A large part of people’s lives plays out on social networks, from the working-class millennials to the Gen Zs trying to establish themselves in different niches. 

Businesses leverage this young workforce trend on social platforms to hire the best candidates. That’s why 91 percent of employers use social media as part of their social hiring process. 

With its widening advantage, social media recruiting can help you find the best talent for your brand only if you attract candidates the right way.

Not to worry, though. This article discusses six ways to run your recruitment drives and captivate high-talent individuals.

Let’s get into it! 

1. Tap into Right Social Platforms

Every niche has a demographic base with special needs and pain points. For many recruiters, LinkedIn is the first choice for recruiting and job listings; hence, 87 percent of recruiters use the app for vetting candidates. 

However, you can use other social media platforms like Tiktok for younger potential candidates in the 18-34 age group and Facebook for the millennials.

Instagram might also be the best fit to find qualified candidates in design and content creation, while developers might prefer social media platforms like Reddit and Github. 

So, having said all that, how exactly do you pick which social platform is the best for your recruitment efforts?

You must first identify your candidate persona. These quick factors can help you identify ideal candidates:

  • What kind of job does your company offer? 
  • Based on your company’s vision, what type of person would be an exciting hiring candidate? 
  • Are there any specific skills you’re looking out for? 
  • How would you connect with your target candidate? Through a job post, online seminars, or spaces? 

Once you identify your ideal candidates, you’ll know which platform/s will work for your recruitment drive.

2. Use Advanced Features of Social Media Platforms

For every platform you use as your social media strategy, take different approaches to align with the media platforms. 

For instance, Twitter allows you to organize spaces where potential employers can share their views (more on this later). You should take advantage of those when running your recruitment drives on social media for prospective candidates.

Here are some of the advanced features of social media channels you can leverage to get potential applicants:

Tiktok Live

TikTok might be heavy on silly dances and weird challenges. But, you can connect with a relevant audience performing a job search in real-time by using the TikTok live feature. TikTok’s algorithm does the heavy lifting of showing your live or pre-made videos to an ultra-tailored audience based on their interests. 

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You can use this to your advantage by discussing your company and using it as a recruitment strategy like Chili Piper does above.  

Twitter Spaces 

Twitter Spaces are available to everyone on the public platform. Including people who don’t follow you. To get non-followers to join your space, urge your audience to share the link with their network. 

Here’s how a just concluded Twitter Space looks like:

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You may also organize spaces regularly to showcase your company to potential and passive candidates. Or, search candidates’ social profiles and send them the link directly. 

LinkedIn Advanced People Search

This LinkedIn feature provides advanced search capabilities to find your ideal candidates on the platform. 

Utilize the necessary filters like location and industry to build connections as part of the recruitment process. You can also use the LinkedIn sales navigator to find prospective employees using tools like function, group, job level and years of experience.

With Linkedin’s advanced search filters, you have premium flexibility to have a streamlined recruiting process, making your job easier.  

Facebook Job Posting

Facebook uses its platform to showcase job posts on social pages. You can leverage this by sharing job posts on your feed or via messenger. It also has advanced features that tailor your hiring application ads to potential employees.

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However, this feature is currently available to US and Canada employers only.

Employing social media advanced features in your social media recruiting arsenal ups your chances of reaching potential employees.

3.  Showcase Your Company Values and Employee Benefits

Employer branding involves marketing your company’s reputation to build relationships with potential employees. Establish or promote your employer branding efforts on social media by sharing some attractive insights that convey your company’s value.

Google’s Image Equity Fellowship conveys their brand’s value for diversity and original content by rewarding POC mentors and creatives with funding. 

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This showcases the Google employer brand as accommodating and inclusive for people of different races or ethnicity.

Showcase what your employees enjoy, too, when working with you regularly. Share engaging company culture content and training programs regardless of open job roles. This will attract a wider community to your company network and might intrigue active job candidates over a period of time.

Buffer does a good job of this. Check out their post on hiring a Growth product manager and its perks:

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Like Buffer, promoting a job opportunity and its perks attracts non-traditional candidates and helps your business stand out. It can help you generate social media engagements, too. Just look at that massive engagement the Buffer post got with their Growth Product Manager post.

You can give followers a glimpse into what your employees do in the workplace as well. It could be a moment you and your coworkers shared on a workday or a free employee lunch.

See how Hootsuite dedicates a hashtag to give its followers a glimpse of its employees’ moments and company events. 

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Hootsuite has a company culture of keeping social media followers in the loop by sharing images and videos of special events, employee outings and fun treats.

In other words, you need to show you’re a great employer for talent to come to you.

4. Increase Your Reach

Social media can show your company’s culture and attract a candidate pool.  But what happens if you can’t reach potential candidates? There’ll be less engagement and zero chances of netting prospective employees.

So, what do you do? Increase your reach. 

For example, you can buy Tiktok followers or other social media followers to supplement your corporate page’s organic growth. As you grow, keep your social account profile niche-specific and establish connections with professionals in the field.

When it comes to promoting your company network on social media, you can rely on word-of-mouth through your existing employees, too. Employee referrals can help boost and attract the pool of talent you want in your social recruiting. 

Use an employee advocacy program to organize and monitor what your current employees say on their social media accounts and share it on your corporate account.

But all this presupposes, of course, that your employees are happy with your company in the first place. Ask them questions to know what they think of your company culture, send out internal surveys, and organize daily employee interactions for the reviews. 

You can also install small office phone systems to communicate and get these answers directly from your employees.

Ultimately, this research would show aspects of your company policies to focus on and areas for improvement. So that when you improve them, your employees will gladly serve as advocates for the company even on social media.

5.  Measure Your Performance

Measuring your social hiring performance helps you determine the success (or lack thereof) of your social recruiting effort and whether or not your candidate pool is flourishing. 

Find out the effectiveness of your work by constantly tracking critical performance indicators like;

  • Traffic to your company careers site
  • Traffic to third-party job boards
  • Social media page engagement by prospective candidates
  • Number of applications via social media

Finally, measure your efforts in social hiring to set benchmarks that would improve your social recruiting strategies. Make comparisons with the past performance of your social recruiting team to find out things like; attrition rate, average cost per hire, and social channel effectiveness. 

You can use digital metric measuring platforms like EEO dashboards to help you visualize important metrics like hiring feedback, social recruiting strategies, and active participants on social media.

But why is measuring your performance important? Understanding your past performance would help you strategize for future improvement. 

In Closing

Employers seeking the right candidates for their jobs often use social media. It is no longer necessary to use traditional recruiting methods like fax or newspapers; everything is available online now. 

Despite its efficiency, social media recruiting strategies may take some time. However, putting enough time and energy would make the results worthwhile and could surpass expectations. 

Tap into the right social platforms to reach high-potential candidates with engaging corporate culture content. Leverage the advanced features of the platforms you’ve chosen. 

In your posts, showcase your company values and employee culture, too. You want to show your audience you’re a great employer. Also, increase your reach so more people can read your job opening posts. Finally, measure your success regularly to show where you need to put more effort and where you’re thriving. 

Once you get the hang of this, you’ll run recruitment drives on social media that yield the best results.