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Social Media and Recruiting Talent

Jim Newcomb

Recruiter & Retiring to AI Solutions | Founder of VenBot – Website AI Agents for Small Businesses

发布日期: 2022年11月2日

Social Media & Recruiting. Most companies primarily use their corporate social media presence to build customer relationships and attract new business. This makes sense; that’s where the revenue comes from. Also, marketing professionals are more accustomed to targeting that audience. That’s the purpose of marketing and what they’ve been trained to do.

Have you thought about how your social media presence fits your recruiting strategy?

Why use social media to attract employees?

There are many good reasons to incorporate employee-focused content into your social media plan. First and most pragmatically, the customer base that follows your content online may include prospective employees or people who can refer them. What better talent pool could you ask for than people who already know and like your brand? Of course, it can work the other way around; people who initially follow your content for employment reasons might just become customers.

Image of open laptop with person holding cell phone and social media response floating out.

There are more reasons than these ‘transactional’ ones, though. Your employees are the people who create your customer experience. When you make it clear that you care about recruiting the best people, you’re also telling your customers that you care about the experience they have with your company. Showcasing your employees through your social media platforms personalizes and humanizes your company’s brand and shows that you care about your people.

Social media is about the audience. Whether they know it or not, a company’s audience includes customers, employees, and potential employees. All are essential to a company’s success. A social media presence that speaks to all audiences helps to create a more holistic and cohesive brand. In addition, nearly every candidate I interview wants to represent a quality product. What you communicate to customers is also consumed by potential employees, reinforcing your brand as an employer.

How to use social media as part of your recruiting strategy

Image of cell phone showing social media icons.

In most cases, creating a separate social media presence focused on your employee experience is not a good idea. It can cause brand confusion, and in any case, people are less likely to follow an employee-focused profile that’s ‘one-dimensional.’ It’s better to incorporate this kind of content into the existing strategy. Employee content shouldn’t take over your feed – it’s just a matter of dripping into the overall mix. Engage your recruitment team (in-house and even recruitment firms you partner with, like Goodwin Recruiting) to help develop the strategy and the employee value proposition you’re communicating.

As far as candidate-focused content is concerned, don’t just post open jobs. Naturally, you can link to your careers page, but the content should focus more broadly on the employee experience. Here are some ideas about the content you might include:

Showcase individual employees and the skills and expertise they bring to your customer experience.
Highlight specific jobs – especially those you frequently recruit – giving more context and background about the work the people in those jobs do.
Share social events and other gatherings that bring your employees together in a context that isn’t strictly work-related. This will personalize your company and show that your employees enjoy their work relationships.
Celebrate employees who deserve celebrating – marking significant work anniversaries, accomplishing notable work, or completing a course or certification.

Finally: authenticity matters

As with any branding exercise, authenticity is critical. A law firm has a different brand presence than a retail chain. Even within the same industry, one restaurant may have a very different target market, and therefore brand image – than another. Your employee-related content should consistently reinforce the brand you present to your customers.

Social media can be much more than customer engagement. Incorporating the right messages into your social media strategy helps prospective employees learn more about your business, supporting your work (and your recruiter’s work!) in attracting top talent.