10 Social Media Recruiting Techniques for Recruiters

By Gaurav Sharma

The recruitment landscape is rapidly shifting. In recent years, Headhunter tools and social media recruiting techniques have opened a whole new horizon for recruiters to find the right talent.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were more than 11.3 million job openings in the US at the beginning of 2022. It is an extremely tough ask for the hiring industry and recruiters are constantly looking for ways to hire the best talents in minimum time. 

That's where social media has presented itself as a viable solution. In fact, CareerArc says 62% of employers post all their job openings on social media expecting to find the most suitable candidates. 

An equally interesting fact is that social media platforms are the ‘go-to’ option for 86% of job seekers looking for new jobs.

These numbers are enough to convince you that social media recruiting is a highly potential market. You can get the right talent but it depends on how you recruit good-fit talents for your organization. It's a great medium for generating leads for recruitment agencies that deal in core technical recruitment such as aviation recruitment, design engineer recruitment, civil engineering recruitment, and automotive recruitment.

With a cohesive social media marketing strategy, you can leverage the power of social media.

And that’s exactly what I am going to discuss in this post. Let us dig deep and understand what social media recruiting techniques you need to adopt to find the most suitable candidates with minimal investment. 

Let’s get going. 

What is Social Media Recruiting? 

In simple words, social media recruiting is a process of using social media platforms for recruiting.

Social media recruiting is a strategy to find and hire candidates through social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on. It also includes discussion forums and job boards where employers can easily get in touch with a larger pool of talents.

Social media recruiting techniques are drastically different from traditional hiring methods and are proving to be extremely beneficial. Through social media, recruitment businesses can reach out to passive candidates, target the right talents, gain more referrals and build their online reputation. 

The effectiveness of social platforms as recruiting channels is totally understandable. As the millennials and Gen Z spend a majority of their time on social media, it is easier to engage and hire them on these digital platforms. It is the best place to launch a recruitment strategy to attract a high volume of applicants for your recruitment process.

Generally, social media recruiting techniques have two major goals - build brand authority and attract high-quality talents. To reap excellent ROI from social media recruiting techniques, you need to use a combination of strategies to interact regularly with passive candidates. 

Account-base recruitment marketing is a new trend in the recruitment industry to hire the best-fit talent for your account-based marketing campaigns. It helps businesses to build a specialist team for each marketing strategy.

10 Social Media Recruiting Techniques You Should Take Note Of 

To get better-recruiting results on social media, you need to adopt the most effective strategies. Following are the 10 social media recruiting techniques you can adopt to find and hire the right candidates on social media. 

1. Build Your Company’s Reputation Online

Social media is a crowded place and to become a well-known company that everyone wants to work for, you need to work on building your online reputation. 

Tell your potential candidates why they should work with you? What do you have to offer to them? For this, you can elaborate on your working culture and individual performance monitoring for remotely working teams to track and learn how to improve their performance if they are lacking.

For example: Google, in this post, is showcasing its newest office which is taking sustainability to a whole new level. Such posts inspire top talents to work for the company. 

Image Source - Instagram

Remember, today’s generation lays equal emphasis on a company's values and ethics as much as on the pay package. Connect with them emotionally and work towards becoming an authority in your industry. 

2. Choose the Right Platforms 

Social media platforms are quite diverse. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and so on are distinct in one way or the other. 

As a recruiter or a business, you need to understand the demography of each social channel. Choose the ones that are most likely to be used by the candidates you are looking for. Smart application of such social media marketing techniques will help accelerate your hiring process.

Let's say you are looking to hire a senior manager-level candidate. You are more likely to find such professionals on LinkedIn rather than on Instagram. While choosing the social platforms, also keep in mind the industry, professions, and education level of candidates. 

What's more?

Once you've found the candidates, you also need to take them through a thorough vetting process. It's also critical to ensure that you ask them the right questions while interviewing them. This would ensure that you've got the best candidate possible for the post of the social media manager.  

Before conducting a face-to-face interview, you need to think clearly, getting a good night's sleep is vital and make a quick call with your prospects using business phone providers or implement VOIP to check their voice test if you are hiring for your customer support team.

3. Tailor Your Message for Each Platform 

Now, each of the social platforms you choose to be active on is distinct and so should be your message for each platform. 

When you are inviting job applications on LinkedIn, your tone should be more professional and formal. On the other hand, a more informal and creative pitch works better for platforms like Instagram or Pinterest.

This is one of the effective social media recruiting techniques to make your job postings stand out. 

4. Invest in Video Marketing 

Do you know that 86% of companies utilize video as an effective marketing tool? 

What’s the reason? 

Videos engage the viewers, get them excited, and nudge them to take action.

If video is that powerful a medium, why not use it to connect with your potential candidates? Video can be used as one of the most powerful social media recruiting techniques in multiple ways. 

Microsoft is running “The Meet-Up” video campaign where their employees share their unique stories.

Image Source - Facebook 

You can create videos of campus tours, employee testimonials, and so on to give your potential candidates a glimpse of your work culture. You can even take time to create videos where you can answer some of the most asked questions about your organization and bond with your followers.

5. Pick the Right Hashtags 

Hashtags are a powerful way to grab the attention of your target audience. But in recruitment, generic hashtags wouldn’t be enough. You need to come up with industry-specific and profile-specific hashtags that can quickly help you narrow down your talent search. 

You can simplify this task by using a keyword research tool like Semrush to find the most relevant keywords in your industry. Coming up with the right hashtags is just the initial stage of the task. You should then weave quality content and posts around the hashtags to get them trending. With such social media recruiting techniques, you can easily attract more job seekers to your social media page. 

6. Add Fun to the Mix 

Recruitment is a serious and grueling task. But that doesn't mean your social posts have to be serious too. By adding a bit of fun to the mix you can showcase the lighthearted side of your brand. 

While you are focusing on recruiting the right talents, adding a few fun posts every now and then will help you bond well with your followers and gain visibility. 

Think out of the box to make your job posts witty and funny to get your readers thinking. It may be a small thing, but it can help you get the ball rolling. 

7. Leverage the Power of Employee Advocacy 

One of the core purposes of social media marketing is to expand your reach. But you don't have to struggle alone on this journey. Get your employees to join hands with you to make your social recruitment process more effective. In this process, you can leverage the best employee advocacy tools to get more results.

You can ask your employees to repost or share open positions on their personal profiles. Encourage them to refer their friends and connections to apply for the vacancies you have. 

When your employees advocate for you on social media, it acts as social proof. This kind of content is more trusted by the readers than branded content and it also helps boost your credibility as an employer. Provide certain communication guidelines to your employees to maintain the post standard. Along with that, your employees could use a few tips to improve productivity that can help them participate in such programs more effectively.

And don’t forget to reward your employees for their efforts and build a sense of belonging within the company. 

8. Publish Quality Content 

Remember, your social media posts reflect your brand values and culture. No matter the kind of posts you share, you can not afford to post mediocre ones. 

Come up with a good mix of information, promotion, and fun in your posts that the readers can easily connect with. Your content needs to be free of errors, polished, and should not offend the public sentiments. 

Get your hands on top advertising tools which can help you create top-notch ad copies in quick time. Along with regular image posts, you can include videos, infographics, how-to guides, contests, podcasts, and user-generated content to bring in variety.

9. Invest in Social Media Advertising

Paid promotions are one of the best social media recruiting techniques to reach out to the candidates who may still not be following you. If you do not have an in-house marketing team, you should consider hiring a full-service marketing firm to drive your social media recruiting campaigns. 

Now with paid media management on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media platforms you can reach a larger and highly targeted audience base. Based on your recruitment requirements, you can select the kind of social media ads you want to invest in and reap amazing ROI. 

10. Connect with Potential Candidates in a Personalized Way

Your social media recruiting techniques should go beyond regular posts if you want to attract quality content. You can start by being quick in responding to queries and comments on social media. Address your respondents personally and stick to a courteous tone. For example, if you are looking to hire a data analyst then you can approach candidates who have good knowledge about generating annual reports, charts, and expert in data visualization.

You can offer a personalized relaxed approach to your upcoming talents from multiple locations and provide the chance to work in a central location. It will help you to attract the right talents for your organization.

Direct messages can be used to provide all the relevant information the candidates are looking for. Take your interaction with the right candidates to the next level with email marketing and speed up the recruitment process. Thus, by connecting with your potential candidates in a personal way, you can establish a strong bond and boost your reputation too. 

Are You Ready to Adopt the Top Social Media Recruiting Techniques? 

As I wrap up this list of the latest social media recruiting techniques, let me tell you there is no magical formula to finding the right talent on social media. 

It certainly will take time and a lot of effort. But the recruiters who are already using social media for hiring are reaping great results. 

That's why I would encourage you to go ahead and invest your time and energy to implement these social media recruiting techniques. A highly potential pool of talents is waiting for you.

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