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Succeed with Social Media – Recruiting with Social Media

Recruiting can be an uncertain process—it is expensive, time-consuming, and after everything is complete, there is no guarantee that new employees are the right fit. They might be incompatible with your company’s culture or unsuitable for the job. All your recruiters’ work could be for naught, and by sticking with only conventional recruiting practices you may be condemning your company’s recruiters to an endless exercise in futility unless your company updates its methods.

Traditional recruiting channels like agencies, job boards and referrals are often misleading, only offering versions of potential employees’ lives skewed to impress your company. This makes it difficult to get a clear sense of employees’ character and ability to mesh with the organisation before their first day. These channels can also be limiting, only allowing your company to interact with potential employees via job boards or referrals rather than engaging them directly.

Companies are increasingly relying on social media to bolster their recruitment efforts in light of traditional recruiting’s shortcomings. Keep reading for ways to capitalise on social media recruitment.

How to Recruit With Social Media

Incorporating social media into your company’s recruitment tools helps widen your company’s reach if done correctly. Social media comes with its own set of pitfalls you must avoid. To begin, choose the appropriate social media site(s) according to your recruitment needs. The three most popular social media services, listed below, have their own strengths and limitations:

  • Twitter is a social networking and microblogging site that promises access to a wide, diverse audience. It is ideal in the early stages of recruitment for broadcasting your staff needs. However, without a sizeable and engaged following, you risk tweeting into the abyss with no hope of an interested reply.
  • LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to fostering connections in the business world. It is better suited than Twitter to directly engage potential employees, since you can access users’ education, work history, and skills and expertise. Yet LinkedIn does not offer Twitter’s distribution range.
  • Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site. Because it is the most popular and lets users list their employment history and interests, Facebook can serve as a middle ground between Twitter and LinkedIn, although the amount of data may prove overwhelming for smaller companies.

No matter which site you choose, they all share several basic strategies for making the most out of your social media recruitment efforts:

  • Think of social media as an ongoing investment. Social media recruiting is not a static process; it requires long-term involvement and maintenance to maximise your responses.
  • Cultivate two-way conversations. Do not treat social media as a simple broadcast medium. Social media is just that—social. It requires persistent two-way conversations with your followers and potential employees.
  • Enlist employees as company ambassadors. Your current, top-notch employees are probably connected to like-minded potential employees through their social networks. Leverage these existing connections by encouraging and incentivising employees to participate in recruitment efforts with their own social networks.
  • Single out talented followers. As you monitor your followers and conversations on social media, natural candidates will emerge ahead of the pack—they may dominate the conversation or have the best credentials. Keep track of these candidates and match them with suitable open positions.
  • Emphasise mobile accessibility. Mobility is convenient. The more mobile your recruitment efforts, the more potential employees will be able to conveniently read and respond to your efforts. Make it as easy as possible.

The Advantages of Recruiting With Social Media

  • Social media is free.
  • Employers can directly engage with their target audience.
  • Messages spread more easily on social media.
  • Because there is less spam on social media, recruitment drives will yield higher response rates.
  • Passive but qualified candidates can be reached through social media.
  • Social media encourages referrals.

The Disadvantages of Recruiting With Social Media

  • The financial benefits of recruiting with social media remain largely unquantified, meaning it may not be as cost-effective as you think.
  • Information gained from social media is notoriously inaccurate. Users create profiles that reflect how they want to be perceived, not who they are.
  • Relying on social media recruitment means your company is limiting itself to only candidates with regular Internet access and who use certain social media sites. Without complementing your recruitment efforts with other services, you risk acquiring a workforce with less diversity.
  • The relative ease of accessing personal information makes employers more vulnerable to illegally discriminating against potential employees.
  • Sifting through social media profiles for qualified candidates is time-consuming and may be too much of a challenge for smaller companies.
  • Widening social media management to include recruitment opens your company up to more online scrutiny. The greater your online presence, the greater the scrutiny you must endure.

Recruiting with social media is an emerging strategy that shows no signs of abating. Seize the opportunities in social media recruiting and watch top talent trickle in.

The following information is not exhaustive, nor does it apply to specific circumstances. The content therefore should not be regarded as constituting legal or regulatory advice and not be relied upon as such. Readers should contact a legal or regulatory professional for appropriate advice. Further, the law may have changed since the first publication of this information.

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