How Social Media is Changing Recruitment Marketing

In today’s ultra-competitive talent market, staying at the top of candidates’ minds means meeting them where they are. And it’s usually on social media! As Generation-Z, the largest group to ever enter the job market, makes their way into workplaces around the world, almost all are dependent on mobile devices and social media. This trend isn’t slowing down, and the industry is evolving just to keep up with it.

Social media isn’t just something to check off the TA to-do list. It’s a critical tool recruiters can (and must!) use to maximise their talent inflow and reach passive candidates. The advantages of job advertising on social media are endless. If done well, they can plug your company into the epicenter of an entire digital universe where candidates are already engaging.

In this piece, we’ll take a look at what those advantages are, which channels are most popular for engaging passive candidates, and how using social media can help you win over higher-quality candidates at a lower cost than the outdated methods of the past.

The Pros of Recruiting Via Social Media 

• Increased visibility. With over 1 billion active daily Instagram users, 1.79 billion active daily Facebook users and 706 million LinkedIn members, the potential for using social media to reach a larger candidate audience is massive! 
• Constant presence with top talent. If you’re trying to stay at the top of candidates’ minds, it’s time to tap into the platforms they use most. By researching your target demographic and funneling content and job ads through those channels, you create constant ways to engage passive candidates.
• Reduced cost of hire. Social media advertising is significantly less costly than traditional recruitment methods. 
• Easier referrals. A major part of social media is sharing content. This means job advertisements can travel across the digital universe between current employees and their family members, friends, former colleagues, fellow group members, etc. without relying only on word-of-mouth.

Six Solid Reasons to Use Social Media Recruiting 

Here are six reasons why using social media as a recruitment marketing idea might benefit your company: 

1. Engage Passive Candidates 

Smart, experienced, highly-sought-after candidates who are not actively seeking employment don’t typically log onto job boards. A great way to get them to notice your company is to target them on social media where they already have an established presence.  

2. Post Targeted Social Media Ads 

Targeted social media ads can help you connect with candidates across a wide range of demographics, and each channel offers a variety of benefits to posting them there.

3. Reach a Wider Audience (For Free)

If paid advertising is not your journey, there’s the potential to reach an equally large (but less targeted) audience for free. Every time your company posts a job listing, you create another opportunity for that content to be shared across the digital universe. If you can get your coworkers to share, comment and like your post you’ll also significantly increase the visibility of your post.

4. Match Candidate Personas With Their Ideal Channel

Depending on your industry or desired candidate persona, you can power up your social media recruiting strategy by choosing the platforms your potential candidates use the most. You can even take advantage of built-in insight tools to perfect your job ads with measurable KPIs.

5. Boost Your Employer Brand

An added bonus of recruiting on social media is boosting your employer brand. Once you’ve caught your ideal candidate’s attention, you can use it to show off what makes your company different.

Whether it’s an outside-the-box culture, the freedom to be flexible with work or an epic headquarters—social media is one of the easiest ways to present your organisation in the best possible light.

6. Make Your Recruiting Efforts Easy to Measure 

Using social media for job advertising means being able to measure your success! The main metrics that help you do this are:

• Volume measures how many people are mentioning your employer brand (@yourcompany and #yourcompany). This is crucial for spreading your reach far and wide to passive candidates. It also helps you see who is talking about you. Are they your target candidate audience? If not, it might be time to switch your social media approach.
• Reach measures how many people are talking about you. Organic reach measures the number of people who saw your post. Viral reach measures how many people have seen it as a result of sharing. Paid reach measures the number who saw it from a promoted social post.
• Engagement, measures how people are interacting with your brand across all social networks. The more engagement your company has, the higher your viral reach will be, the more passive candidates you’ll access on a daily basis.
• Influence is the result of a long game of engagement. Once you’ve influenced your candidate audience, you can steer the conversation and consistently drive value to it.
• Conversion, the most important metric of all, since it measures how many of your candidates actually applied. It can also be an indicator of how well your application process is working. If your ad has high reach and engagement but a low conversion rate it might be time for you to take a closer look at your career site and try to find out why candidates leave your site before applying for a job.