Using Social Media as a Recruitment Tool

More and more companies have started using social media as a recruitment tool instead of job boards like Indeed and Monster. It’s easy to see why—social media is a less costly tool with a much wider range. It also provides a quicker, more insightful view of your potential new hire.

With social media being so vast, it can also make things difficult if you don’t know how to use it to find potential recruits. Here are some of the most important things you need to know before you get started using social media as a recruitment tool.

Know Your Social Media Platforms

Different social media platforms inform you of many different things when recruiting. By knowing which ones will give you information your company can benefit from you’ll be able to find the right employees a lot more easily.

Sprout Social has some good guidelines for this:

• Visiting LinkedIn to learn more about a candidate’s professional experience
• Engaging candidates on Twitter to learn more about their interests and what they value—which also helps identify the right culture fits
• Monitoring Facebook to get a glimpse into how candidates present themselves to strangers, friends, and family
• Using Pinterest and Instagram to get a sense of where candidates spend their free time or what they might be passionate about

It is also definitely useful to check out more than one of the candidates’ platforms. People present themselves differently everywhere. You want to get the most information to get a better understanding of the individual.

Present a Clear Company Brand

As with any recruitment strategy, your company’s brand needs to be presented clearly and professionally. This is especially important considering how many false things are on social media. People are warier of a brand recruiting on social media if the company’s social media platforms aren’t professionally maintained and consistent.

“Make sure you can communicate your company’s brand. Take time to develop a clear brand identity to attract employees who believe in what you’re doing.” – COO Alliance

A potential employee’s social media account is a great tool to get to know them, but they’re also going to use your account to get to know you, too.

Using Employee Advocates

Your current employees advocating for your company on social media makes you look a lot more credible to potential recruits. An employee sharing their work online can both convince people on the edge to apply and attract new applicants that never would have seen the job posting before.

“Current employees play a role as well. They can add credibility to your company and reinforce its culture. Most importantly, they can act as inside resources for others helping attract and retain employees. For example, our current employees use social media to share the work they have created for our clients.” – Forbes

It also provides applicants the opportunity to comment on posts or send messages to current employees so they can have a better idea if they’d be a good fit for the job.

Engage with Your Audience

You should always be prepared to answer questions quickly and personally. Social media is a two-way street.

“At the same time, make sure that you don’t focus exclusively on job postings. You should always strive to spark conversations that engage different groups of people, share helpful resources, and infuse your message with the tone of what your company brand strives to represent.” – Sprout Social

If lots of people are engaging with your brand even when you aren’t hiring, you’ll develop a pool of talent to dip into when you eventually do have a job posting.

Social media is the new road that recruiting is taking, so it’s very beneficial for your company if you learn how to use it effectively. Social media is taking over the world for a reason—that means the world of recruiting too!

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please leave a comment below and my team will get in touch with you.

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Cameron Herold grew up in a small town in Northern Canada. When his father, an entrepreneur, figured out that Cameron wasn’t going to fit into what they were teaching in school—because of his severe ADD—he taught him to hate working traditional ‘jobs’ and to love creating companies that employed others.

By 18, Cameron already had 14 different little businesses and he knew he loved money, entrepreneuring and business. And by 20 years old, he owned a franchise business painting houses and had twelve employees. He spent his twenties and early 30’s heading up 3 large businesses and coaching over 120 entrepreneurs. He was also the COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, and during his 6.5 years he took the company from 2 million to 106 million. 

Knowing that every CEO needs a strong COO then led Cameron to start the COO Alliance in 2016. He noticed that there were no peer groups for one of the most crucial roles in the company—the Chief Operating Officer/2nd in command.