The One Mistake Every Recruiter is Making on Social Media and How to Avoid It

By Tony Restell

There are many reasons you're not getting the results you'd like to be getting from social media. One of those reasons is easy to fix - but I can say with near certainty that you haven't acted on this yet. How can I say that - well because our day to day interactions with the recruiting industry demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of recruiting teams and recruitment businesses are guilty!
 

I'll get to this flaw in just a minute, but first let me ask you a couple of questions:
 

• Does your company spend any money (or invest any of your team's time) trying to attract candidates - or client leads - for your business?
   
• Has it become second nature that you track these investments to monitor where your team generates the most positive results?

I'm sure you'll have answered yes to the first question - and I'm guessing that you answered yes to the second one too. Collectively we've certainly become a lot more rigorous in tracking our spend and the return it brings. Or have we?

The answer explains in part the poor results your recruiting team are getting from social media. It explains why social media hasn't turned into a significant source of candidate traffic for your recruiting team. It explains why social media hasn't become an important source of new client leads for your recruitment business.

Here's the rub. Recruiters have embraced a wide range of data over the last two decades. We know how much a shortlist candidate costs to generate on each of the job boards we use. We know our sources of hire - and the time to hire and cost of hire for each. We probably know the relative performance of different recruiters on our team. We know our retention figures by source of hire. We know the ROI on our LinkedIn licences. The list could go on...

The glaring omission here is social media effectiveness. In all other areas of recruiting we've rigorously tested what works and what doesn't work; we've tweaked and refined what we do to squeeze ever greater results from our investment. Yet almost universally, this is not yet the case with social media.

If you're building a social media presence for your recruiting team, you should be thinking about this like a sales funnel and then tweaking and refining every element of the sales funnel. You have an audience you would like to reach - and an end result that you're hoping to achieve with your social media presence. Every element in between ought to be being tested and refined:
 

• What message in your profile bios generates the highest conversion rate (of new fans or followers)?
   
• What types of updates generate the most comments, likes and reshares on your profiles and in your niche market?
   
• Which methods of getting your profiles seen by new candidates or client leads are proving to be the most effective?
   
• What engagement activity generates the most interactions with prospective candidates or clients for your recruiting business?
   
• What "call to action" is most effective at converting those potential prospects into more tangible leads for your recruiting team?
   
• Is the immediate result you're striving for from social media (eg. applications to your open job vacancies) even the right one, or would a different end result (eg. driving candidate registrations for your email newsletter) actually produce a far higher conversion rate?
   
• How do these sales funnel conversion rates differ by social site - and therefore which social sites are producing the most favourable returns for your recruiting team?

Right now I imagine you'll be nodding your head that your recruitment processes are typically monitored and refined with this level of attention to detail. But equally you'll be conceding that in the sphere of social media this is not yet the case. Correct? So as a first step in raising your game, start tracking and testing on social media and I'm in no doubt you'll see a significant upturn in your results. You'll probably also have a lot of fun and make some surprising discoveries along the way about how best you can engage your audience and drive positive ROI for your team.

Need help putting these ideas into practice? The Social-Hire team can certainly help. Why not jump on one of our next webinars for more insights about how we get results for clients? Or book in a call with our team to talk through your own experiences with social media and the results you would like us to help you generate.