As a recruiter you want to hire the best talent for your organization. What’s better than social media to tap into prospective candidates.

Today, social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have more than 535 million (combined) users. The average internet user has 4-5 social media accounts. These platform offers tremendous opportunity to connect with candidates – many of whom you won’t be able to reach through traditional mediums. This type of hunting is popularly known as Social Media Recruitment.

Despite of the huge potential, many companies are not using these channels optimally. In this post, we’ll discuss the advantages of using social media for recruitment and social media recruiting best practices.

Recruiting on Social Media – How to do it?

Every organization should develop its own unique social media recruiting strategy. If you haven’t yet started with this type of recruitment, here is the guide to get started.

• Don’t follow the crowd – The key to right social media recruiting is to cut through the noise. This means do not follow the crowd; do things that will make your posting attractive and uncommon. If you are using LinkedIn, be a part of relevant groups and for twitter use hashtags to get your job posting in front of your target audience. For instance, #DeveloperJobs #TechHiring #ITJobs works best on Twitter.

• Promote your uniqueness – Social media recruiting is more than just job postings. You need to connect with your audience well to get the desired outcome. This can only be done by sharing something that makes you stand out in the crowd. You should promote your work culture – something that’s unique and shows your company is the best place to work. Candidates usually look forward to work for companies that has flexible work hours, organizes events and other extra curricular activities, encourages & appreciate ideas from employees and so on. If your organization has any or all of these qualities, do share it immediately.

  

• Think out of the box, go out of your way – Definitely, now-a-days most people uses Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. By if your requirement is niche, you need to walk an extra mile to get that extraordinary candidate. If you are recruiting for a position in IT domain you need to keep tap on GitHub, StackOverflow, and Quora to find the best fit for the role.

• Train internals to target externals – While social media is the powerful tool to attract new age candidates, it is important for companies to train and encourage their recruiters to update their social media accounts and follow social media best practices to connect with candidates.

Benefits of Using Social Media for Recruitment

The idea businesses can recruit using social media is no longer a privilege. It is now essential and significant for sourcing candidates and promoting company culture. Here are some of the pros of using social media recruiting.

1. Get personal, academic and professional details without a resume

2. Know about their skills, hobbies and personality

3. Economical recruiting option, unless you are promoting job openings through paid campaigns

4. Filters out irrelevant and bad candidates

What works for one organization may not work for the other company. Prepare a social media strategy that makes sense for your firm and positions you are hiring for.

If you are looking for IT Staffing – temporary or permanent, we will be happy to help you. Contact us for assistance today.