Social media platforms are no longer used only to communicate with friends and families. Today, social platforms are used for running online shops, marketing products and services, and also to hire and recruit talents.
Social media for hiring is extremely effective because a considerable portion of the world’s population is on these platforms- from top managers to ground-level workers.
The big guns for social recruiting today are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, but you must look beyond that. For example, most top IT talents are available in GitHub and Stack Overflow. Therefore, it becomes vital for companies to keep an eye on what kind of professionals they want to hire and where they are primarily available.
Let us see what social media does for recruiting top talents from this guide.
What is Social Media for Hiring?
Social media for hiring refers to the recruitment practice of using social media to attract and hire top talents. For example, you can post your vacancies on a professional network like LinkedIn. Billions of people are using this platform to find the most relevant jobs. They can find your posts suitable, and thus, you can cost-effectively connect with top talents.
Social media for recruiting is one of the most commonly used talent acquisition tactics. Nearly 60% of people, more than half of the world, are using social media today. Since these platforms are widely used, leveraging them to attract and hire new talents makes sense.
Besides using social media for recruiting, you can use it for increasing employer branding. You can spread your word about employee value propositions (EVP) and improve inbound recruitment efforts. EVP refers to the unique benefits you offer employees in return for the skills, abilities, and experiences they bring to your company.
Since most companies today have a social media presence, and their employees and clients are also there, prospective employees have a better chance to decide even before applying for the job. This can be a great thing for both employers and prospects.
Why use Social Media for Hiring?
There’s nothing wrong in using traditional recruitment approaches like posting on job boards, websites, or newspapers to reach out to candidates. By using social media in recruitment and selection, organisations can attract employees from across the globe, with nominal resources being spent.
Moreover, they can help you entice candidates who aren’t even actively looking for jobs. Studies show that most job seekers rank social media platforms and professional networks as more valuable than job ads and recruiting agencies.
Let us see some of the benefits of using social media in the hiring process.
Expanding Talent Pool
Social media channels offer a vast and diverse network of talents around the globe. This enables you to expand your reach to potential talents and connect them during recruitment. This saves time and resources and allows you to meet people that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible using local job boards.
Moreover, these platforms offer advanced search functionalities and filters that help you search for candidates based on specific criteria. Are you targeting professionals based on their skills, experience, or educational background?
Reach Passive Job Seekers
These professionals are already working in an organisation and aren’t looking for jobs actively. However, they may switch jobs when better opportunities appear to them. Therefore, they aren’t visiting job boards or company career sites to find an opportunity, so targeting them is a hurdle.
Under such conditions, employers using social media for hiring can actively target these professionals and increase their chances of hiring the “ideal candidate.” For example, person X works in a company in India, providing him good pay, incentives, and growth opportunities, but he is a Dubai resident.
If he now comes across a company in Dubai posting a similar job while browsing through LinkedIn, he is likelier to apply for it, even though he was not actively looking for a job.
Create a Fair Recruitment Platform
Employers sharing hiring posts on social media ensures fair and equal candidate recruitment. Traditional recruitment methods may have biases or limitations, especially to backgrounds and geographical locations. However, social media recruitment is just the opposite, offering everyone equal opportunity based on merits and abilities.
Therefore, if you commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, using the social media talent acquisition approach is best.
Target-Specific Talent Pools
Social media allows you to target specific talent pools using multiple filters. For example, employers using Facebook to screen job applicants can use advanced search filters to find ideal candidates.
You can set your criteria for choosing candidates based on location, industry, or specific keywords. Then, Facebook will calculate how many candidates fit your search. Thus, you can connect with the right talent pool and receive high-quality applications.
Similarly, Twitter and Instagram use the benefits of hashtags for targeted advertising and narrow down the talent pool.
Boost Employer Branding
You can create an engaging presence on multiple social media platforms to promote your visibility, credibility and company culture. Whenever you keep updating people about your industry and the company regularly, you establish yourself as an authority in your domain.
This motivates candidates to follow and communicate with you and opens opportunities to headhunt the best-fit talent for the open position.
Reduce Time and Cost Per Hire
Marketing job vacancies to hiring top talents is an expensive and time-consuming process. However, by creating a social media page, you can market your openings for free.
Additionally, paid ads on social platforms are now available for all budgets, and you can use them without financial burdens. On the other hand, social media allows you to connect with a broader audience, which shortens your talent-searching timeline.
Additionally, social media check for employment are easily available compared to other platforms. Thus, you can cut ample time from searching to hiring top talents and ensure they are the right culture fit for your company.
How to Measure the Impact of Social Media for Hiring?
You can easily determine the effectiveness of social media for hiring by using a few key performance indicators and metrics.
For example, you can measure the amount of traffic the social media activity drives towards your organisation’s web page, career site, or other corporate information.
Similarly, you can also analyse the number of people engaging with your job posts, applicants who are qualified or highly qualified, etc. In addition, you can also look into the likes, shares, and comments on your posts to understand the level of engagement.
There’s no single formula to find job candidates via social media effectively. However, most recruiters follow an almost similar approach. Firstly, you must have a specific goal for each campaign and target audience based on stated objectives. Then, make a list of social media channels that your audiences use the most to post your job vacancies.
However, to reach maximum candidates, you need to use a multi-channel approach where you post job ads on multiple social media platforms.
How 6 Pence Helps
Social media for hiring is a vital recruitment approach as it allows you to connect with top talents. But companies with their ever-expanding duty roasters often struggle to stay on top of it all.
To save you from all recruitment hassles, connect with us at 6 Pence. We are one of the leading staff outsourcing agency in the GCC. We have a huge repository of talents matching your requirements, and we use a multi-pronged approach to attract the right talents- from posting on job boards, social platforms, and more.
Our responsibility doesn’t end at finding just the best-fit person; we help with background verification, work visa processing, payroll processing, and more. Contact us today to know more.
Also Read: A Guide To Adopting Employee Referral Bonus Policy
Frequently Asked Questions
What social media is being used for the hiring process?
Some of the most used social media for hiring are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, you can choose the social recruitment channel depending on the type of industry, job and target audience.
How can social media be used for recruiting?
You can use social media for hiring by sharing job postings, networking with professionals and researching potential talents. Additionally, it helps you save money and time searching for the right people for your company.
Why use social media to hire?
Social media recruitment strategy can help you connect with passive candidates, foster referrals, target the right talents, showcase the organisation’s culture, and reduce recruitment time and money.
