The rise of social media platforms has given businesses a valuable and cost effective way to reach both actively seeking and passive candidates to fill key vacancies.
Social recruiting has many advantages: Low costs, an easy way to amplify job listings' reach, and simple ways to involve existing employees in sourcing fitting applicants. Yet there are also social recruiting mistakes that can reduce the efficacy of your social job ads.
Here are 8 mistakes (and how to avoid them):
Social recruiting works so well because of the chain-reaction or 'viral' effect of social sharing. Say, for example, one employee with 500 Facebook friends shares a job add, and 1% of this network reposts the ad (5 people). If they have the same network size, that's another 25 people that may share your job ad with their social and professional contacts.
The above example is for a share by one well-connected employee. Yet to truly get many eyes on your ad, be sure to share your social job listing with entire departments to amplify reach and stand a better chance of finding your ideal candidate.
You may have the most amazing position in a vibrant company environment to fill. Yet on social media, many people will ask 'What's in it for me?' when asked to share a post. This is where reward comes in: Make sure you set a reasonable financial reward that gives people a reason to share your job posts. Everybody loves a low-effort opportunity to win.
When creating social posts for Facebook, your post will reach more of your followers if you keep text-in-image to a minimum. This makes it challenging to brand your visuals, yet your logo is one place where you can convey your company’s identity combining graphics and text. Make sure you’ve uploaded a good, clear logo that quickly signals to followers and members of your target audience who your job ad is for.
Although social media platforms are useful for finding active seekers and passive candidates who have both the skills and paper qualifications necessary to fill a role, it's still important to screen CVs and ensure candidates promise good fit before scheduling interviews. A social recruitment platform that lets you manage and respond to all your applications in one place is a good investment for simplifying the applicant screening process.
As with any business process, it's wise to have a social recruiting strategy when you start posting social job ads. How are you going to measure your job ad's success? By number of shares? By the time it takes from first post to placing your chosen candidate? And how will you appeal to your target segment? Using a social recruitment platform with an interactive dashboard that gives you data on reach and performance will also help you to monitor and evaluate your social recruiting strategy, giving important feedback on what gets you results.
Gaining new followers on social media is only one step in building a base to fill vacancies. More than gaining follows, it’s important to establish communication with good candidates. Use messaging to engage interested candidates and build relationships. When potential applicants send direct messages, make sure you have someone who can respond in a timely manner and nurture these relationships to ensure interested parties with relevant skills don’t slip away.
Different social channels have different cultures around content and the way consumers and professionals engage with brands. Make sure your social recruitment strategy is tailored to the strengths of the platform you share it on (for example, LinkedIn is particularly focused on business whereas Facebook allows for a broader mix of fun and work). Knowing your platforms will stand your job posts a higher chance of receiving the most relevant, actionable responses.
Your social job ads are the perfect opportunity to illustrate for both active and passive job candidates what makes a company a great place to work. Part of crafting this message is conveying brand persona. Is the company mostly young, hip and trendy? Intellectual and serious? Make sure your job ads convey what distinguishes the brand as an employer.
Although the above social recruiting mistakes are easy to make, using an all-in-one social recruiting platform like Global Refer is fool proof. Try it now.