4 Ways to Overcome Social Recruiting Challenges

By Cheryl Morgan

Social recruiting is one of the most recent, yet now undeniable, ways of finding candidates for any job position. Although its benefits are numerous, its inevitable obstacles discourage some human resources managers from using this powerful tool. However, even with the challenges you may face, you should not be dissuaded from giving social recruiting a try.
 

Transparency Requirements

Today's social media users are savvy and sophisticated. They can easily see through a company's account that was created solely for recruitment purposes and won't pay much attention to an account that doesn't otherwise serve their needs. Potential candidates will want to know the intimate details about your company and what it's like to work there day in and day out. Transparency is a must in social recruiting.

The solution for the transparency requirement in social recruiting is to be honest with your followers. It's possible to post about both the good and the bad of your company while still painting its image in a positive light overall. Talk about the company culture and discuss your expectations for new hires.


Make it easy for candidates to access job posts.
 

Easy Access

Whether you have primary company accounts with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or other social media pages, many of your followers will be perusing your posts on the go. They need easy access to whatever you post. Don't link them to pages that contain big blocks of text or make it difficult to access detailed information about the open position. In order to overcome this hurdle, make it easy for them to apply for jobs and have a way for them to easily upload attachments.
 

Limited Instant Gratification

In order for social recruiting to be truly successful, it takes a long-term commitment. You are unlikely to have a great deal of instant success with it. In order to reap the full rewards of social recruiting, you need to have patience and persistence. However, there are some tried and true ways that you can enjoy some of the more instant rewards of social media recruiting.

You need to make sure to post regularly; in fact, you should aim to post a couple of times each weekday on all profiles, with the exception of Twitter, where you ideally want to be doing 6-8 posts a day. Make all posts relevant and valuable to your followers. For example, if you are targeting sales professionals, you can be sharing things like links to content on improving your sales technique, images from your sales team recent away day, a blog from one of your sales team about what it's like to work there etc.
 

The Need to Do It All

It can be tempting to try to do all of your social media posts by yourself as part of your social recruiting process. It is nearly impossible to put the full concentration in curating useful content to your followers while also keeping your eye on your social recruiting goals. Enlist the help of a social media manager or a social media expert to help fill your account with useful content in addition to the recruiting posts that you need to make.
 

Conclusion

You are likely to find that these are some of the most common obstacles to your social recruiting endeavors. If you follow these strategies, you can soon be leaving them in the past. If you feel that you need assistance in order to make social recruiting a success for your organisation then take a look at the monthly business plans offered by Social-Hire.