Attract Engage and Hire with a Branded Social Recruitment Strategy

By Jamie Madsen

Building a successful business today means hiring the best people. This starts with the ways in which you attract candidates, engage them to learn more, and hire the most qualified. However, this can be easier said than done, with the high number of candidates out there searching for work.

By using a well-managed social recruitment strategy that’s aligned with your corporate brand, you can better manage the talent needs of your growing business. There are three critical steps in the pursuit of leading candidates. Let’s take a look.
 

Step 1 – Implementation

Before you can successfully launch your brand using social networking, you will need to develop this brand on all your corporate social media channels. From Facebook to YouTube, create a consistent brand that speaks to the nature of your industry and the unique corporate culture. Then integrate these into your corporate career portal, and make sure your HR and recruitment team is ready. Having a central editorial calendar where the marketing outreach and recruitment team can collaborate is ideal.

Step 2 – Identify

Next you will want to take the time to note the activities that are taking place on your social networks, such as responses from candidates, sharing of posts, and questions and comments that come in.  Monitor all sources of traffic to your corporate website, to identify additional possible areas where you can be networking. This should be an ongoing process of connecting with others in meaningful ways that will attract the best job seekers.

Step 3 – Engage

A key factor in the recruitment of high performance candidates is being able to get them interested in your company and then keeping them engaged. From the time they encounter your company to the way in which you provide valuable content, you will want to use a variety of resources to improve candidate engagement. Speak to their needs with blog posts, webinars, videos, and incentives.

What does social recruiting look like?

As you roll out a social recruitment campaign, you’ll want to focus on the funnel, which is similar to what is used in other forms of internet marketing and sales. As you can see, at the very top of the funnel is a very large population of candidates who are just learning about your company. This is the attraction phase of the social recruiting strategy.

Moving downwards, you’ll note that recruiters use tools to select and screen candidates. These can be part of a Human Resource Management System, or the recruitment team may use some other form of technology to accomplish this. Then at the bottom of the funnel, candidates who best fit the needs of the company are selected, giving them a chance to become part of the corporate team.
 

Is social media useful in recruitment?

According to the JobVite State of Social Recruiting Survey, social media as a recruiting tool was evaluated by hiring managers who had been recruiting in this manner. The results of the survey indicated that:

• 64% of surveyed companies used at least two networks in their recruiting efforts, and 40% used three or more
   
• 55% planned to increase their budgets for social recruiting and 30% for referrals, while only 16% will spend more on job boards
   
• 64% of survey respondents have hired candidates through social networks in 2011
   
• 73% of all social hires came from LinkedIn, 20% from Facebook and 7% from Twitter

In order to get the most from your social media recruiting efforts, remember that it’s important to protect the information of candidates and not use what’s found on social networking sites to decide not to hire them. Put a social recruiting best practice policy into place to get the maximum value from this resource. 

 

Jamie is the manager of marketing at Jobscience and recently graduated with her M.S. in Organizational Development. An innovative, vibrant, hard-working young professional who strives to further her career, explore new horizons, and face new challenges. Industrial Organizational Psychologist with a passion for developing employees, enhancing collaboration, and instituting processes that empower organizations to the highest level of performance. Connect with me on linkedin and let's chat all things talent management!

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