Attracting Talent!

Social media provides an extremely valuable means for both recruiters and organisations to find a host of top talent to fill their available roles. According to research by employee review website Glassdoor, a staggering 79 per cent of job hunters use their social media accounts to seek out greener pastures and better job opportunities.

And another study  by marketing firm Aberdeen Group revealed that 73 per cent of Millennials (aged 18 to 34) found their last role via a social media platform. So what does all of this tell us? That social media isn’t merely a novelty, it is a must-have resource for recruiters to tap into and carve out their staffing strategies.

The likes of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook all provide a wealth of opportunities when it comes to advertising jobs, finding the best candidates, communicating with potential new recruits and promoting company culture. All of which have the added bonus of leveraging your business’s reputation.

This powerful medium is able to to locate and entice the best candidates to review your latest job prospects and, hopefully, decide to forge their career with you. Here, we offer you our top tips to get you started.

Produce compelling content

Allow potential employees to envisage themselves working for a company as wonderful as yours. You can do this by sharing compelling storytelling and dynamic visuals. Social media allows you to lift the lid on your office and working environment, employees, corporate and social activities, interesting projects, awards and any other perks, like cafeterias, games rooms and gyms. This is without doubt a more interesting and inventive way to use social media than merely using it to post relentless and repetitive job openings.

Get employees to share your ethos

Go one step further and harness the people who work for you. They, after all, are the best advocates to authentically share their experience of working for you via social media. Encourage your employees to honestly express what your workplace culture is really like and why it is such a positive place to be through enthusiastic posts, photos and videos.

Engage with your audience

Two-way dialogue is key to social media recruiting as it establishes good relationships with candidates and strengthens your brand’s position. Take the time to engage with your target audience by asking questions, responding to messages, comments and reactions in a timely fashion and avoid using formulaic template replies or messages. This all shows that you care about your followers and gives the impression that you are a considerate employer.

Pick the right platform

There are a lot of social media platforms to choose from, but not all of them will be right for your business and it is simply no good trying to shoehorn them in to your online strategy. The big four - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram - are the usual stock go tos but you really do not have to use them all. The social platform of your choosing quite simply boils down to your candidate persona. If they spend a lot of time on Twitter then that is precisely where you need to be.

Target your audience

Use social media strategically to identify your dream candidates and then create bespoke ads and messages that are designed just for them and speaks to them directly. This level of personalisation is more effective then pushing out generic, bland messaging that targets no one specifically.

Always be willing to connect

It makes sense that the more people you connect with on social, the richer your network will be. Not all of them will necessarily be the right fit for your business or the position which you are currently trying to fill. However, they might know someone who is perfect so accept all follow requests to keep the lines of communication seamlessly flowing.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Use your existing social network to its fullest advantage so that you can reach your preferred candidates. When you have a position to fill or a job opportunity to share, be sure to post it on your own pages and then ask your followers and connections to do so as well. This means that you will drastically increase your reach and, with it, the chances of attracting the perfect person for your current roles.

A study by influencer marketing agency Mediakix study showed that the average person will spend five years of their life on social media. This is why you simply cannot afford to miss out on recruiting in the spaces where people, namely your candidates, wile away so many hours of their free time.