Candidates that are difficult but have hidden potential need to go through further screening in more detail, and social media recruitment is perfect for the opportunity. The traditional ways of putting out a job vacancy and waiting for people to come to you are a thing of the past in most industries. What can you do to fully grasp the importance and versatility of social media in your recruitment strategies in order to end up with quality candidates for your company?
New generation of workers
You may have noticed that more and more young people tend to spend time using social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They spend so much time on them however that it becomes nigh impossible to reach them in any other way.
This is exactly the type of connection you need in order to reach a new type of worker. This worker is completely used to using digital platforms and computers, they are very versatile and easily adapt to new technologies and ideas and best of all, they can work at any time of the day. Youth is used to staying up all night long using their social media profiles to talk to their friends, read up on interesting trivia and celebrities they adore and learn more about what their friends and acquaintances are doing.
Slipping your own advertisement and job position ads in between those articles and posts is the perfect way to reach them and gain their interest in applying for your job offer.
Reaching a crowd
Narrowing your search based on social media criteria can make your recruitment job a lot easier. Facebook is well-known for allowing companies and prepaid advertisers to post their content based on people’s profiles, interests and times of day. Depending on the criteria you set and the frequency of your ads, you can gain a huge reach in numbers, whatever position you are looking to fill.
Imagine setting the parameters so that all the graphic designers in Europe see your job ad at exactly 8 PM local time when they scroll through their news feeds. Now think about how many of them will look at your offer and actually apply for it. This is only a fraction of what social media can do for you when it comes to narrowing down your candidate profiles.
Passive and insecure candidates
One thing to keep in mind is the fact that a lot of today’s youth lacks self-confidence. While it’s not a universal rule, majority of people who spend time on social media during their free time lack the conviction to apply for a job position themselves.
That is why social media platforms are a perfect place to not only advertise on but also reach out to potential candidates. You can set up a social media recruitment team that can be trained to effectively and professionally screen potential candidates based on their social media profiles.
This can work just like advertisement but go a step further than that, ensuring that you don’t wait for the people to come to you but ask them if they want to work for you instead. This kind of proactivity on the part of the company is rarely seen and can easily be recognized as forthcoming and positive by the potential candidates.
Background checks
Checking your candidates’ social media profiles for more information on them is nothing new. Interviewers usually check the internet for their candidates in order to see if they have any longstanding professional recommendations, issues with friends or the law or even to look for any Google information about the candidates.
Social media can provide a huge insight into which your candidates actually are when they step through the door. Many candidates don’t feel the need to disclose any personal information on the interview and tend to keep things to them.
Some people have families and go through tough times that they don’t like to discuss with strangers. Others might have used the word point in order to write their resumes and translate them to foreign languages. You can easily overcome this by checking their backgrounds behind closed doors and making the final call about whether to hire them or not based on that.
Live recruitment
One of the best options that social media platforms give recruiters is the ability to live recruit new employees. Screening employees has never been so simple because of the possibilities that social media offers when interviews and testing are concerned.
All you have to do in theory is type a simple message to your candidate and wait for them to turn on their camera and start talking to you in a matter of moments. No long travels across the city or country, no need for complicated appointment times and best of all – no need for specialized recruitment offices. You can recruit new employees from anywhere in the world by using social media to interview them live over the internet.
Curated company pages
Opening company pages on social media platforms offers a plethora of options when it comes to recruitment. You can use the off-peak period to build up an audience by posting interesting content, articles, testimonials and company documents in order to gain the public’s trust.
Once your recruitment period starts, you can easily garner a huge number of applications from the pool of people that have started following your company’s social media pages. This is a great opportunity to constantly work on your recruitment regardless of the current need for new employees.
Forthcoming and friendly
Leveling the playing field with your younger and more energetic candidates by using social media as a means of communication is a great way to establish trust. Giving the bulk of responsibility concerning recruitment to a young and passionate team and letting them communicate with their equally young candidates is a great way to insert some friendliness into your brand.
Interviewing and hiring candidates based on social media communication in which your already recruited young workers do all the talking is very forthcoming in the eyes of the candidates. Best of all, it shows that your company is accepting of new technologies and trends, giving them a huge incentive to consider applying for work at your company.
High speed, low price
The most obvious reason for including social media in your recruitment strategy is the fact that you can set up social media pages very fast and very low prices. Sometimes you won’t need to pay a single dime during the entire recruitment campaign depending on your previous reach and community buildup. Getting ad revenue from Facebook or Twitter takes quite a while, but once you are there, you will be at a neutral zero when it comes to recruitment advertisement expenses.
Getting your pages up and running is also very fast and simple – all it takes is putting up a couple of branded company materials on the page and sharing a few official company announcements. If your company is well-known, people will start following your pages quickly afterwards.
Conclusion
While the benefits of using social media in your recruitment strategies are numerous, it’s also important to point out that adequate content management is also needed. If you put a person without any internet advertisement experience in charge of developing and distributing content, you won’t reach the required number of people before your ad campaign starts.
Also, reaching the wrong audience is just as easy as reaching the right one and it all depends on the type of content you publish. Give social media advertisement a good look before denying its applications. You might be surprised with the results you get during your next recruitment cycle.
