HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF SOCIAL RECRUITING
Lewis Glanz Consulting
LGC is a global recruitment solutions partner who helps companies build and scale their teams.
Social recruiting is increasingly important, not just giving you new ways to reach the right candidates, but often letting you do it faster and more cost-effectively. But with 49% of HR professionals increasing their use of virtual candidate searches, it’s not easy to find incredible people before they’re snapped up.
To help you make the most of social recruiting, here are four top tips on finding, shortlisting and securing the best talent.
1. KNOW YOUR CHANNELS
From Twitter to TikTok, today’s social media landscape is vast – and always growing. While it’s tempting to think of LinkedIn as the go-to spot for jobs, hiring and shortlisting clients, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
LinkedIn is a powerful place for candidates who are exploring their options, but what about the more passive audience who would leave their current role for a great opportunity?
Before you do anything else, think about the verticals you’re operating in, the kind of people you need to reach, and where they hang out. A great way to do this is a simple search on each social media platform, gauging how active the community in your search results seems.
At the same time, remember the more niche communities where specific types of candidates gather. From discussion forums to Reddit, you need to establish your presence wherever they are.
2. BUILD YOUR REPUTATION
Once you know which channels you should be targeting, the temptation is to start sending mass messages to every potential candidate. But social media is supposed to be social – and the best results come from a genuine, authentic relationship.
Make your initial approaches to candidates targeted and specific, but your key focus should be on building your own reputation within the community. The more you can demonstrate your credibility as an expert, the more responsive people will be to potential roles and opportunities.
Effective ways to build your presence can include:
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Done right, a strong reputation can even lead to candidates approaching you when they’re ready to make a change.
3. DO YOUR RESEARCH
Even on LinkedIn – a place with an explicit HR and recruitment purpose – it’s easy to get a bad reputation. In the vast majority of cases, this comes from poorly targeted lines of enquiry and attempting to engage candidates that just aren’t the right fit for a given role.
This kind of approach has the potential to undermine any trust you’ve built up. Worse, it’s a waste of your time and energy.
As well as providing a platform to reach candidates, social media is also a powerful research tool. Once you’ve shortlisted some potential talent on a given platform, dig into their wider activity and posts. You’ll often get a sense of how well they fit the given role, not just in terms of skills and capability but also culture and ambitions.
The more research you do, the more targeted your relationships become – and the better your results will be.
4. PREPARE YOUR PROCESSES
Finally, it’s important to make sure that your wider processes for shortlisting, interviewing and placing candidates are deeply integrated with how you use social media.
The candidate shortage doesn’t just make it harder to find top talent. Delivering a seamless, convenient and cohesive service is more important than ever before. Simply put, candidates have a lot of other options if they’re not happy with how you do things.
Key questions to ask yourself include:
A seamless process helps you work quickly and efficiently, but it also leaves candidates and clients feeling cared for, supported, and satisfied. Ultimately, it turns candidates into powerful advocates for you inside the communities where you found them.