Don’t think of social media when you’re thinking about recruiting new staff? Then I’m sorry to say that by now you’re lagging behind the industry in that regard. Social media recruiting has become the new normal. Yes, that’s right, something that didn’t exist less than a generation ago is now an instrumental part of finding new employees.
In this article we’re going to cover some of the big reasons why this has come to be. Hopefully, in the process we’ll give you enough reasons to jump onto this particular bandwagon, so that you can give your recruiting that upward nudge it needs by reaching better candidates and making them interested in working with you.It’s how to reach job seekersPreviously, to get to job seekers you would use the job boards and hope that the people you were looking for actually went to them. In this way, you only really reached the people who were actively looking. Those people who were thinking about switching jobs, or who were already going to interviews and therefore not combing the boards weren’t going to see your ad.
That’s not the case anymore. With social media or a social mobile app, the jobs spread like roots across the internet, finding their way into every nook and cranny where there might be interested parties. This means that you’re far more likely to reach the audience that you’re actually after.
And it shows, as putting a job opening up on social media will, on average, boost the number of applications by 30 to 40 percent.It’s where you’ll find the right peopleEven if you didn’t get that many more applications, it would still be worth putting up your job. Why? Because the people that you want to reach are going to be on social media. Who do I mean? Do I mean the movers and shakers? Do I mean the well-connected? Sure, them too.
Who I am really talking about, however, is the millennials. They are almost always online and spend the vast majority of that time connected to social media. Therefore, if you’re hoping to hire them, then that’s where you want to be as well.
What’s more, as more recruiters come online, more job seekers join in as well. This has created a self-perpetuating cycle in which everybody who wants to change jobs has an online presence.It allows you to tell your storyAnother thing that has changed, right along with where people are to be found, is what they look out for in an employer. Where in days gone by it seems that the most important thing about a company was how much they paid you, today things are different.
Millennials care a great deal about what a company stands for. And the best place to share your company values is through social media. This can be entirely explicit, like when you say ‘we stand for family’ or it can be more implicit, much like how people share content on their social media platforms that they themselves want to be associated with.
In this way a content marketing campaign or a simple outreach program towards your customers can become the reason why people would want to work for you (or why they don’t want to).  So that’s something to be aware of when you decide on your content marketing strategy. You’re not just drawing in customers. You’re also defining your brand.It gives you and them transparencyJust like social media gives them a lot of insight into what kind of company you are, so too that transparency is available to you. If you recruit on social media that means you have access to your applicant’s social media. And that will allow you to take a look that is slightly deeper than their cover letter at the applicant that is applying.
And that can have you avoid a huge amount of heartache. Do they like to go binge drinking on week days? Is all they talk about in their circles the herb they like to smoke? Do they have posts about how much they hate their former bosses online? Well, that information might just allow you to think twice before you make them an offer and thereby avoid a hire that looks good on paper but would have potentially been a disaster in practice.It gives you access to left fieldIn days gone by it wasn’t what you knew it was who you knew. That’s how you got ahead in life. Nowadays that is thankfully changing. Why do I say thankfully? Because it meant a lot of talent got left behind. We’re not all gods at the networking required to get ahead. Nor should we have to be. If you’re looking for somebody to program some intricate aspect of your mainframe’s response time, how many prep friends a potential hire has is completely irrelevant.
For that reason, it’s great news indeed that the market has changed. It means that you can now find people based on their actual skills, rather than on who they know and what families they were born into. That’s both good news for you and for potential hires (except, of course, for those people born into great families – but then I’m not too worried about them, are you?).Last wordsSocial media is here. It has arrived. It is no longer the technology of tomorrow. That means if you’re not using it, you’re living in yesterday. Now that doesn’t seem to be the most effective strategy, does it?
After all, the people you want to hire aren’t living back then. They’re in the moment. For that reason, get stuck into social media. Build up your company’s presence. Use it to recruit. And perhaps consider doing a bit of content marketing while you’re at it. The two are natural bedfellows anyway, so why not kill two birds with one stone?
Good luck and good hunting. I’m sure the right candidate is out there for you. In fact, they’re probably checking their social media.