We are experiencing a challenging job market, where there are more jobs than people looking for them.
This translates to a more competitive talent market, causing recruitment costs to increase.
Recruiters are forced to evolve, leaving behind the way they were recruiting just a few years ago, and try new and creative strategies that help to better identify top talent. As Jobvite points out, “they are reevaluating what success looks like today, with high quality and retention rates becoming a higher priority than time and cost-per-hire.”
One of the methods that have proved to be an effective way to identify and recruit the right talent is the use of social networks as part of the recruitment strategy.
The same way recruiters use social platforms to know about the candidates, candidates use social networks to know more about the organization. This is why it is important to make your organization a social company.
Having a presence on social networks is essential to attract the best talent. If you are not on at least one social media platform, you might be losing access to numerous great candidates, as they will never know that your company exists or is hiring.
However, when leveraging social media in recruiting, there are some pitfalls you will want to avoid.
1) Not Knowing the Audience
Recruiting through social networks will allow you to make professional and close contact with the candidate given the personal nature of the platforms. However, to be effective and to maximize the benefits that these social channels provide, you must know your audience.
Knowing everything you can about the people that follow you on your social platforms will help you write more personalized content and talk directly to them in a language they understand, which in turn will create stronger candidate engagement and generate a greater ROI in your recruitment campaigns.
To have an idea of who your audience is, use the following questions:
- What are the ideal qualities the candidates for the open job should have?
- What is their social behavior?
- What workforce generation do they belong to?
- What are their social interests?
- Who is your LinkedIn page currently attracting?
The answers to these questions will help you to promote the interest of the candidates towards your organization, thus achieving more effective communication.
2) Contact Candidates with a Generic Message
Having repetitive messages can be interpreted as spam.
It is critical to develop different messages according to the professional profile you are looking at, the social network you are using to recruit, and most importantly, who the candidates are that you’re communicating with.
By doing this, you will experience a boost in engagement since personalized content will be more relevant to your audience. Also, when using digital advertising, ads with personalized content tend to receive better feedback, which in turn results in a decrease in the cost of advertising activities on social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Moreover, as a result of the benefits mentioned, brand affinity and loyalty from the candidates towards your organization (or your audience in general) will strengthen. When you strive to personalize your message, it shows that you have genuinely considered your audience. This translates into a better brand and consumer relationship that makes these individuals more loyal and reinforces the impact of the messages.
3) Not having a defined Employer Brand Strategy
The image of a company as an employer, or the Employer Brand, is a term commonly used to describe the reputation of an organization as an employer and its value proposition for its employees, as opposed to its more general corporate brand reputation and the value proposition for customers.
The absence of an Employer Brand strategy implemented in social networks can be a deciding factor for a talented candidate when deciding if they want to be part of your organization or not.
It is critical to share content on your social networks that represents the values and interests of your organization, beyond the mere promotion that you can generate for your workplace.
What is being shared on your organization’s social profiles that will help candidates decide if they want to join your team or not? Are you promoting the culture of your workplace? Are you communicating your organization as an excellent place to work?
Social recruitment is not a luxury reserved for Fortune 500 companies. If used properly, it can maximize recruitment efforts and modernize more traditional methods without leaving them altogether. Just try to avoid making these common mistakes.
Are you looking to find the right candidate? Read these recommendations that 5 of MAU’s Staffing Specialists share on how to successfully identify, interview, and recruit the right talent and align them with the right job.
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