot more than just creating a job post. Here are 5 essential things you need to consider to improve your chances of success.
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Authenticity and Personality
Your social media marketing should always reflect your true employer brand. How you present your organisation as an employer should be transparent and authentic so that potential employees get to know you. As part of a successful recruiting strategy, you need to recruit the right people for the roles you have on offer and for your company. Recruiting new members who don’t fit with the ethos of the company will only create potential problems in the future and won’t encourage team loyalty or improve retention.
Social media can be used to highlight your mission statement and to showcase who you are as an employer, but it has to be a true reflection. This is even more important if you are sharing social media channels with sales and marketing where you need an aligned message for customers and potential candidates.
Right Platform at the Right Time
Using the right platform at the right time may sound obvious, but it is something that lots of companies still get wrong. You can have the best Facebook profile in the world building your employer brand and sharing your career opportunities, but if your potential candidates are all on LinkedIn, they won’t see your message, no matter how good it is. What is your audience using the platform for? Is it the right platform to attract potential candidates? The nature of your business and the types of roles you are recruiting for will help determine which platforms are the right ones.
The timing of content is also important from two different perspectives:
- Firstly, content needs to be posted at the right time on the platform. If you post first thing in the morning but your audience doesn’t come online until late in the evening, then your message will be buried under a pile of other people’s content.
- Secondly, you need to consider the timing of your content for a potential candidate’s journey. A passive candidate who isn’t actively looking for work but could move for the right opportunity might not be ready to “Apply Now”. The content that they see needs to encourage them to want to know more or find out more about the benefits of working for you rather than applying straight away. Equally, some opportunities like graduate positions or apprenticeships will have a better time of year to post depending on your application process.
Conversation Over Broadcast
Traditional recruitment relied heavily on broadcast. A role became available, and it was broadcast across newspapers and job boards to announce it. It can be very tempting to use social media the same way where you create a job post, post it to your followers and hope for the best. It’s a strategy, but I’d argue that it isn’t a good strategy.
When organisations use social media, they often don’t understand that the emphasis needs to be on social and not media and the same applies to social recruiting. As a potential candidate, I am likely to check you out online, including your social media. If all I see is job post after job post, what does that say about you as an organisation? Social media should reinforce your employer brand through conversation rather than announcements. What would a potential candidate want or need to see from you to understand your business better and, particularly if you are in a competitive market, to choose you as their next employer? John Lewis are a great example of this. They create content that shows what it’s really like to work for them, highlighting different roles though “day in the life” content and showcasing different team members in different roles.
Consistency and Regularity
Consistency and regularity in how and what you post are important for two reasons. Firstly, it helps you to keep the algorithms happy. Across all of the platforms, there is an algorithm that thrives on content and data……and it needs to be fed both regularly. Long gaps between posts don’t give the algorithm the data that it needs to assess your content and consider it a priority for your followers’ feed or the wider platform audience. Secondly, your audience needs to see content from you regularly. You shouldn’t flood their feed with content, but you want them to see you enough to be reminded of who you are and what you offer.
We are very often asked how often should we post, update or pin. The truth is that there isn’t a single formula that will work for all businesses. We do know that regular and consistent content works. Always think quality over quantity. Two or three posts that connect well with your audience have a much higher value than six or seven posts that are space fillers.
Strategy
A social marketing strategy for your recruitment is key to your success. Having a plan in place will empower you and your team to understand not just what you are doing but why you are doing it. A good strategy will help you to define your goals and objectives and how you are going to achieve them. Your strategy should be shared with the team so that everyone can see the role that they play in delivering it. A key focus of your strategy should be defining your audience and how best to connect with them. Which platforms do you need to focus on? What type of content will connect best with your audience? What does our audience want to see from you? Your strategy will help you to answer these questions and help you implement a robust plan to improve your social recruiting.
If you need help with your social recruiting then why not join us for our next Social Media for Recruiting course.? Delivered face to face, this full day course covers everything you need to know from strategy to content creation. See our next available dates here.
