Are You Making These Social Recruitment Mistakes?

By Cheryl Morgan

Share on: 

Social networks play an increasingly important role in talent recruitment. It makes sense: LinkedIn is a huge CV database that allows recruiters to search for, contact, and vet job candidates, and Facebook can be a terrific platform for showcasing a company's brand and gain referrals. A 2013 survey found that 15 new jobs were posted to Twitter each minute, (over 650,000 per month) and that rate was expected to increase to 2 million per month in 2014. 

Social recruitment
Recruiters and job candidates alike are seizing the opportunities social recruitment offers.

Social recruitment, however, isn't magic. You can't simply start blasting your Twitter feed with job postings and expect to get results. Social media is all about give and take, and even large enterprises are expected to engage with their followers and fans on social media. Consistency and quality of posts are critical, and development of a cohesive voice across social platforms is necessary for social recruitment success. In addition to knowing what to do, you have to know what not to do. Take the time to make sure you're avoiding the following social recruitment mistakes.
 

Having Lacklustre Social Profiles

Your social media profiles should offer a professional image of yourself or your company and should demonstrate to potential followers that there is something to be gained by following you. In the careers and recruiting sectors, this means promising insights that help recruiters and candidates further their careers. Naturally, your posts should reinforce this.

Profiles are concise sales pitches, and should include a brief statement about your niche and what followers can expect if they add you. A brief call to action should appear with your contact details. You can bolster your Twitter profile by pinning one of your most valuable Tweets to the top, to offer instant value to the person reading it.

Profiles should also have visual appeal. Use professional, aesthetically pleasing images that look good even when shrunk for use on mobile devices. Cover photos should also be professional looking and should coordinate with your overall brand. Imagery surrounding your logo should harmonise visually and conceptually.

 

Broadcasting Without Engaging

The word "broadcasting" comes from a method of sowing seeds by casting them about broadly. It may get excellent results if weather and soil conditions are right, or it may get poor results, say if a flock of birds discovers the bounty you've just distributed. Once broadcasting is done, care of the medium (soil) is required for best results. This is analogous to broadcasting on social media.

Social recruiting
Social media produces the best results when there is engaging give and take among users.

Not only must you time your posts to maximise chances of reaching your target audience, you have to work the medium once your posts are out there. That means engaging with other users, commenting on their posts, and joining relevant discussions. You cannot simply disgorge information, but should be a useful member of the network. The more engaged you are, the more likely your posts are to be shared, multiplying your reach. 

 

Not Coordinating Posts to Effectively Capture Your Corporate Culture

Effective social recruitment requires that your social media profiles and posts reflect your corporate culture. Social platforms can function as virtual worldwide water coolers, around which discussions form and through which your brand message spreads. Some companies let their employees help sell the company to potential talent using social media. When done in a professional manner with a genuine tone, it can be very effective.

Company management should set the tone and set a good example for social media posts. Everyone who posts should be on the same page conceptually, even though message content will vary based on point of view. Job candidates prefer hearing from a range of corporate voices so they can gain more well-rounded insight into companies they may be interested in.

 

Not Having a Social Recruitment Strategy

Perhaps the biggest social recruitment mistake is not having a social recruitment strategy in the first place. Typing the 140 characters that make up a Tweet doesn't take long, but making the best use of those characters and knowing how to time posts correctly takes skill, practice, and attention to social media analytics. Social media posts are too important to leave to an intern or to tack onto the workload of a busy professional. 

Social-Hire is a social media marketing agency focused exclusively on the recruitment industry, and every day we help companies like yours develop and deploy savvy, effective social media strategies. We can help you reach and engage with your target audience online and achieve your goals. Why not contact us to set up a consultation about your social media strategy? We would be delighted to hear from you.

About the company...

We won't just do social media strategies. Social Hire will work collaboratively with your team to ensure your business gets genuine value from us and that your team gets the most out of the service. Our experienced social media managers are motivated to make a enhancements to your social media marketing and reaching targets in a way that realistically makes a difference to your business goals.

The social media marketing team in our company are the best in the business at helping our partners enhance their online marketing. We create and implement original social media marketing plans that help our customers accomplish their organisational objectives and build up their online footprint.

Our specialists are a company that assists our customers further their presence online by giving online marketing on a regular basis.

You might like these blog posts 5 Twitter Tips for Better Marketing, 3 Tips on How to Use the Power of Color Psychology in Your Web Design, 4 Social Media Marketing Tips to Grow Your Small Business, and 10 Surefire Tips for Getting Email Responses.

  Back to Recruitment blogs