Social media as a tool for talent acquisition was just an idea a few years ago. Little did we realize then that the simple-looking, and obviously entertaining social media apps were going to become job portals of their own. According to a recent data report, 73% of job seekers aged 18-34 found jobs through social media platforms. This number is only expected to rise in the coming time as our lives continue moving online.
While social media has been around for a while, its use for talent acquisition seems a little unusual at first. Like any other tool, there certainly are ways to optimize value from social media, particularly for acquiring talent.
In this comprehensive guide, we hope to introduce you to the most efficient methods of harnessing social media for recruitment.
If your average day involves even a few minutes online, chances are you have heard most of the following names. But just to be safe, we are just doing a customary rundown of the biggest social media platforms in 2023.
Let’s begin with the basics, shall we?
So What is Social Media?
Social media is a network of people from all over the world connected through applications and websites. The users on social media create and share content with their network of people.
The following are the most popular social media platforms:
Facebook: A social networking site that allows users to connect and share with their community online, and join and create groups of shared interests and activities.
Twitter: A microblogging website that allows people to share opinions publicly or with their friends with the use of up to 280 characters.
Instagram: What started out as a video/photo-sharing platform is becoming a pioneer in short-form content for the purpose of advertising and sharing.
LinkedIn: THE professional networking site that allows users to connect with the people in their work life. Also used for searching for jobs and creating a brand for oneself in the professional world.
TikTok: A short-term video-sharing platform that empowers all its users with the ability to create videos without much effort. Today, there are multiple kinds of videos like dance, comedy, and education on Tiktok ranging between the duration of 15 seconds and 1 minute.
YouTube: The original video platform allows users to watch and upload videos on a series of subjects. Users can also use the wide reach of Youtube’s parent company Google to reach a wide content or audience.
So Why Use Social Media for Talent Acquisition?
Social media reveals a very essential insight into our times; all these people on social media are people like everybody else and most people have a job to maintain income and thus, survival. Social media brings a human element to the world of the internet. Unlike traditional forms of job search, social media enables recruiters to assess and analyze different aspects of the personality of a potential candidate to better assimilate them into the organization.
Social media also curates content as per the preference of the individual and allows them to build communities around this shared preference. This allows businesses to connect not only with their audience but their ideal candidates. And for this reason, the rise in popularity of social media has been steady for recruiters all over for it gives them the chance of engaging with a diverse pool of talent.
Some of the key benefits of social media for recruiting are listed here:
- Economical: Most social media platforms are free to use as of now. Recruiters can deploy this advantage to reach the most kickass manpower from all over the world.
- Target Recruits as per Your Needs: Social media have advanced AI systems to analyze and group existing users. Recruiting managers can analyze and choose their target candidates among a series of options to hire the most desired people for the organization.
- Employee Referrals: The reason social media is so popular among most people is the ease of sharing. This ease can be used to get referrals from existing employees to boost the company image and thus, attract more talent.
- Speed: The ease of social media also doubles as the speed of it. Even if it looks like the most obvious advantage, when used strategically can resolve the direst situations.
- Visibility: Another obvious benefit of social media for recruitment is increased visibility for brands with more control. Brands can reach a wider audience regularly and reveal their effective and warm company culture, leading to better hires not only now, but for a long time in the future.
- Easy Communication: Social media platforms are designed to increase engagement among the involved parties. It’s too soon to speak for all platforms, but a few like LinkedIn and Twitter have a user-friendly interface to expand communications. Recruiters thus can reach out to candidates easily.
- Recall Value: Brands can display their excellent company culture on social media thus opening themselves to yet another section of interested and motivated employees. It also eases the process for the candidates by making the company and its culture more accessible. They can also see and judge for themselves the experience of candidates within the organization.
Social media opens companies to wider doors within a short time while the use of the most sophisticated technology allows their doors to have clearer direction as well. The benefits of social media are too large to ignore in the times we are living it and it comes as no surprise that most, if not all, organizations have jumped on the bandwagon.
To further elucidate our point, we are summing up the benefits in one sentence: social media increases the efficiency of the process of hiring by reaching out in the direction of desired candidates and maintaining open communication with them.
Now that we’ve told you the most obvious ways of using social media to recruit the creme de la creme of the industry of your choice. (You’re right, they are also the most obvious merits of social media.)
Here are some creative strategies for using social media in talent acquisition:
- Social Media Challenges: Recruiters can share tests designed to select the most desired candidates on social media as a challenge. Doing it in a social media-friendly method can guarantee more interactions, and in most cases, lead to a kickass candidate.
- Social Media Contests: Tests can be further presented as social media contests and nudge candidates towards a more creative solution to familiar problems. To further illustrate their creative inclinations, companies can also gamify these contests to up the ante and make it a more fun, interactive process for the candidates.
- Virtual Events: Companies can use the sharing interface of social media to share and invite candidates to their life and culture. Live chats, webinars, or virtual tours can be great features to hold hands out to future employees.
- Crowdsourcing: Social media is a great tool to communicate with old, current, and prospective team members all at once. They can listen and understand the needs and wants of these people more and incorporate reasonable suggestions to make the organization a great place to work at.
- Community: Organizations can use existing communities on social media to understand their people better. They can also use the confluence of people’s interests and values to create online communities that create the company culture remotely. This opens companies to an investment in social communities they can easily deploy in the most calling circumstances.
Before you start hiring the best manpower on the internet, here are some basics of starting and managing your social media presence. (Here’s a tip: convert this list into a checklist and make sure you tick them all before you start applying the innovative methods listed above ).
- Optimize Social Media: When used right, by applying the relevant keywords and hashtags, social media can amplify your reach by heaps and bounds. And we know it can seem so simple and basic, that it is easy to overlook the advantages.
- Use All Relevant Social Handles: Every social media platform offers an entirely fresh set of relevant candidates. So go out there and share your offers on all platforms you find relevant to your industry.
- Employee Referrals: Make the most of employee referrals by current employees to position your organization as a legitimately great place to work at.
- Make Most of the Groups: In plain words, social media is a bunch of communities within a platform. You are bound to find communities that are most relevant and similar to your industry. Access to these communities/ groups can amplify your presence within the industry and help you reach better people faster.
- Collaborate: The key word to thrive in 2023 is: collaborate. With the global market within your reach, competition has hitherto become outdated. It’s time to find organizations that complement your offering and create a wholesome experience for your target market.
- Use Social Media Ads: While you’re looking for the ideal candidate, you can also get paid advertising (available on most channels) to work for you. With the advanced AI system and access to tons of data, you can certainly leverage your ROI using ads.
We know, we know, we are hyping up social media for hiring great candidates and it’s only true. It’s only natural to use all resources at one’s disposal to magnify the outcome. And social media is free, and it’s easily available.
But we also want to remind you of a few things you need to keep in mind when you use social media.
- Concerns of Privacy and Data Security: Social media opens you to a huge pool of data and which is why it’s all the more important to handle it with care. It’s also prudent to be well-versed with laws around data security to avoid future problems.
- Time-Consuming: To reap the benefits of social media, you need to invest time and resources. And if you already have a strong offline presence, it might feel like a hassle in the beginning.
- Misrepresentation of Information: One of the best arguments against the use of social media is the ease of fabrication. There is brilliance in the social media world, but there are also quacks. There’s no hard and fast rule for identifying either, but we can only advise you to be as thorough as possible in your search and analysis.
- Limitations of Social Media: Social media is only a tool to reach more candidates. It is not holistic yet in terms of understanding people. While you can get a fair idea of one’s personality, hobbies, and interests, social media only functions as a skeleton to understand people.
Social media when used with discretion can lead to quantifiable benefits for the organization but it’s only a little element of the new realities we are creating. Who knows how it is going to evolve in the coming times, now with the whole world (well, most of it) glued to their own social media handles? But for now, even at its best, it’s only a tool to reach the world and all your hiring activities on social media have to be buttressed by real-time activities like employee referrals and headhunting among others.
Now that you are officially equipped to use social media for hiring, find out how we at Workfall are making the most of it:
Also, if social media feels like too much of a hassle (we totally see you), hire easily at workfall.com