The Role of Social Media in Recruitment

With Social Media becoming ever more prevalent in our everyday lives, it’s inevitable that it’s going to have a big say in how candidates look for jobs, and indeed how recruitment companies recruit for those jobs. As a recruitment company, using social media is imperative to help us reach a wider and more relevant audience for roles.

Here at Jobwise we have recently started using a job posting tool which allows us to simultaneously post jobs to all of the Jobwise social media accounts as they are added to our database, ensuring that the jobs page on our website is not the only place you will see our latest roles.

Although understandably there are both pros and cons when it comes to using Social Media in recruitment. Below we discuss a few:

Passive candidates

If a recruitment company advertises vacancies purely using job boards, the reach to those who are searching for new roles will be limited.

Social media is a great tool for reaching that magical pool of potential candidates who aren’t actively seeking a new role but would be open to change if the right opportunity came along. 

Vacancies are more targeted

Use social media tools to target your vacancies such as hashtags, or asking any employees who currently work in a similar role to share the vacancy to their connections. This helps to get the vacancies in front of those more appropriate for the role, and cuts out candidates who would not be suitable.

It’s free to use

Now there are features on social media that do cost money. Paid advertising, such as Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Job Posts come at a price. However, it costs nothing to share your vacancies on your LinkedIn company page or on Twitter or Facebook. So, it makes sense to take advantage of your social media accounts. If you then get your employees to share the vacancies on their own pages the reach will be exponential.

Screen your candidates

Social media isn’t just a great tool for advertising your vacancies; it’s also a tool that some employers use to screen candidates. When you see a candidates CV, you can review their skills, previous experience and personal qualities.

Looking at a candidate’s social media profile can offer a different side to them. Of course, you need to pay caution to reviewing someone’s social media profiles without their consent; however, more and more candidates are including links to their LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter pages within their CVs.

Glimpse into the future for the candidate

Social media sites can also greatly reduce the time needed for candidates to properly vet employers. It provides a glimpse into the company culture without going through the face-to-face interview.

Missing and/or inaccurate information

It can be assumed that in this day and age, people who look for jobs probably have at least one social media account. But there is a percentage, even though it might be tiny, that do not. If you can’t find someone on social media, you must not draw the conclusion that something dodgy is going on.

On the flip side there are also people who have social media profiles but the profile has not been updated for such a long period of time, for a variety of reasons. People can change drastically in a short space of time so you cannot make judgements based on their profile.

Why not follow our social media pages on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram, and keep an eye out for our latest roles, as well as seeing behind the scenes at Jobwise! If you need help looking for that dream role or candidate, get in touch with us today!