Five Social Media Recruiting Tips for Better Hires

153999235Eventually, every trend becomes just another facet of daily life. There was a point in time when the smartphone was cutting edge technology, now there are more mobile devices on Earth than people. The same is true of new recruiting methods for finding the best people for your clients.

Once upon a time, the idea of social media recruitment was shiny and new. Everyone was talking about how to use this new form of communication to find great people for open positions.

As the CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing startup, I’ve had a lot of experience using social media to hire. I’ve had a lot of trial-and-error along the way, but each experience finding a new great person for my company has taught me a lesson on how to leverage social recruitment.

Now, with about 94 percent of recruiters actively using social media to connect with job seekers, it’s hard to see social recruiting as the newest trend. Social media in the hiring process is here to stay.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Webinar replay: Improve Hiring Efficiency & Quality with Reference-Checking

So what are the best practice lessons I’ve learned, and how can you use them to impress your clients with great hires? Here are five ways to leverage social media to find the top candidates your clients need:

1. Use talent communities. Talent communities exist anywhere online where smart job seekers gather. It could be a Twitter chat, a LinkedIn discussion, or even a Facebook group. These talent communities are breeding grounds for smart discussions and outside-the-box ideas. It’s where your best and brightest candidates go to network, share advice, and talk about the industry. And if you want to find top talent for your clients, it’s where you should be as well.

For instance, I would often take part in Twitter chats about the job search allowing me to connect with talented job seekers looking for advice. As an extra bonus, talent communities can work as excellent filler for your company’s talent pipeline. When a new position comes along, now you know exactly the right candidate for the job.

2. Connect with passive candidates. Passive candidates are busy candidates, which makes them desperately hard to pin down. You might not have the time to convince a passive candidate to look for new opportunities, but using social media you can build a relationship with these busy movers and shakers. This way, when a great job comes along, they’ll be more likely to listen to your wise counsel.

Best of all, because social media can be viewed and updated from an office or on the road from a mobile device, the busy passive candidate never has to pause to connect with you.

3. Share your positions. Social media isn’t just great for connecting with candidates, it’s also a great way to open up a two-way dialogue and help job seekers connect with you. Using social media, you can promote job openings and give interested job seekers a chance to find great positions.

When hiring for my company, I used Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote new openings. I also used these social channels to post pictures of company outings and give candidates a view into the company culture. As a staffing professional, it’s a great idea to use social media to promote your client’s company culture and unique selling points, making their jobs more attractive to the best candidates.

4. Integrate social with other technology. A great benefit of social media being everywhere? Now it’s easier to integrate almost every aspect of your recruiting life with social media. You can make it easy for great job candidates to refer their talented friends by tweeting or sharing your open jobs.

You can use social media to invite job seekers to a preliminary video interview so no one has to waste time coming into the office. You can even work social into your mobile optimization strategy, making it easy for candidates to promote your openings while they apply for your jobs.

Social media now touches almost every aspect of our technological lives, and it should be this way for your recruiting process if you want your social strategy to truly work.

5. Utilize keywords and hashtags. Talented job seekers can’t apply for your client’s jobs if they can’t find these jobs. Think like a search engine optimizer and make sure you focus on keywords when drafting job descriptions and posting to social channels. Before you tweet or post your job on Facebook and LinkedIn, do some research.

A little homework will go a long way towards finding the best people. Discover what keywords your top talent is searching for and find out if there are any relevant hashtags you should use to make your positions easily searchable. The more intuitive you make it for job seekers to find your positions, the wider your candidate pool to find the perfect hire.

Just like I used social recruiting to find great people for my growing company, your clients will be looking to you for guidance using social channels to connect with great people. If you use social media correctly, you’ll be able to integrate with other new technology, connect more personally, and impress your clients by delivering the best people.

What do you think? How do you use social media to find great people? Share in the comments!

MORE: How Facebook is changing the way staffing firms source candidates

 

Josh Tolan

Josh Tolan
Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing platform. Learn more about using video interviews for staffing and connect with Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

Josh Tolan

Share This Post

Tweet

Related Articles

5 Responses to “Five Social Media Recruiting Tips for Better Hires”

  1. […] “Talented job seekers can’t apply for your client’s jobs if they can’t find these jobs. Think like a search engine optimizer and make sure you focus on keywords when drafting job descriptions and posting to social channels”. – The Staffing Stream […]

  2. James Lisbon says:

    Wow Josh, it is interesting to consider that social media is making the finding and recruiting process more streamlined.  I liked tip number three when you talked about sharing positions online.   It probably would not only open up possibilities for jobs, but it could be a two-way street for communication as well.  There seem to be many different ways of recruiting people for work and other things, but it would probably depend on a business’ needs.  http://www.candidateprep.com

  3. […] Eventually, every trend becomes just another facet of daily life. There was a point in time when the smartphone was cutting edge technology, now there are more mobile devices on Earth than people.  […]

  4. […] Once upon a time, the idea of social media recruitment was shiny and new. Now, with about 94 percent of recruiters actively using social media to connect with job seekers, social media in the hiring process is here to stay. Josh Tolan lists social media recruiting tips for better hires in a new blog post in The Staffing Stream. Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire. To read the post, click here. […]

  5. […] “Integrate social with other technology.” Now here’s a tip we can all agree on! It’s why we make our “job-sharing buttons so easy to find. […]

Powered by staffingindustry.com ·