case study on social media recruitment

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Home > Books > Social Media and Journalism - Trends, Connections, Implications

Social Media and Technology Trends in HRM: Cases in Recruitment and Talent Management

Submitted: 02 February 2018 Reviewed: 06 June 2018 Published: 31 October 2018

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.79342

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Human resource management practices have evolved over the years to align with shifts in technology, economy, globalization, talent diversity and business strategy, with practices intended to solve business problems. Increased globalization, competition and the pressure for speed and innovation mandates differentiated HR practices which enable attracting, motivating, and retaining a talented workforce, a factor critical to business success. While employees have embraced digital and social media for increased communication and collaboration, opportunities of leveraging the rich information available on social media platforms for HR practices have emerged. The of use of human capital analytics is becoming a powerful tool available to the HR fraternity, as data driven insights have demonstrated impressive business results. The latest of these trends is the leveraging of social media combined with technology solutions and embracing digitization of various HR processes. The present research presents three case studies that illustrate how technology solutions and data insights have transformed talent acquisition, learning and talent management practices within HR functions in India. The cases demonstrate the how the technological advances and increase usage of social media is likely to have significant implications for talent management processes of the firms in the near future.

• talent management
• social media
• HR analytics
• talent development
• predictive analytics

Author Information

Debolina dutta *.

• Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur, India

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

The rapid pace of technological changes and globalization are simultaneously acting on each other and compounding their effect on the pace of change. The net result has been a pace of change resembling a spiraling vortex that has increasingly challenged individuals’ and organizations’ ability to adapt to the same. With technological changes leapfrogging ahead, the access to Internet also changed the way information was produced, received and consumed over the world. The biggest transformation in media communication was from the unidirectional consumption mode of communication changed to multi-creator and multi-user bi-directional communication. Conventional print media continued to see steady decline with sales reduction from2.1 billion copies in 2000 to less than 1.4 billion copies in 2010 [ 1 ]. With commoditization of information and multiple media platforms through which consumers and other stakeholders accessed information, organizations were forced to re-think the way conventional communication could be effected with their relevant stakeholders. While multiple examples exist within the realm of co-creation for product development or marketing, human resource functions still struggled to come to terms with the changing ways communicating with and engaging their current and potential workforce.

Human resource management practices have evolved over the years to align with shifts in technology, economy, globalization, talent diversity and business strategy [ 2 ], with practices intended to solve business problems [ 3 ]. The resource-based theory has been the guiding paradigm influencing strategic HRM research [ 4 ]. Increased globalization, competition and the pressure for speed and innovation mandates differentiated HR practices which enable attracting, motivating, and retaining a talented workforce, a factor critical to business success. This becomes critical, since sustainable competitive advantage obtained from people and people practices, as argued by resource-based theory, have been weakened by globalization and environmental changes [ 5 ]. While employees have embraced digital and social media for increased communication and collaboration, opportunities of leveraging the rich information available on social media and technology platforms for HR practices have emerged which indicate a potential to change the dynamic capabilities of organizations [ 6 ]. For HR functions, leveraging of technology solutions and embracing digitization of various HR processes therefore becomes critical.

The “war for talent” [ 7 ] continues, with organizations trying to identify high quality individuals who not only meet the functional and technical needs of the jobs, but also demonstrate a fit with the organizations values. Simultaneously, research on employee recruitment continues with multiple studies addressing recruitment objective, strategies, intervening job applicant variables and recruitment activities and processes [ 8 ]. However, a limitation of some of the recent recruitment method research has been the emphasis on post-hire outcome (e.g. performance, turnover) rather than pre-hire outcomes (which approaches generate better applicants)—something that is of critical interest to organizations seeking high quality talent. In this context, it becomes extremely crucial for HR practices to evolve more broad based recruiting methods to discover skilled applicants required to support organizational growth. Furthermore, targeted recruitment (whom to recruit, where to recruit, etc.) has also attracted little attention from researchers, and the need for research on targeted recruitment [ 9 ] and the use of data science and intelligence tools within human resources has been emphasized [ 10 ].

In the present chapter, the case studies of three firms of India are discussed which are aiding and enabling talent management. Two of the cases demonstrate how people analytics utilizing predictive analysis measures is transforming talent acquisition and workforce planning in the emerging markets of the world and the resulting impact on HR functions within organizations. The third case discusses new approaches in leveraging technology for building efficiencies in the recruitment process. While there has been considerable research on e-recruitment and its drivers, there is need for research documenting the latest trends in the use of technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning for supporting external recruitment. These cases demonstrate the state-of-the-art technology available to recruiters to enhance the operational efficiency, agility, and quality of applicant hired in their recruitment process, and illustrate the way social media and technology is being used to hire both efficiently, in terms of reduction in resources consumed, and effectively, in terms of finding a fit between the person and the organization. The new ways of communicating with talent, quantifying and systematizing through technology, the complex human decision making process related to employee-organization fit, are demonstrated. The implications that emerge from these trends in talent acquisition is that technology is likely to revolutionize the HR organization by possibly creating redundancies within the applicant attraction process of recruitment or at an extreme view, disintermediate the talent acquisition function as a whole.

2. E-recruitment and talent acquisition using social media

Electronic recruitment processes which involve hiring of candidates over the internet, talent management techniques for identification, tracking, evaluation, and selection of personnel increasingly are being adopted widely for acquisition of human resources in organizations today. These practices have been a matched by an exponential increase of social networking sites for recruitment purposes, which may have been prompted by cost efficiencies or talent scarcity [ 11 ]. The advantages of e-recruitment over traditional channels have been well documented, such as economy of time and money, larger candidate pool, and ease of use for both the recruiter and the candidate. E-recruitment led to improvement in time to hire and quantity of hire, by improving outreach to potential candidates, and scanning information across a wide range of sources, to lead to a better fit with the organization.

Online recruitment has the advantage of reciprocal communication, where the candidate and the recruiter may communicate with each other at minimal cost. While the advantages of the e-recruitment processes are significant, there are also several challenges that online hiring brings. The launch and maintenance costs of online hiring systems are high, and it requires hiring of personnel competent in dealing with the technology. Secondly, the number of candidates obtained through job boards is often extremely large, making optimal scanning difficult. Thirdly, there are also concerns of breach of confidential data and security, as platforms might store resumes for later references.

Various organizations may adopt differentiated strategies and tactics while embracing social media and e-recruitment. These are broadly classified under the pillars of building employer brand , building relationships (for current or future requirement) , active recruitment for vacancies or new job roles , and finally cost optimization [ 12 ]. Lastly, we assess the influence of these emerging trends on the pillars defining strategies and tactics adopted for social media and e-recruitment.

Case study research focuses on the latest practices in a field, to better understand processes not well explored and to generate theories out of them. The present research incorporates three case studies on use of social media, E-recruitment and big data analytics for facilitating talent acquisition. All three organizations selected are involved in providing recruitment services to firms—using online resources. Each study demonstrates a different approach and demonstrates the latest trends in the e-recruitment domain in the emerging markets of the world.

Case 1: This case focuses on the people analytics solutions marketed by the firm Belong.co, with reference to recruitment, the unique features of these offerings and their implications.

Case 2: This case focuses on asynchronous recruitment solution offered by Talview which brings in efficiencies into the recruitment process through better pipeline management, keeping actively engaged applicants refreshed and enable better fit with the organization.

Case 3: This case deals with a job portal iimjobs.com , positioned to attract high caliber applicants. The organization then used the large data pool of applicants to build intelligence around talent availability. The intelligence made available to HR enables better talent management.

A total of 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted in all, with 7 interviews each spanning over 2 hours conducted at firms 1 and 2. In firm 3, 8 semi-structured interviews were conducted, each spanning about 1.5–2 hours. The interviewees selected were either key position holders in the firms and subject matter experts on the product offering and value demonstrated or were members of the founding team of these firms. The author also interviewed seven members of the user community (HR and Talent acquisition heads), who had subscribed to the offering of these firms, three who were subscribing to Belong and two each who were using Talview and iimjobs.com solution offerings. The purpose of these interviews was to understand both the acceptance of the new solutions being offered and also their perceived value. These interviews spanned between 45 minutes to 1 hour each.

3.1.1. Case 1: Belong.Co

Belong.co [ 13 ] is a Bangalore based startup, which provides hiring solutions using predictive analytics and personalized engagement, which enable firms to identify, meaningfully engage, and recruit top, relevant talent in optimum time. The typical V-funnel of recruitment—represented by large number of applicants sourced through conventional channels, reduced number of candidates deemed fit for the role, and a much smaller number clearing the interview process and final candidate being hired—was found to be tedious and time consuming, with a lot of effort invested to screen, interview and filter out potential fits. Additionally, most applicants were active job seekers, which constituted only 20% of the available talent pool. Discussion with recruiters of multiple organizations reinforced the painstaking process of candidate filtration undertaken by each one.

The organizations unique value proposition was to identify, connect with, and engage the passive talent pool which resulted in hires that were more engaged. Such candidates, selected through individualized consideration and matching, felt that they truly belonged to the organization. Calling this approach “Outbound hiring”, there was also the realization that the best talent was not always available on popular job boards. The founders created a product offering based on machine learning and artificial intelligence, which allowed organizations to “Google Search” not just for skill fit, but also for ideology fit was born. The outbound hiring process is presented in Figure 1 .

Figure 1.

Flipping the recruitment pyramid by Belong.co. Source: https://belong.co/outbound-hiring/ last accessed on 07-01-2018.

In the Belong system, artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms are used to scan publically available information on talent on the internet, to map and suggest profile fits. The data scanned include information that potential candidates put out on a blog, updates on Linkedin or other professional networking profiles, tweets sent, updates on social networking sites like Quora [ 14 ] or Kaggle [ 15 ] (a domain where data scientists hang out), contribution to sites like Github [ 16 ] or Stack overflow [ 17 ], personal websites, or any other public reference to the candidates. The analytics thus helped generate data that was far more comprehensive than a resume, and helped the recruiter identify which pools of talents were to be engaged. Again, based on information such as a potential candidate’s prior employment tenure, or the average duration in the current organization before they would be considered for a role change/promotion, the tool was able to predict their likelihood of responding to an interest eliciting mail. The search results were therefore always customized for a particular job positing or organization, unlike a key-word search for skills, which would throw up the same set of candidate names, irrespective of the organization that was searching for it ( Figure 2 ).

Figure 2.

Prospective resume shortlist, probability of candidate interest and potential fit indication. Source: Company provided information.

The predictive analytics at Belong.co ensured that, unlike the normal talent funnel, the search identified 8–10 potential passive candidates. The recruiter would then shortlist out of these limited set of suggested candidates, thereby freeing up recruiter time and improving their effectiveness. Next, a recruitment bot would send out personalized relevant emails on behalf of the recruiter which would elicit the interest of the passive talent for initiate a conversation with the recruiter and enhance engagement. The customers of Belong.co reported that candidate feedback on the personalized mail reflect the delight in the degree of personal attention and detail demonstrated in the approach. At the same time, recruiters, who saw a significant reduction in their manual effort in sourcing profiles (estimated to be 40% to their time), were delighted in the quality of candidates brought for interviewing, the higher conversion ratio, and the reduction in time to fulfill recruitment mandates.

The effectiveness of outbound hiring were demonstrated in multiple customer success stories [ 18 ], which documented instances of 50% reduction in sourcing time and significant reduction in overall recruitment time, better candidate engagement and better fit in terms of skills, interests and motivations. The value demonstrated by the offering was measured by different industries in terms of fit of hire, cost per hire and quicker demand fulfillment.

3.1.2. Case 2: Talview

Most organizations receive a large volume of unsolicited applicants, most of whom do not find matching opportunities within the organization. The applications of these potential recruits invariably lie unutilized and unscreened within the applicant tracking system or mailboxes of recruiters within organizations. Additionally, each job application tends to receive a large volume of potentially suitable candidates, as deemed by their resume, experience and skill sets. However, most recruiters experience a selection ratio between resumes received and final selection of candidates which could range from 20:1 to 1000:1. A lot of time and effort of recruiters and managers are spent in filtering through the potential set of candidates. Energy is dissipated in trying to arrange mutually convenient schedules for a face to face interview between candidate and interviewer, which could be arranged through technology enabling platforms such as Skype/Facetime, etc. In case physical meeting is to be arranged, travel delays add to the inefficiencies built into the selection process, which could also involve efficiency loss due to scheduling time/effort, synchronizing interview times, travel time and wait for interviews etc.

To solve both these issues and address efficient use of resumes and efficient use of applicant and hiring manager time, a Bangalore based technology firm Talview [ 19 ] introduced an asynchronous cloud based mobile enabled video interviewing platform. Candidates deemed as potential fit for current/future role are sent a link through the platform. Potential applicants could log onto the platform and pre-defined set of questions sequentially from any location and at any time. Once completed, the recorded interviews were then screened by the recruiter and hiring manager at their convenience. The platform also enabled psychometric, aptitude testing and coding testing for potential applicants. Additionally, the gamification feature of assessments made the process engaging for applicants and helped in enhancing employer brand ( Figure 3 ).

Figure 3.

Example of competency based asynchronous video interview using Talview platform.

Organizations using this platform were able to effectively build and manage a passive talent pipeline, efficiently filter through a larger number of applicants and quickly check for fit parameters. With the recorded interviews saved on the cloud, the convenience of candidates and recruiters was aided, ensuring better candidate experience. With over a million applicants assessed through the platform, Talview has an impressive clientele of a large number of fortune 500 companies over 102 countries. The benefits of the platform range from 40% reduction in poor performance of new hires, 50% reduction in cycle time for recruitment and a 70% reduction in campus recruitment costs.

3.1.3. Case 3: iimjobs.com

iimjobs.com [ 20 ] had started as a job portal with a differentiated proposition. The founder Tarun Matta possessed qualification of engineering and management from some of the top institutes of India. Like a lot of his peers from these institutes, he found access to challenging and aspirational jobs difficult. Recruiters typically received a large volume of resumes and found it challenging to sift through and identify good talent. Additionally, candidates were more successful in obtaining desired jobs through referral process. To disintermediate this asymmetry between high caliber talent availability seeking jobs and recruiters looking for high caliber talent, iimjobs.com was born. The name alluded to talent pedigreed from IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management), which were considered the most premier management institutes within India. While a large segment of the applicants on this portal were from these institutes, applicants from other prestigious institutes also started applying on this portal. It additionally allowed applicants to only apply for jobs posted on the portal, and maintained the confidentiality of applicants who applied on it. Resumes of applicants were not openly visible to other recruiters for many years. When iimjobs.com finally opened resume search access, it was restricted only to corporate accounts and not made available to recruitment consultants and search firms. This helped maintain applicant confidentiality, which was a key requirement of high caliber talent.

By 2017, iimjobs.com had built a repository of over a million registered users as job seekers and over 70,000 recruiters using the platform to interact and find suitable fits. While working on database and listings, iimjobs.com got inputs from the clients about the challenges faced in taking talent decisions and discovered opportunities in leveraging this database to yield important job market trends. For instance, when a seeker registered and applied for a job, the system captured everything about their educational background, CVs, salaries (current and expected), etc. This provided an opportunity to synthesize this information and provide recruiters a clear understanding of the trends in the talent landscape for a particular segment or skillset.

A comprehensive visibility of the talent landscape continued to present a challenge for HR professionals, who struggled to identify key talent. Most HR professionals based their understanding of talent trends from some of peers in the industry to get a qualitative sense of the trends in their respective firms. However, organizations desiring quantitative data for decision making desired exact data. This was usually obtained through job market analyses conducted by consulting firms. Obtaining meaningful data tended to be painstaking, costly and a voluminous task for most organizations. Obtaining this kind of data meant mapping an entire industry or associated industries where such talent could be hired from. Additionally, the problem with these kinds of surveys was that the reports they generated were static, while, on the other hand, the actual workforce and talent trends changed dynamically. Finally, most organizations resorted to compensation benchmarking exercises, where specific job families were pegged against market compensation rates to understand and correct internal pay equity. These, compensation benchmarking reports tend to be highly expensive, putting the updated reports out of the reach of many small and mid-sized firms and start-ups.

While planning talent requirements for current/future state of business, the internal factors of talent availability, training capability and reward philosophy were also key factor influencing HR leaders decisions to build or buy talent. While demand/supply of labor presented the external market information, the planning and administering of compensation and reward systems would be influenced by the talent strategy adopted. For instance, inducting new skills/capabilities into the organization would influence the organizations’ definition of key labor competitors, pay positioning with respect to the market, choice and/or expansion of the market basket used for compensation benchmarking, which in turn could dilute the benchmark relevance etc. The HR function was expected to provide informed decisions around costs of hiring/re-locating talent/upskilling talent/attrition trends and costs of attrition for future state talent needs of the organization. Absence of clear and dynamic data made these decisions challenging.

Detailing the offering being made available by iibjobs.com , Matta said.

‘Recruiters and hiring managers are often pushed to fill vacancies, that too with unrealistic specifications and targets. So this tool enables them to know and talk about expectation of talent availability, in a more meaningful manner. They can now say that by relaxing a few parameters we can increase our supply side. It helps them to understand the industry trends and calibrate expectations accordingly’.

The Calculus platform was created by the iimjobs.com team from the data available within the within the job portal The aim was to provide recruiters an interface where they could examine the trends reflected in the existing database of iimjobs.com , to answer their own specific requirements about the talent horizon. The interface of the Calculus was almost similar to that of database search so that recruiters were able to use it easily ( Figure 4 ). All the recruiter needed to do was to define a query—using keywords, position looked for, or/short form/long (bullion operator), company, industry, and other search parameters, such as target, college (Tier 1/2/3), type of course (e.g., full time/part time), batch (e.g., 2010–2014), and notice period (e.g., 3 months).

Figure 4.

Talent demographics of salary, gender and availability on Calculus. Source: Company data.

The automation tool generated a sample set, based on the specifications, and studied the trends reflected in the sample in terms of the query generated. To make the sample representative, the tool removed all the outliers (extremes). Also, to keep the sample set recent, the search results were limited to profiles updated in the last 6 months, thereby revealing the dynamic trends and shifts within technologies, skills and domains.

Compensation: This data point allowed talent management functions to view the current and expected salary trends and understand the range, the mean and median salary; The compensation analytics also indicated gender, age, or experience-wise distributions of salary

Geographical location: This functionality used to determine the talent density in a particular location. It provided visibility to how many professionals of a certain profile are present in a geographical area). This enabled the manager to decide where to open a new branch. It also shows how salaries change as per locations, helping in zone-wise compensation management

Gender diversity: This reflects the gender-related distribution of talent, and its interaction with other factors such as experience, salary, location, notice period, etc.

Average tenure: For most recruiters, tenure of employment was a surrogate measure of expected stability and future attrition. Hence trends information in along skills/functions/age groups helped talent management teams calibrate talent expectations.

Availability index: Based on information provided by the applicant, the expected notice period across different roles/seniorities and functions was also indicated.

Figure 5.

Talent availability basis experience, current and expected compensation and geographical distribution on Calculus. Source: Company data.

Since its launch in mid-2017, Calculus has been well received by the industry. The head of marketing, Amandeep Singh enthused:

‘The feedback, in general, is highly positive for our offerings. HR heads have been telling me that Calculus simplifies their HR decision making a lot and also aids in realistic planning’.

4. Discussion

Key analytical ability and developments in technology are enabling organizations to meet competitive threats and adapt to changing business and technology conditions. The use of machine learning and predictive analytics, combined with large information available on social media is clearly changing the ways recruitment is being done across organizations. With economies arising from large scale enterprise systems, globally connected networks and data available on the cloud, mobile devices enhancing connectivity and greater internet connectivity, globally connected networks and economies arising from large scale enterprise systems, online social graphs, mobile devices and enhanced connectivity, internet of things and open data/public data, Big Data has emerged as a potential solution to disintermediating talent requirement and availability. The ability of the platforms to “link various data streams using appropriately defined unique identifiers” [ 21 ] enables better understanding of candidates behaviors, motivations and expected fit with the organization.

Talent is operationalized into two components: ability component (innate abilities and systematic development) and affective component (which constitutes the motivation to invest and the interest areas). The difference in the various approaches of defining talent is presented in Table 1 .

Table 1.

Talent classification through various approaches.

Talent has also been conceptualized through the exclusive approach is based on the notion of segmentation of the workforce, and proposed talent as an elite subset of the organizations’ population [ 22 ]. The exclusive subject approach focuses on specific employees “who are exceptional in terms of skills and abilities, either in a specific technical area, a specific competency, or a more general area” [ 23 ]. Since talent acquisition focuses on hiring individuals based on their differentiated abilities, skills, competencies and fit to the role and organization, the exclusive subject approach to talent definition becomes relevant.

SHRM literature has no clear theory or principle to guide when and on which organizational pools should be targeted or classified but align with the view that “pivotal talent pools are vital targets for HR investment and leader attention” [ 24 ]. Thus it is important to develop some system of identification and segmentation of talent as it facilitates the ability to strategize organizational actions to attract or develop the talent pool [ 25 ]. All three cases demonstrate the ability to support recruitment functions in identifying talent.

While proposing that changes in technology produce changes in the quality of talent required by organizations, a classification was developed of talent along the dimensions of difficulty-to-replace and value-added [ 26 ]. The difficulty-to-replace dimension is thus linked with the labor market factors and the value-added dimension is a customer related factor [ 25 ]. This framework essentially makes it possible to do the segmentation of talent specific to each organization and the environment it operates in and takes into account the “economic geography of talent” [ 27 ]. The Calculus platform support talent management decisions by providing real time insights on talent availability and cost, thus supporting tactical recruitment decision or decisions in investment of capability development for certain skills required by the organization. Furthermore, it reinforces the “outside/in” approach that talent functions are adopting, creating value by integrating outside context to support decision making [ 3 ].

Lastly, we evaluate the impact of the three organizations under the lens of strategy for social media ( Table 2 ).

Table 2.

Strategic and tactical outcomes of social media recruitment for the three organizations.

Source: Adapted from [ 12 ]—alignment of strategy, philosophy out outcome of social media recruitment.

The perceived supportive environment of the hiring organization would induce candidates hired through the Belong platform to utilize their efforts, skills and abilities to embrace organizational objectives. Belong’s approach was also of keen interest to recruiters in all industries, who saw this tool as a potential ally in “hunting” passive talent. A longitudinal study along the lines of value of human capital through human capital metrics appreciated by the business functions [ 10 ] would help cement the perceived value delivered, apart from speed of hiring or the ability to find passive talent.

Technology has been found to increase efficiency and reduce administrative burden in HR [ 2 ]. The recruitment solution offered by Talview was able to contribute to first level efficiency metrics of improved productivity, reduced costs and improved recruitment cycle time [ 10 ]. Further, the offering of assessments by the system was able to set the decision criteria for effective filtering to support the decision making discretion, which build agility within the organizations utilizing this offering. By having a repository of potentially suitable talent available when commensurate opportunities arise, better candidate experience and agility in recruitment is demonstrated. This agility would be valuable to organizational seeking to build this dynamic capability through quickly acquiring key talent faster than competitors [ 28 , 31 ]. The organizations using and benefitting from Talview’s offering grappled with large volumes of recruitment, where the demonstrated agility was keenly appreciated.

While the above mentioned cases illustrate the impact of social media and technology in disrupting candidate search, attraction and recruitment process, the emerging trends and their impact on recruitment approaches have the potential of reinforcing recruitment biases and discriminatory hiring practices. Big data algorithms used to screen and filter are based on specific patterns of social behavior. This approach presents a fundamental limitation in promoting a non-discriminatory approach to recruitment. With algorithms built on people characteristics rather than on job requirements, the algorithms are trained to predict desired behavioral outcomes and filter out candidates not meeting the criteria. For example, while publically posted photos of inappropriate behavior or offensive language are some of the obvious filtering logics used, spelling mistakes in resumes are also used as a measure of communication skills. These flout the norms of equal opportunity recruitment practices advocated and open up avenues for exposing organizations to lawsuits for discriminatory hiring practices.

Social media and technology also have the ability to influence employer brand. A few examples of employees demonstrating inappropriate behavior or even posting about unfair treatment at the workplace have resulted in huge social media backlash and poor PR for organizations [ 29 ]. Both journalists and media also leverage social media trends to promote and rank topics of interest. Websites like Glassdoor allow for anonymous reviews of companies, their management, the recruitment experience and provide a feel of the culture. Managing the social media PR has become increasingly important for HR functions. While an erstwhile approach adopted by organizations was to provide gated access to internet, with mobile access freely providing access, the approach of organizations to manage the social media engagement of their employees and thus the impact on employer brand has got changed. Social media allows individuals to meet social needs but with plausible deniability [ 30 ]. Most organizations have adopted social media and digital strategies and code of conduct to educate employees on desired social behaviors and consequences of inappropriate behaviors.

The illustrative cases are a demonstration of the morphing social media and digital trends shaping HRM practices in organizations. For practitioners looking for synergies with their strategic and tactical outcomes in recruitment, these illustrative cases suggest the relevant appropriateness of each case. These cases also open avenues for further research on multitude of dimensions in the domain of recruitment such as efficiency and effectiveness of the new trends as well as the unconscious bias of big data in recruitment [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Additionally, theoretical linkages of social media tactics and their alignment with organization strategy could further be explored. The emerging trends in social media and technology uses in recruitment are allowing for correlation between individuals’ social media behaviors and recruitment outcomes. However, these trends are contributing to the development of societal norms for technology and social media adoption by organizations and also the socially accepted behaviors of individuals on these platforms, thereby having influences beyond HRM principles.

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• 29. When HR decisions become social media scandals. Harvard Business Review. 2 8, 2013. [Cited: May 29, 2018] https://hbr.org/2013/02/when-hr-decisions-become-socia.html
• 30. Piskorski MJ. A Social Strategy: How we Profit from Social Media. New Jersey: Princeton University Press; 2014
• 31. Harris JG, Craig E, Light DA. Talent and analytics: New approaches, higher ROI. Journal of Business Strategy. 2011; 32 (6):4-13
• 32. Friedman TL. Thank You for Being Late: An optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2016
• 33. Yin RK. The Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Applied Social Research Series 5, 2nd Ef). CA, Thousand Oaks: Sage; 1994

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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The Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Recruiting

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Social media has become an essential tool for recruiters in today’s competitive and dynamic job market. 86% of job seekers go through social media for their job search while social media profile is extremely important to over 85% of recruiters and employers. [1] It goes without saying that social media marketing for recruiting has become a way to reach a wider and more diverse pool of talent, showcase an employer’s brand, and engage with potential candidates.

But how can you use social media effectively for your recruitment goals? What are the best practices and tips for creating a successful social media strategy for recruiting? In this article, we will answer these questions and provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to leverage social media for recruiting.

Introduction to Social Media for Recruiting

Social media for recruiting is the use of various social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and so on, to attract, source, and communicate with potential candidates. Social media can help recruiters to:

• Identify qualified candidates who may not be actively looking for a job, but are open to new opportunities.
• Create a strong employer brand that showcases the company’s culture, values, benefits, and achievements.
• Develop a content strategy that provides relevant and engaging information to the target audience, such as job openings, industry news, employee stories, etc.
• Engage with candidates and build relationships by responding to their comments, questions, and feedback, as well as sharing their content and inviting them to join online events.
• Utilize social media advertising to reach a larger and more specific audience based on their demographics, interests, skills, and so on.
• Measure and analyze the effectiveness of the social media strategy by tracking key metrics, such as reach, impressions, clicks, conversions, etc.

Best Practices for Utilizing Social Media for Recruiting

To make the most out of social media for recruiting, you need to follow some best practices that can help you optimize your results and avoid common pitfalls. Here are some of the best practices that you should consider:

1. Identify your target audience and social media platforms

Before creating a social media strategy for recruiting, you need to identify who your target audience is and what social media platforms they use. This will help you tailor your content and messages to the specific needs and preferences of your potential candidates. Some of the factors that you should consider when identifying your target audience are:

• The type of role you are hiring for (e.g., entry-level, senior-level, technical, non-technical, etc.)
• The industry or sector you are hiring for (healthcare, education, or finance, for example.)
• The location or region you are hiring for (for instance, local, national, international, and so on .)
• The demographics of your ideal candidates (age, gender, education level, etc.)
• The interests and values of your ideal candidates (career goals, hobbies, or passions, for example.)

Once you have a clear picture of your target audience, you can then research what social media platforms they use and how they use them. For example:

• LinkedIn  is the most popular and professional platform for job seekers and recruiters. It allows recruiters to post jobs, search for candidates based on their skills and experience, join groups and communities related to their industry or niche, and share content that showcases their company’s culture and values.
• Facebook  is the largest and most diverse platform for social networking. It allows you to create pages and groups for your company or brand, post jobs and events, share content that is informative and entertaining, and interact with candidates through comments and messages.
• Twitter  is the fastest and most concise platform for sharing news and updates. It allows you to post jobs using hashtags and keywords related to their industry or role, follow influencers and thought leaders in their field, share content that is relevant and timely, and engage with candidates through retweets and mentions.
• Instagram  is the most visual and creative platform for showcasing stories and experiences. It allows you to post photos and videos that highlight your company’s culture, employee testimonials, behind-the-scenes moments, and fun activities. It also allows you to use stories, reels, and live features to create more interactive content.
• YouTube  is the most powerful platform for video marketing. It allows you to post videos that demonstrate your company’s products or services, interviews with employees or leaders, tips and advice for job seekers, and success stories of hired candidates. You can also use live streaming, premieres, and short features to create more engaging and dynamic content.

To push your social media recruiting strategy beyond, equipping a tool like an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can benefit you in the long run. An ATS like  Manatal  is packed with features like job board integrations, where you can share your job ads across 2,500+ channels, including social media sites. Plus, Manatal’s Social Media Enrichment feature can also browse the web and migrate candidates’ data from over 20 social media and public platforms into a single database, allowing you to get to know them beyond their CVs.

2. Create a strong employer’s brand on social media

One of the main benefits of using social media for recruiting is that it can help you create a strong employer brand that attracts and retains talent. Employer’s brand is the perception of a company as an employer by its current and potential employees.

You can use social media to create a strong employer’s brand by:

• Sharing content that showcases the company’s mission, vision, and values, such as stories of how the company is making a difference, testimonials of how the company is supporting its employees, and examples of how the company is living up to its core values.
• Sharing content that showcases the company’s culture and work environment, such as photos and videos of the office space, team activities, events, celebrations, and fun moments.

Social media is a powerful and essential tool for recruiters in today’s digital and dynamic world. It can help you reach a wider and more diverse pool of talent, showcase your employer’s brand, and engage with potential candidates. However, to use social media effectively for recruiting, it is important to keep yourself sharp and stay alert by updating yourself with some best practices and tips to help you optimize your results and avoid common pitfalls.

You should also encourage your current employees to become brand ambassadors on social media by:

• Asking them to share their positive experiences and feedback about working at the company.
• Inviting them to participate in online events and campaigns related to the company.
• Providing them with guidelines and resources on how to represent the company on social media.
• Recognizing and rewarding them for their contributions to the company’s social media presence.

3. Develop a content strategy for social media recruitment

Another key aspect of using social media for recruiting is developing a content strategy that provides relevant and engaging information to the target audience. A content strategy is a plan that outlines what type of content to create, when to post it, where to distribute it, and how to measure its performance. A content strategy for social media recruitment should include:

• A content calendar that specifies what topics to cover, what formats to use, what platforms to post on, and what frequency to follow. A content calendar can help you plan ahead, stay organized, and avoid repetition or inconsistency.
• A content mix that balances different types of content, such as job openings, industry news, employee stories, tips and advice, and so forth. You’ll be able to provide value, variety, and relevance to your audience with a content mix.
• A content style that reflects the company’s tone of voice, personality, and brand identity. It can help you communicate effectively, professionally, and authentically with your audience.
• A content optimization that ensures that the content is visible, attractive, and actionable for the audience. Content optimization can include using keywords, hashtags, images, videos, links, call-to-actions, etc.

You should also monitor and analyze your content performance by using tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter Analytics. These tools can help you track metrics such as reach, impressions, clicks, and conversions, along with others, and identify what works and what doesn’t for your audience.

4. Engage with candidates and build relationships

One of the most important aspects of using social media for recruiting is engaging with candidates and building relationships with them. Social media is not a one-way communication channel, but a two-way conversation platform. You should not only post content and expect candidates to respond. You need to interact with them and show genuine interest in them as well.

You can engage with candidates and build relationships with them by:

• Responding to their comments, questions, and feedback on their posts and messages. You should acknowledge and appreciate their input, answer their queries, and address their concerns. You should also be polite, friendly, and respectful in their responses.
• Sharing your content and inviting them to join online events and campaigns related to their industry or role. You should show support and recognition for their achievements, skills, and interests. Also provide them with opportunities to learn more about the company and its offerings.
• Reaching out to them proactively and initiating conversations with them. You should identify potential candidates who match your criteria and send them personalized messages that introduce yourself and express interest in them. Also, follow up with them regularly and keep them updated on the status of their application.

5. Utilize social media advertising for recruitment campaigns

Another effective way of using social media for recruiting is utilizing social media advertising for recruitment campaigns. Social media advertising is the use of paid ads on social media platforms to reach a larger and more specific audience based on their demographics, interests, skills, etc. Social media advertising can help you to:

• Expand your reach and visibility among potential candidates who may not be aware of or following your company or brand.
• Target your ideal candidates who match your criteria and qualifications for the role you are hiring for.
• Drive more traffic and conversions to your job postings, landing pages, or career sites.
• Test different versions of your ads, such as headlines, images, and copy to see what performs better and optimize your results.

You can leverage social media advertising for recruitment campaigns by:

• Choosing the right platform and format for your ads, such as Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Twitter Ads, Instagram Ads, or YouTube Ads. Each platform and format has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on the goals, budget, and audience of the campaign.
• Creating a compelling and relevant ad that captures the attention and interest of the audience. The ad should include a clear and catchy headline, a captivating image or video, concise and persuasive copy, and a strong call-to-action.
• Setting up a budget and bid strategy for your ads, such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-impression (CPM), cost-per-lead (CPL), etc. The budget and bid strategy should be aligned with the objectives and expectations of the campaign.
• Segmenting and targeting your audience based on their characteristics and behaviors, such as location, age, gender, education level, industry, job title, skills, and interests. The audience should be as specific and relevant as possible to  increase the conversion rate  and reduce the cost per acquisition.
• Tracking and measuring your ad performance by  using tools  such as Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, Twitter Conversion Tracking, etc. These tools can help you collect data on how your ads are performing, such as impressions, clicks, leads, or applications, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

6. Measure and analyze the effectiveness of your social media strategy

The final aspect of using social media for recruiting is measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of your social media strategy. Measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of your social media strategy can help you to:

• Evaluate how well you are achieving your goals and objectives for using social media for recruiting, such as increasing brand awareness, attracting more candidates, improving candidate quality, and so on.
• Identify what are the strengths and weaknesses of your social media strategy, such as what platforms and content types are performing well or poorly, what are the best practices and pitfalls to avoid, etc.
• Improve your social media strategy by making data-driven decisions and implementing changes and improvements based on the insights and feedback you gather.

You can measure and analyze the effectiveness of your social media strategy by:

• Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your goals and objectives for using social media for recruiting, such as reach, impressions, engagement, clicks, and conversions.
• Collecting data from various sources and tools that provide information on your social media performance, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, or LinkedIn Analytics.
• Analyzing data using various methods and techniques that help you understand and interpret you social media performance, such as descriptive statistics, trend analysis, correlation analysis, etc.
• Reporting data using various formats and tools that enable you to communicate and present your social media performance, such as dashboards, charts, graphs, and tables.

Best Case Studies of Social Media Use for Recruiting

The leading logistics service provider leverages Facebook to reach potential candidates by showcasing their company culture and career opportunities through engaging content. In this particular case, UPS inspires job seekers to join the company through a compelling video , showcasing the life of its Feeder Driver who is also passionate about marathon runs. The video takes us through a day in his life and highlights how he can spend time with his family while balancing the time at work with UPS.

For people who are passionate about sports, there’s nothing better than being close to the sports they love while pushing themselves forward in their career path. This is enough to attract and candidates in the sports industry. As a global sports goods empire, Puma knows this fact really well and uses it to attract top talent. The company implemented the ‘Life’ section in its LinkedIn profile, showcasing life at Puma, where you’ll be supported by the company to run at your maximum speed. And as Puma lives and breathes sport, its employees will be facilitated by sports classes like yoga, swimming, ruining, and more… You name it.

When it comes to applying for a job, everybody needs some tips and tricks to boost their likelihood of securing that empty seat. H&M lets job seekers out there know that the company is all about supporting its candidates right from the first stage. The global fast fashion brand constantly posts videos about secrets to successfully being hired. In this particular Instagram post, its recruiter points out how you can make your application stand out. Talk about showcasing a solid employer brand right from the get-go.

Tips for Staying Up-To-Date with Social Media Trends in Recruitment

Social media is constantly evolving with new features, platforms, and algorithms. As a recruiter, you need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in social media to ensure that you are using it effectively and efficiently.

Here are some tips and tricks for recruiters to stay up-to-date with social media trends in recruitment:

• Follow industry experts and influencers who share insights and best practices on how to use social media for recruiting.
• Subscribe to newsletters and blogs that provide updates and news on the latest trends and developments in social media and recruitment.
• Join online communities and groups that discuss and exchange ideas and experiences on how to use social media for recruiting, such as Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter Chats, etc.
• Attend webinars and events that showcase and demonstrate how to use social media for recruiting.
• Experiment with new features and platforms that emerge and offer new opportunities and challenges for using social media for recruiting, such as Clubhouse, TikTok, Snapchat Spotlight, and so on.

Staying up-to-date with social media trends in recruitment keeps your skills and knowledge fresh and relevant. You’ll gain a competitive edge and advantage in the job market as well.

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Ann Schumann

As a former recruiter turned content writer, Ann specializes in creating engaging content. With a passion for the recruitment industry, she helps businesses streamline hiring and attract top talent using innovative solutions.

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Social Media Recruiting: A Complete Guide (With Examples)

Here’s some tips and tricks to get you started on recruiting through social media.

Despite the potential to connect with and recruit millions of candidates, many companies still haven’t embraced social media  recruiting , and those that have often operate without a cohesive strategy. This article will walk you through everything you need to know to turn social media into a powerful recruiting tool . 

What Is Social Media Recruiting?

Social media recruiting is a  recruitment strategy that combines elements of  employer branding and recruitment marketing to connect with and attract active and passive candidates on the digital platforms they frequent.

Recruiting the best talent takes much more than posting a job to your careers page and waiting for the candidates to roll in. To connect with the best people you have to go where they go, and these days that means social media.

Strategies for using AI to streamline hiring processes, promote your brand, and attract and nurture top talent.

Benefits of Social Media Recruitment  

The main benefits of incorporating social media recruiting into your recruitment process include:

1. Improved Recruitment Marketing

Social media enables recruiters to reach millions of skilled candidates across the globe in seconds. In fact, about 90 percent of job seekers use LinkedIn , 57 percent use X and 42 percent use Glassdoor. Traditional mediums like billboards, newspapers and events don’t offer the same immediacy or scalability that social media does. They also don’t provide built-in tracking that collects the data you’re most interested in, like page views, engagement and followers. These resources will also better inform you of which platforms are performing well with your audiences so that you can continue to focus and tailor your social media recruiting efforts.

2. Narrower Audience Segments  

Each social media platform has its own audience and culture, providing you with the opportunity to get granular and take the right message to the right people at the right time. For example, companies looking for candidates located in cities and who have a college education will likely have more success on Facebook and YouTube. 

This also means you’ll have to get creative when crafting your pitch, as a one-size-fits-all approach rarely works. But the extra work is worth narrowing the applicant pool early in the recruiting process and spending more time focusing on the best applicants . 

3. Wider Media Options  

From the written word and compelling imagery to video and interactive content , there’s no limit to the content you can create in your social media recruiting efforts. It’s important to keep in mind that different content will perform better on certain platforms, so you’ll want to do some research to figure out what resonates best with your target candidates. Still, it’s OK to create a great video for Facebook and  repurpose a clip of it for Instagram or take an image from the video for X.

4. Enhanced Employer Branding

Around 84 percent of job seekers factor an employer’s brand into their decision to apply for a job, and about half of candidates would refuse to work for a company with a poor reputation. Social media is an excellent resource to promote your employer brand to potential employees who may not be looking at your job descriptions .  

5. Broader Recruiting Reach  

Unless you’re one of the few companies lucky enough to have candidates lining up for your jobs, it’s imperative that you reach as many potential candidates as possible. The more qualified candidates you reach, the greater your odds of making a great hire. Social media recruiting can help you: 

• Provide tailored information to reach passive candidates who aren’t currently looking for a job and may never have heard of your company.
• Personalize communication by reaching out to individuals on social media via direct messaging or comments to spark a conversation without coming off as spammy.
• Target niche personas and industry experts with paid advertising opportunities on different social platforms.

6. Deeper Insights Into Candidates

The traditional resume may be great at summarizing a candidate’s professional background, but it offers little insight into who they actually are as a person. Social media recruiting allows you to develop a more comprehensive understanding of candidates, including their personality, interests and mutual connections.

Read Next Here’s How Word-of-Mouth Marketing Works

How to Create a Social Media Recruiting Strategy

Your social media recruiting strategy will change plenty over time as you learn and evolve. That said, these eight basic steps for creating or revamping your social media recruiting strategy can serve as a strong foundation to build upon. 

1. Research Competitors and Candidates

Figure out what platforms are most popular among your competitors, pinpoint the type of content they create for each platform and how that correlates to engagement. On the flip side, research where your candidates are spending time — perhaps you’ll discover an untapped resource for talent acquisition . 

2. Create Candidate Personas

Establish  candidate personas for the roles you are looking to fill. Know what personality traits will add to your  company culture and balance that with the qualifications necessary to be successful in the role. Analyze areas of recruitment your company struggles most with and prioritize that in your strategy. 

3. Set Goals

Set measurable goals to benchmark and optimize your recruitment strategy over time. Figure out exactly what you want to accomplish with your social media recruiting strategy that you haven’t been able to do with traditional tactics. 

4. Determine and Measure Metrics

Make sure to track  recruitment metrics . This will help you determine which platforms and strategies yield the highest quality candidates in the shortest time frame. Pick the metrics that relate directly to the goals and know how to effectively measure them. 

5. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms

Depending on your industry and target personas, you may need to branch out to more niche social media platforms to reach the right candidates. Consider using a social media management tool to organize your efforts and simplify analysis. 

6. Allocate Tasks Among Team Members

Your company is a group of people that collectively make up its culture and employer brand , and they can be your brand ambassadors. Create a calendar and designate different people to create content and connect with prospects.

7. Provide Training and Guidelines 

Maintain a cohesive voice that is a true reflection of the company’s brand and mission . People use social media for a variety of purposes, so make sure to create some guidelines so that employees understand the goal at hand and create content with that in mind. 

8. Optimize Over Time

Sit down with your team periodically and review the metrics, goals and results of your social media recruitment strategy. Assess your strengths and weaknesses and adjust your resources and efforts to better meet your future needs.

More on Employee Advocacy Why Employee Advocacy Is the Darling of Social Marketing

Top 6 Social Media Recruiting Sites

Tailoring your efforts to each social media platform will improve results and maximize your investment. Here’s a breakdown of some of the most popular ones — and how you can connect with candidates on them. 

1. LinkedIn Recruitment

As the original professional social network, LinkedIn offers an unparalleled overview of a candidate’s work history . It also provides insight into their interests, endorsements and referrals.

Start conversations with personalized messages introducing yourself and your company. Comment, like and share industry content to gain attention and authority. Follow, endorse and write recommendations for talented individuals to build rapport. Ask for referrals and introductions and reciprocate the favor. 

LinkedIn Recruitment Examples

• Google uses LinkedIn to  highlight accomplishments from employees as well as share resources for candidates to use. Some of Google’s popular resources include tips for interviews, informational events and employee testimonials . 
• AT&T shares life milestones of their employees on LinkedIn, from announcing promotions to  celebrating growing families . The company has created the  #LifeAtATT so that prospective candidates can easily follow along with current events and employee news.  

2. TikTok Recruitment  

TikTok’s video platform is home to more than 1.5 billion active users , making it one of the most popular social media platforms. In addition, U.S. adults aged 18 to 34 are more likely to use the platform than those in older age groups. 

The best way to connect with candidates on TikTok is to create a video. Many companies have taken to highlighting specific employees’ daily routines and responsibilities on the app.  

TikTok Recruitment Examples

• Chipotle cashed in on promoting its work opportunities on TikTok. It shares  perks of working at Chipotle — some of which include learning how to cook and getting educational costs covered by the company. Chipotle also links to its careers page in its TikTok bio.
• Intuit employees make informative TikTok videos and connect with TikTok users who ask questions on the platform. One example is  this employee sharing a bit about their role and the perks it offers.

3. Facebook Recruitment  

Facebook may not be a dedicated professional network, but its sheer size makes it an indispensable resource for recruiters. Its casual atmosphere can shed some light on an individual’s personality away from work, and it provides countless ways to find and connect with candidates. It even offers a job board .

Follow and interact with prospective candidates. Join or create groups relevant to the positions you’re looking to fill. Create and share content to promote your company and employer brand. Promote recruiting and networking events . Start chats on Messenger. And, of course, post openings on the Facebook job board. 

Facebook Recruitment Examples

• Accenture uses  its Facebook to highlight employees’ career journeys and share job openings for similar opportunities.
• Sprout Social ’s Facebook is a mixture of resources for companies to help them improve their employee advocacy practices, employee spotlights and industry insights. Sharing industry knowledge and resources helps potential candidates understand the company’s product and priorities. 

4. Instagram Recruitment

Instagram’s visual format has become hugely popular with Millennials and  Generation Z . These generations are the two largest in the workforce right now and many of them find companies they are interested in through platforms like Instagram. 

Curate a variety of visual content that captivates your audience’s attention and encourages them to follow the company page. Engage with people of interest by following, liking and commenting on their content. Participate in trending topics by posting related content with appropriate hashtags. Host Q&A sessions with the Stories feature either live or with their infinite library of stickers. 

Instagram Recruitment Examples

• Salesforce uses its Instagram account to showcase  employee interviews on what motivates them, share reels and videos from  company events as well as  funny videos on work culture .
• Microsoft ’s  #microsoftlife on Instagram is a compilation of posts from employees sharing their experiences and the company showcasing some of its work and office culture. Creating a hashtag that employees can easily attach to their posts allows candidates to see testimonials from real people on their own accounts.

5. X Recruitment

X is known for being short and sweet. That brevity isn’t a bad thing, though, as X has become a go-to source for news and events.

Search for relevant hashtags to join conversations and attract like-minded candidates. Like, comment and follow to engage with candidates. Repost and share timely information. Pin relevant posts to keep them visible on your profile. 

X Recruitment Examples

• One way to recruit easily on X is to put a jobs link right in the company bio, and UPS does just that.  UPS ’s X account highlights employees and their stories through hashtags like  #UPSers and  #ThankAUPSer .
• Some companies like PepsiCo have created X accounts specifically for their recruitment efforts.  PepsiCo’s jobs account highlights company achievements, employee resources and testimonials.  

6. YouTube Recruitment

About 44 percent of internet users prefer to learn about a product or service through video. And when it comes to video, YouTube is the undisputed heavyweight.

Create great video content tailored to your prospective candidates. Don’t forget to repurpose videos from the company website and other social media channels . 

YouTube Recruitment Examples

• HeadSpace covers all aspects of their company — from employee testimonials to customer appreciation letters, perks and benefits and the overall work culture.
• Zendesk uses its  recruitment videos to emphasize its remote and hybrid work opportunities as well as what the company builds and how it operates.  

Social Media Recruiting Best Practices

Let’s walk through a few tips and best practices for recruiting on social media.

Create an Editorial Calendar  

Producing creative content every day can be time-consuming, frustrating and feel like more effort than it’s worth. Simplify the process by creating an editorial calendar with daily themes to refer to when creating content. It’s also OK to switch things up — the calendar is not set in stone. 

Get Team Members Involved  

Get everyone at your company involved in the recruiting process and your results will skyrocket. Arm them with some pre-produced content to make things even easier. 

Send Direct Messages to Candidates 

Start conversations with candidates through one-on-one messaging, but don’t lead with a hard sell. Create a  personalized message expressing your interest in the candidate, and be sure to include specific information about the individual so they know you are serious and aren’t spamming. 

Comment on Candidates’ Content

Odds are your prospective candidates are sharing their own thoughts and opinions on social media, which is the perfect opportunity to start a conversation. Don’t be afraid to respond directly to content they’ve posted and encourage them to direct message you to continue the conversation. 

Start a Group Discussion  

LinkedIn and Facebook feature thousands of industry-specific groups, which can be fertile ground for motivated recruiters. Asking a question or sharing an opinion can spark a discussion and expose you to hundreds of potential candidates, in addition to posting your jobs. Contribute to these groups in a meaningful way and you’ll always be welcome. 

Shout Candidates Out

Tagging potential candidates in a company post or replying to them on X can start a conversation that others may join, bringing traffic to both the company’s and the candidate’s social profiles. 

Livestream an Event or Conference  

Livestream an event in your office or conference at which you’re presenting. Host Q&A sessions for viewers to learn more about your company and ask questions that your team can respond to in real time. Share a behind-the-scenes perspective of life at your company. 

Take Full Advantage of Hashtags

A hashtag’s relevancy — and the number of people following it — will vary by platform. Likewise, broad terms can get lost in the mix while overly specific terms may have no following. Keep brand-specific tags consistent across platforms, and always research a hashtag before using it. Make sure trends related to the hashtag align with the company’s mission.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is social media recruitment.

Social media recruitment is the process of connecting with passive and active candidates through social media platforms. This includes researching and networking with potential candidates, posting job openings and sharing company content to boost an employer’s brand in the eyes of candidates and job seekers.

What social media is best for recruiting?

The ideal social media platform depends on the types of candidates companies want to attract and the content they want to create, among other factors. Popular platforms recruiters use include LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok.

What percent of recruiters have hired through social media?

While there’s no exact number for how many recruiters make hires through social media, social media platforms play a crucial role in the hiring process. According to a 2020 Harris Poll survey , about 70 percent of employers use social media to screen applicants and 67 percent use it to research potential candidates.

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Social Media Recruiting: 10 Tips and Best Practices

• April 6, 2024

Over 45% of the world population, or roughly 3,48 billion people, use social media. Millennials and Gen Z, the current and future primary workforce, spend much of their lives on social networks. Regarding this global phenomenon, recruiters and headhunters are focusing more on social media recruiting to discover and approach high-quality candidates.

Social media is a gateway to effective branding and recruiting, so if you’re not already in the game, you are missing out on many opportunities. This article will give you insights and tips to kickstart your social media recruiting campaigns.

What is social media recruiting?

Social media recruiting involves leveraging platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to discover, attract, and hire talent. It serves as a complementary strategy to traditional methods like job boards and corporate website advertising, offering a multifaceted approach to talent acquisition.

Here’s what a successful social media recruiting strategy will bring to your organization:

• Boosts Recruitment Marketing Efforts: Social media amplifies recruitment marketing efforts, reaching millions of skilled candidates worldwide within seconds. Unlike traditional mediums, social media provides immediacy, scalability, and built-in tracking capabilities, enabling informed decision-making and targeted efforts.
• Helps Tailor Your Recruiting Efforts: Social media platforms offer diverse options for reaching specific candidate groups, allowing for precise targeting and efficient resource allocation. Each platform caters to unique audiences and cultures, necessitating tailored messaging and creative approaches for optimal engagement.
• Creates a Variety of Content: From written content to compelling imagery, video, and interactive formats, social media offers endless possibilities for content creation. Tailoring content to platform preferences enhances engagement while repurposing content across platforms maximizes reach and impact.
• Promotes Your Employer Brand: Social media serves as a powerful tool for promoting employer branding and influencing job seekers’ perceptions and decisions. By showcasing company culture, values, and employee experiences, organizations can attract top talent and differentiate themselves in the competitive landscape.
• Increases Your Reach: Social media extends recruitment reach by targeting passive candidates, personalizing communication efforts, and leveraging paid advertising opportunities. Organizations can expand their candidate pool and improve hiring outcomes by reaching niche personas and industry experts.
• Helps Connect You with Candidates: Social media enables connections with passive candidates who may not be actively seeking opportunities. By engaging with specific audiences individually, recruiters can provide personalized experiences and enhance candidate engagement.
• Helps You Get to Know Candidates Beyond Their Resumes: Beyond traditional resumes, social media provides insights into candidates’ personalities, interests, and connections. This holistic understanding facilitates more informed hiring decisions and fosters meaningful connections with candidates.

In essence, social media recruiting integrates elements of employer branding and recruitment marketing to connect with both active and passive candidates in the digital spaces they frequent. It’s a dynamic strategy that empowers organizations to tap into diverse talent pools, enhance candidate engagement, and drive hiring success.

Which Social Media Platforms to Use for Recruitment

LinkedIn remains a central platform for recruiters, with up to  65 million candidates  searching for jobs weekly. However, not all job seekers rely on LinkedIn, especially younger demographics who frequent various social media platforms. Recruiters must diversify their approach to reach these candidates effectively.

Platforms like Facebook allow job postings with text, images, and video, attracting predominantly older audiences. Instagram, favored by younger users, emphasizes visual content through posts, Reels, and Stories, offering insights into the company culture. LinkedIn, known for its professional networking, attracts a mix of age groups through its text and image-based posts.

Snapchat and TikTok appeal to younger demographics with their focus on image and video content. Snapchat utilizes hashtags for engagement, while TikTok offers innovative features like #TikTok Resumes for video resumes. Although limited in search functions, Twitter uses hashtags to target audiences across age groups.

Beyond these mainstream platforms, niche sites like Dribbble for designers, GitHub for software developers, and Reddit for topic discussion of all kinds are also alternate sources of talent.

Top 10 essential social media recruiting strategies and case studies

Connect with the right people.

Before diving into recruiting, it’s crucial to create candidate personas tailored to the roles you want to fill. Picture your ideal candidate – what traits would fit seamlessly into your company culture? Balance that with the qualifications needed for success in the role. Take a moment to analyze where your recruitment process could use a boost and make that a priority in your strategy.

Remember, there’s an online community for nearly every niche. These platforms are teeming with potential candidates eager to showcase their skills and grow. Don’t underestimate the power of niche networks; explore Facebook and LinkedIn groups or relevant Subreddits. Within these communities, you’ll uncover top talents waiting to be discovered – diamonds in the rough. All it takes is a keen eye and proactive engagement to connect with them.

Scout out for Competitors and Candidates

Researching competitors and candidates is a vital step in refining your recruitment strategy. Here’s how to go about it effectively:

• Analyze Competitors’ Presence: Investigate which platforms your competitors utilize most effectively. Study the type of content they produce on each platform and how it resonates with their audience. By understanding their strategies, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your approach and attract top talent.
• Assess Candidate Behavior: Research where your target candidates spend their time online. Explore social media platforms, professional networking sites, and industry-specific forums to identify potential talent pools. Understanding where candidates congregate allows you to tailor your recruitment efforts to reach them effectively.
• Identify Untapped Resources: During your research, you may uncover overlooked platforms or communities where potential candidates gather. These untapped resources present valuable opportunities for talent acquisition. Expanding your reach beyond traditional channels allows you to access a diverse pool of qualified candidates.

By thoroughly researching competitors and candidates, you can gain valuable insights to inform your recruitment strategy and enhance your chances of attracting top talent.

Build An Online Reputation For Your Company

Millennials and Gen Z are known for their idealism, seeking companies whose values resonate with their own. For them, forming an emotional and ethical connection is crucial to committing to their work. Therefore, broadcasting your brand’s characteristics is essential to attract these candidates.

Here’s how you can implement this strategy:

• Know Your Company Inside Out: Dive deep into your company’s core values, culture, vision, and mission. For example, if your company values innovation, showcase how your team collaborates on cutting-edge projects that make a difference.
• Consistency is Key: Maintain a consistent voice across all your communication channels. For instance, if your brand persona is friendly and approachable, ensure your social media posts and recruitment emails reflect that tone consistently.
• Highlight Employee Experience: Share real-life stories and experiences from your employees. Feature employee spotlights on your website or social media platforms to showcase their achievements and contributions.

For inspiration, take a look at Google’s Instagram account,  @lifeatgoogle . It’s a prime example of building a positive brand image in candidates’ minds. The account features moments and stories from Google employees, offering a glimpse into Google’s dynamic and enjoyable working environment.

Involve Your Employees in Sharing Posts on Social Media

Being popular on the Internet requires a lot of sharing. And popularity equals more potential candidates reached. Involving your employees in sharing posts on social media can significantly boost your recruitment efforts. Here’s why and how to leverage this strategy effectively:

• Harness the Power of Personal Connections: Personal recommendations carry immense weight in today’s digital age. Prospective candidates are more likely to trust the endorsements of friends and acquaintances than traditional advertisements. Encourage your employees to share your company’s posts and job openings on social networks to tap into their personal connections and expand your reach.
• Provide Social Proof: Job seekers often seek validation before applying to a company. By showcasing positive reviews, testimonials, and experiences your employees share, you provide valuable social proof that can sway candidates’ decisions. Highlight the benefits of working at your company through authentic employee stories and testimonials to attract top talent.
• Offer Incentives for Referrals: Motivate your employees to actively participate in your recruitment efforts by offering incentives for successful referrals. Consider providing bonuses or rewards for employees who refer qualified candidates who ultimately join the company. This encourages employees to advocate for your organization proactively and helps you attract high-quality talent.

Be Active on Multiple Platforms

While LinkedIn is a popular hunting ground for recruiters, it’s essential to diversify your approach. Relying solely on one platform limits your reach and may exclude potential candidates, especially younger demographics and passive job seekers who may not have a LinkedIn presence.

Expand your horizons wisely. Consider platforms like Instagram, which is known for its high user engagement rates. Facebook offers valuable business tools for insights and advertising. If visuals are your strength, explore Pinterest. And for those with a knack for compelling copywriting, Twitter can be a splendid choice.

Keep in mind that each platform has its unique characteristics and audience preferences. What works on Instagram may not resonate on Twitter, and vice versa. Tailor your content accordingly to maximize your impact.

Use Hashtags to Boost Your Online Visibility.

The “#” symbol connects content across the internet, making it easy for users to discover new posts. Think of hashtags as your way to get noticed by more people. They’re like a spider’s web, catching attention effortlessly.

To make the most of hashtags, first, find trending ones using analytics tools like  Google Trend  and  Meta Ads Library . Then, pick ones that match your brand’s style and your audience’s interests. Stick to your style, but also use popular hashtags to reach a wider audience.

Choose hashtags that are short, easy to remember, and relate to your audience. If you can’t find one that fits, create your own. Make sure it represents your brand, and watch your visibility grow.

Use Social Recruiting Software

Utilizing social recruiting software is a step forward in simplicity and efficiency. As with other recruiting methods, leveraging technology can significantly enhance your workflow and effectiveness.

Social recruiting software can streamline various tasks, from syncing your company’s social media accounts to scheduling posts and automating responses. By centralizing these functions, you can save time and resources while maximizing your reach and engagement with potential candidates.

Some popular social recruiting platforms include:

• Bullhorn :  Specializing in customer relationship management, applicant tracking, and operational software for the staffing industry, Bullhorn allows recruiters to create and share job postings across multiple social media platforms and job boards. Its social media recruiting analytics provide valuable insights for recruiters.

• Rakuna’s Recruiting CRM  offers advanced capabilities for organizing and nurturing candidate relationships at scale. Recruiters can leverage automated workflows, personalized & automated email campaigns, candidate activity tracking, and insightful analytics to manage candidate pipelines and drive engagement effectively. By centralizing candidate data and communication, Rakuna enables recruiters to build stronger connections and convert leads into hires more efficiently.
• Greenhouse:  Offering a centralized dashboard for managing job seekers’ applications from various sources, Greenhouse utilizes an open platform with an API to streamline aggregation and organization.

• INOMICS : Beyond social recruiting, INOMICS serves as a hub for valuable information, advice, and career opportunities in economics and related fields. It provides effective channels for universities, research centers, and companies to recruit within a niche community of students, researchers, and professors.

• Lever:  As a cloud-based solution, Lever combines applicant tracking system (ATS) and customer relationship management (CRM) functionalities into a single platform. It simplifies the sourcing, nurturing, and management of candidates for teams of all sizes.

• Jobvite:  A cloud-based applicant tracking system (ATS), Jobvite facilitates the management of hiring processes, including job distribution, screening, interviewing, and offer management. Suitable for midsize and enterprise recruiting companies, it offers comprehensive features for efficient recruitment management.

Livestream Videos

Livestream videos offer an engaging way to connect with potential candidates and foster meaningful conversations. By organizing live Q&A sessions, recruiters can provide tailored answers to specific questions and build rapport with their target audience.

This method is relatively simple to execute – all you need to do is schedule a live Q&A session as a Facebook event and share it across other relevant platforms. Take inspiration from successful examples like Microsoft Live, which hosts regular live sessions to engage with candidates. Regardless of your company’s reputation, events like these are bound to attract a diverse pool of candidates eager to engage and learn more.

Create a Separate Account For Recruiting

Before diving into creating a new account for recruiting, consider the following:

• Choose a simple and recognizable name for the account to make it easy for candidates to find and identify.
• Tailor the content to cater to the interests and needs of potential applicants, providing valuable insights into your company culture and available opportunities.
• Showcase your workplace culture periodically through engaging posts and behind-the-scenes glimpses to attract candidates who resonate with your values.
• Ensure that contact and application information is readily accessible, making it easy for candidates to connect and apply.

Optimize Your LinkedIn Page

LinkedIn is the core social network platform for recruiting, offering unparalleled access to a vast pool of professional talent. Ensuring your company’s presence on this platform is optimized is essential for attracting top candidates and enhancing your employer brand.

To make the most of LinkedIn, consider the following tips:

• Fully complete your brand page: Your company’s LinkedIn page serves as a digital storefront, providing valuable information to potential candidates. Ensure your page is fully populated with relevant details, including a compelling description that captures your brand’s essence in the first 154 characters. This snippet appears in Google search results, so make it count.
• Optimize your description: Incorporate keywords that potential candidates may use to search for your company, balancing recruitment-focused terms with those aimed at marketing to customers. This ensures that your page is discoverable by both job seekers and potential clients.
• Use filters to refine candidate searches: With millions of professionals on LinkedIn, finding suitable candidates can be daunting. Leverage LinkedIn’s advanced search filters to narrow down your candidate pool based on criteria such as location, industry, experience level, and skills. This targeted approach helps you identify candidates who align closely with your hiring needs.
• Complete the “Company Specialties” section: Highlighting your company’s specialties provides insight into your core competencies and areas of expertise. This section serves as a snapshot of your organization’s strengths and can attract candidates with relevant skill sets.

Core Metrics to Track

Understanding metrics is essential for measuring the effectiveness of your social recruiting efforts. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics, recruiters can gauge their impact and refine their strategies accordingly:

• Profile Views: This metric indicates how many individuals have viewed a profile, providing insight into visibility and interest.
• Connections and Followers: These individuals will likely engage with your posts, offering a valuable audience for recruitment efforts.
• Mentions and Tags: When someone tags your account in a post, comment, or reply, it signifies engagement and potential visibility to a broader audience.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): This measures the effectiveness of social media activity in driving traffic to the organization’s online employment page or other linked content.
• Impressions: The number of people who see a post in their feed, reflecting your content’s reach and potential exposure.
• Reach: The total number of individuals who have seen a post, providing insight into overall visibility.
• Engagement: This encompasses interactions with posted content, including comments, likes, mentions, and shares, indicating the level of audience interaction and interest.
• Endorsements and Recommendations: LinkedIn features that can help candidates stand out, showcasing their skills and credibility.
• Brand Sentiment: The prevailing attitude people have toward a brand, which can be measured using sentiment analysis tools. Negative sentiment may impact hiring efforts.
• Audience Growth Rate: This measures the rate at which a profile’s follower count is increasing, indicating the growth and relevance of your audience.
• Conversion Rate: Measure the percentage of social media users who take desired actions, such as submitting applications or signing up for newsletters, indicating the effectiveness of your recruitment campaigns.
• Response Rate: Track the rate at which candidates respond to your outreach or job postings, providing insights into the effectiveness of your messaging and engagement strategies.
• Candidate Quality: Assess the caliber of candidates sourced from social media platforms based on factors such as skills, experience, and cultural fit, helping to refine targeting and messaging strategies.
• Referral Rate: Monitor the number of candidates referred to your organization by current employees or external sources through social media channels, indicating the success of your employee referral programs and overall brand advocacy.
• Time-to-Hire: Measure the duration it takes to fill a position from the initial sourcing stage to the candidate’s acceptance of the job offer, helping to identify bottlenecks in the recruitment process and optimize efficiency.

Social Media Recruiting Pitfalls

While social media can be a powerful tool for recruiting, it’s essential to avoid common pitfalls that can hinder engagement with potential candidates and damage your recruitment efforts. Here are some social recruiting mistakes to steer clear of:

• Overlooking mobile optimization: With the majority of social media users accessing platforms via mobile devices, neglecting to optimize your content and application process for mobile can lead to frustration and abandonment by candidates.
• Using a one-size-fits-all approach to content: Tailor your content to fit the unique characteristics of each social media platform for maximum impact and engagement.
• Failing to provide clear pathways to apply: Make it easy for candidates to navigate from your social media platforms to the application process by providing user-friendly links and instructions.
• Ignoring candidate feedback: Failing to listen to candidate feedback, whether it’s about the application process, company culture, or job postings, can lead to missed opportunities for improvement and damage to your employer brand.
• Only posting job openings: Engage your audience with valuable content beyond job postings to maintain interest and build relationships.
• Being overly or underly engaged: Strike a balance in your engagement efforts – don’t bombard users with activity, but don’t remain inactive either. Find the sweet spot.
• Bombarding potential candidates with messages: Respect their inbox and avoid overwhelming them with excessive messages, as it may deter rather than attract.
• Creating inconsistent messaging: Ensure consistent messaging across all platforms to avoid confusion and reinforce your employer brand.
• Failing to monitor brand sentiment: Keep an eye on how your brand is perceived on social media to address any negative sentiment promptly and maintain a positive reputation.
• Forgetting to encourage post sharing: Encourage your followers to share your posts to expand your reach and attract potential candidates through their networks.
• Misunderstanding your ideal candidates: Take the time to understand your target audience and tailor your recruitment strategies accordingly to reach and engage with them effectively.
• Neglecting to use relevant hashtags: Harness the power of hashtags to increase the visibility of your posts and reach a broader audience.
• Lack of follow-up and engagement: Once you’ve attracted candidates through social media, failing to follow up and engage with them in a timely and personalized manner can result in missed opportunities and a negative candidate experience.

The majority of your target candidates use social networks frequently for both recreational purposes and career prospects. Social media recruiting strategies are, therefore, crucial to building a good employer brand and reaching job seekers.

The ten tips mentioned above are just a starter. It’s your turn to pick one to start testing and decide what works best for your company. Do well and be the best in whatever niche you plan to go for!

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How to build a social media recruitment strategy: An FAQ guide

Social media sourcing involves using social networks to identify, attract, engage and hire potential candidates. Recruiters use social media sourcing to build talent pipelines for future roles and engage passive candidates who haven’t applied for current openings.

An experienced recruiter and HR professional who has transferred her expertise to insightful content to support others in HR.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to use social recruiting to build a strategy that meets your hiring needs:

Intro to social media recruitment: Analyzing the data

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• What social media networks are most effective for recruiting?

How can I use LinkedIn to find candidates?

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Workable helps you build and promote your brand where your next candidates are. You’re always top of mind, whether they’re actively looking or not.

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Social media sourcing: Tools, training and process

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LinkedIn , Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social networks for recruiters . Google+ , YouTube , Instagram and Pinterest are runner-ups, but are still strong niche recruiting options.

Here’s the breakdown by popularity, according to a 2015 Society for Human Resources (SHRM) study that surveyed recruiters :

• LinkedIn (96% of recruiters surveyed indicated they used LinkedIn)
• Facebook (66% of recruiters surveyed indicated they used Facebook)
• Twitter (53% of recruiters surveyed indicated they used Twitter)
• Google+ (12% of recruiters surveyed indicated they used Google+)
• YouTube (11% of recruiters surveyed indicated they used YouTube)
• Instagram (7% of recruiters surveyed indicated they used Instagram)
• Pinterest (3% of recruiters surveyed indicated they used Pinterest)

It’s clear that most recruiters use social networks to hire. According to data from Social Media Strategies Summit , 78% of recruiters have hired through a social network. Here’s where they’re doing most of their hiring:

• LinkedIn: 92% have hired at least once through LinkedIn.
• Facebook: 24% have hired at least once through Facebook.
• Twitter: 14% have hired at least once through Twitter.

LinkedIn is recruiters’ preferred network to source. However, data suggests more job-seekers are active on Facebook. The Social Media Strategies Summit data shows that:

• Recruiters prefer LinkedIn, job seekers prefer Facebook: Recruiters are more active on LinkedIn ( 94% ) than job seekers ( 36% ), while the opposite is true for Facebook, with 65% of active recruiters and 83% of active job seekers.

Facebook is the most popular social media network among job-seekers, followed by Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter, according to a U.S. survey by the Pew Research Center (2016) . Here’s the percentage breakdown of all major networks:

• Facebook: 79% of people online are active Facebook users, despite age and gender.
• Instagram: 32% of people online are active Instagram users.
• LinkedIn 29% of people online are active LinkedIn users
• Twitter: 24% of people online are active Twitter users.

Aside from personal networking, people also use social media to find and research jobs. According to Pew research on social media users’ job-seeking habits:

• More than one-third use social media to look for or research jobs;
• one in five applied for a job they first found out about on social media;
• and 13% say information they posted on their social profiles helped them get a job.

According to a Society for Human Resources (SHRM) study (2015) , companies use social media recruiting to:

• Build employer brand: 77% aim to boost their employer brand and recognition.
• Save money: 55% found social recruiting to be less expensive than other recruiting methods.
• Source candidates by location: 51% use social networks to recruit candidates in specific areas.
• Increase candidate diversity: 33% use social media to find candidates in traditionally underrepresented groups (e.g. women, minorities and veterans.)

The same research reveals how companies use social recruiting:

• About nine out of 10 companies use it to post their job ads on social networks.
• Three out of four companies use it to communicate with potential candidates and source passive candidates and active candidates.
• More than half of the companies encourage employee referrals through social platforms.

Here are reasons why companies don’t experiment with social recruiting:

• Legal and privacy issues. Just under half of companies ( 46% ) are concerned about legal and privacy issues, although the percentage has dropped in recent years (From 52% in 2013 to 46% in 2015.)
• Lack of time. The same percentage of companies ( 46% ) claim that HR staff don’t have enough time to use social media for recruiting in addition to other recruitment methods.
• Lack of knowledge. Just under one out of five companies ( 18% ) indicated lack of knowledge and skills as reasons for why HR staff don’t use social media for recruiting.

Most companies ( 84% ) use social media to recruit candidates, according to a 2015 study by the Society for Human Resources (SHRM) .

Out of the companies that use social recruiting:

• 81% indicate it’s one of their many recruiting tools.
• 5% say it’s their primary recruiting method.

Out of the companies that don’t use social recruiting:

• 9% plan to use social media recruiting methods in the future.
• 5% never plan to incorporate a social media recruiting strategy to their hiring process.
• 2% claim to have used social recruiting in the past but don’t plan to use it in the future.

Using social media for recruitment:

• Increases job visibility. When you only advertise your jobs on job boards and your careers page , you limit your outreach to people who are actively searching on these channels. Jobs ads on social media have greater reach because they’re visible to a larger audience that may include passive candidates .
• Lets you advertise your jobs to your audience. Instead of casting a wide net, you can narrow down your search – and potentially your costs – by going where your desired audiences are with targeted job ads. For example, Facebook’s paid ads help you find candidates by location, and LinkedIn’s sponsored ads help you get in front of candidates with the skills you’re looking for.
• Improves employer branding. Social media gives you the tools to promote your company culture and showcase your current employees. Give candidates a glimpse of what it’s like to work for your team. Good brands prompt more candidates to apply for open roles.
• Provides better insight into candidates’ profiles. Social profiles capture the bigger picture. They reveal more information about candidates’ skills (e.g. communication abilities) and professional interests (e.g. conferences they attend.)
• Helps you connect with passive candidates. People who aren’t actively looking for a new job opportunity are can learn about your open roles if you approach them on social networks.

Despite being a powerful hiring technique, social media recruitment has limitations. Here are a few:

• Its content is ephemeral. Social media broadcasts what’s “happening now,” which means your posts have a short shelf-life. To be at the top of potential candidates’ newsfeeds, frequently update your status and take advantage of current social media trends .
• It requires thorough sourcing. Not all the content you find on social profiles will apply to your job. If you’re using social sourcing to screen candidates, dig deeper than first results to find useful information relevant to your open roles.
• It’s time-consuming. To use social networks for recruitment, you have to invest time to network and build relationships with potential candidates before contacting them for a job opportunity .
• It comes with legal risks. Social profiles give you access to information unrelated to the candidate’s professional background (e.g. race or marital status) and may create unconscious bias during the hiring process . Evaluate only job-related information when you’re screening candidates on social networks.
• It’s not always well-received by candidates. Though candidates may expect a recruiting email for a job opportunity, they may be caught off-guard by messages on social networks. Refrain from being intrusive when you personalize your messages to passive candidates .

Here are the benefits of posting and advertising your job openings on social media:

• You reach diverse audiences. Social media demographics prove that people of different ages, nationalities and backgrounds are active on social networks. Recruiters can reach out to them by building effective social media sourcing and recruiting strategies .
• You reduce time-to-fill. By using more job advertising channels for your open roles, you increase your chances of finding qualified candidates faster .
• You make it easy for employees to refer candidates. Companies can benefit from the various posting and sharing options that social media sites offer. Current employees can share job openings with friends or simply post job ads on their personal feeds to increase visibility.
• You can get creative with job posts. Social media job posts don’t have to be traditional job descriptions. Include pictures and videos of your workspace, write engaging text to describe the position and add a humorous touch, if it suits your brand.
• You decrease recruiting costs. Setting up social media accounts and posting your job openings costs less than traditional recruiting , and it allows you to inform people from your professional circle and beyond about open roles at your company.

Set aside time to get to know each network and plan your recruitment goals and budget . Start with the following research:

• Learn where your hires come from. This includes tracking your sources of hire . Ask your current employees for tips: Are they members in any professional groups? (e.g. on Facebook or LinkedIn) Use this information to help inform your social sourcing strategy.
• Figure out what each platform offers. To get the most out of your social media efforts, become an active member of these platforms yourself. Join groups relevant to your industry, start discussions with members and explore social media features.
• Study successful companies that use social media. Although what works for one company mightn’t for another, you’ll get some interesting ideas on how to get started from other companies. Read case studies and follow corporate accounts for inspiration.

Yes. Social media recruiting is often used as a pre-employment background check. But, candidates’ social profiles contain information unrelated to their careers that may invite bias and legal issues into hiring decisions. These characteristics include:

• Sexual orientation

Also, from May 2018, organisations need to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when sourcing EU candidates. This means that recruiters shouldn’t be looking for these candidates on non-professional social media like Facebook and they need to inform candidates when collecting their information on social media like LinkedIn.

Based on the Society for Human Resources (SHRM) study (2015) , almost half of the companies that choose not to use social media for recruiting did so because they are concerned about its legal and privacy issues.

To reduce legal risks when using social media to recruit:

• Be aware of (federal, state and/or country) laws. Make sure you understand and follow regulations against discrimination during the entire hiring process. For example, it’s illegal both to ask a female candidate if she plans to have children and to search her social profiles for posts that indicate a pregnancy. Also, ensure you understand and follow GDPR’s requirements when sourcing in the EU.
• Consult with HR professionals. HR staff are more familiar with labor legislation and can help you reach objective hiring decisions. Ask HR professionals to search online profiles and collect only job-related data. Then, have hiring managers use this data to evaluate candidates’ skills to minimize bias .
• Hold the hiring team accountable. From initial screening to the final decision, the hiring team should provide feedback on each candidate to the rest of the team and explain reasons for rejection or selection. This way, you’re less likely to reject a candidate based on personal criteria unrelated to the position.
• Create consistent sourcing procedures. Use the same sourcing methods for all candidates. Look for specific information when scanning online profiles, as you would do with resumes. Spending more time on one candidate’s Facebook page, for example, could lead to a partial hiring decision that disadvantages other candidates.
• Combine information from various sourcing channels. Not all job seekers use social media for professional reasons. If one candidate just posts funny cat videos on Facebook, this doesn’t make them a goofy employee. Gather information from various places and stick to job-related data to make better judgments.

What social media networks are most effective for recruiting?

To source, attract and recruit candidates, you need to go where your audience is, which includes some of the most popular social media networks . Here are the top three most effective networks for social media recruiting, and some recruiting features of each:

• LinkedIn : Professionals use LinkedIn to share their career history, network, build their brand and search for new job opportunities. When recruiting on LinkedIn, use job posting and application options to speed up the hiring process.
• Facebook : The world’s largest social network, Facebook members are diverse in age and background. Recruiters use features like groups and paid job ads to advertise their job openings to their desired audience.
• Twitter : Brevity is king on Twitter, a social platform that empowers its members to share posts no greater than 140 characters. Use appropriate hashtags to inform potential candidates about job opportunities, and take advantage of Twitter lists to network with passive candidates.

For EU candidates, please refer to this guidance on using social media for recruiting under the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

Here are the most effective ways to source candidates on LinkedIn:

• Search through LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn search filters to scan candidates’ profiles by profession, current and past companies, industry and location. If you upgrade to a subscription account, you gain access to additional filters (e.g. years of experience and seniority level.)
• Set up notifications. If you have roles that are always open or have longer time-to-hire , use LinkedIn to set up notifications , so that you receive emails with profiles of new qualified candidates who meet your criteria.
• Use Boolean in your LinkedIn searches. LinkedIn supports Boolean logic for more complex searches. Use appropriate strings to look for specific qualifications and exclude irrelevant results. For example, if you’re hiring for a Senior Sales Manager in Boston, consider this string: “ sales manager” AND senior NOT(assistant OR junior) AND Boston “.
• Join LinkedIn groups. Beyond accessing potential candidates’ profiles, you can search and join LinkedIn groups . Post job ads in HR-related groups, where active job seekers are looking for new opportunities. And join groups relevant to the roles you’re usually hiring for to get access to their member lists.
• Consider a Recruiter license. With a LinkedIn Recruiter or LinkedIn Recruiter Lite plan, you can use LinkedIn’s advanced search tools to look for candidates who meet your specific criteria. You can also send more InMails to contact passive candidates.

Related :  Sourcing on Google: Boolean search for recruiters

The following tips will help you build an effective LinkedIn sourcing strategy:

• Create your company profile. Describe your company, promote your jobs and offer links to your websites or other social media pages. Encourage your current employees to update their profiles and add your company as their current workplace.
• Consider a Recruiter plan. Unlock more sourcing features with LinkedIn Recruiter or LinkedIn Recruiter Lite . You’ll get access to more profiles and you can send more InMails per month (150 and 30, respectively.) If you’re using Workable as your ATS, you can  view candidates’ LinkedIn profile data along with InMails exchanged, all in one place.
• Connect with past and potential candidates. When you spot interesting profiles, send LinkedIn invitations to connect and introduce yourself. You can also use LinkedIn to stay in touch with past candidates who might be more suitable for a future job opening. Keep track of their career choices, comment on their posts and congratulate them when they make professional achievements.
• Post your job ads. LinkedIn offers options to help you advertise your job openings. Write compelling job descriptions and list your desired skills. Prompt candidates to “easy apply” using their LinkedIn profiles to speed up the application process.
• Share your job openings. People from your network – including current employees – may know someone who might be a good fit for your roles. Network by advertising your positions to employees, who might recommend your next hire.
• Track your analytics. LinkedIn offers analytics of your network’s demographics and the behaviors of your page’s visitors (e.g. number of clicks to your posts.) This data is useful because it helps you understand what kinds of posts and updates drive traffic to your page.

Here are the most common mistakes recruiters make while sourcing on LinkedIn and how to avoid them:

• Not having an engaging company page. Set up an appealing LinkedIn company page to sell your organization. Include industry-related keywords (but avoid jargon) to attract people who’d be interested in working with you.
• Relying on your first search results. The first search results are usually the most relevant ones, but other recruiters are likely getting the same results. To stand out from your competition, look beyond the first page and try alternative keywords to expand your options.
• Not personalizing your communication. Highly-coveted candidates receive many identical templated InMails about “an amazing job opportunity.” To increase your response rates , craft an engaging subject line and personalize your message in a way that shows you did your research.
• Advertising instead of networking. Go beyond merely posting your job openings to build relationships with potential candidates. Invest some time (e.g. on a weekly basis) to connect with new people, join groups, comment on interesting articles and congratulate your connections for their achievements.
• Not viewing profiles in private mode. Checking out a LinkedIn profile multiple times might come across as stalking, unless you customize your privacy settings . It’s best to view profiles in private mode (which keeps your identity anonymous) before you decide to get in touch with someone.

Despite the popularity of social media sourcing across multiple platforms, LinkedIn is still recruiters’ primary recruiting tool . Here’s why:

• It’s job-focused. LinkedIn is a professional social network that caters to both job-seekers and employers, which makes it an optimal place to interact with active and passive candidates. People use LinkedIn as their virtual resume and many use it to share their achievements. Members can also either clearly state they’re seeking new job opportunities or subtly let recruiters know they’re open to being contacted .
• It’s recruiter-centric. LinkedIn designs features that facilitate recruiting. With LinkedIn Recruiter licenses, HR professionals gain access to greater numbers of candidate profiles and can send more direct messages (InMails) to people they’re not connected with.
• It’s candidate-friendly. The “Apply with LinkedIn” option under a job ad makes it easier for candidates to apply for a job at your company, as they won’t have to manually enter their career history, education and contact details. All they need is an updated LinkedIn profile. This feature speeds up the application process and improves candidate experience .
• It’s referral-friendly. Recruiters aren’t the only ones building strong LinkedIn networks – your current employees are, too. Ask them to share your job openings and prompt them to look through their connections to identify potential matches. They could even reach out to their connections if they think someone might be a good fit or share their connections’ contact details with you.

Facebook features can help you source candidates. Here are the most useful tools to help you find potential hires on Facebook:

• Facebook groups. People are more willing to share their personal information online once they find themselves in more private settings, like Facebook groups. For example, if you’re looking for a Web Designer, instead of typing “ Web designers who live/work in X ”, search groups where designers hang out, like “ graphic designers ” or “ UI/UX designers ”.
• Paid job ads. Instead of posting a job ad on your Facebook company page, reach your desired audience directly with paid job ads . To attract candidates you want, choose from multiple filtering options, like location, college degree or professional interests (e.g. PHP or Google Analytics.)
• Designer Boston
• Developer Spain

• Facebook Live. This feature helps you connect with your audience in real-time without using extra apps or video editing software. Ask employees to take part in Facebook Live sessions to introduce themselves, give office tours or simply share casual moments at work to build your employer brand .

With 2 billion monthly Facebook users , it’s likely your next hire is sharing a photo or chatting with their Facebook friends right now. Here’s how you can use Facebook features to recruit candidates :

• Post job ads. Add job postings to your company’s Facebook page and include links to the application form on your careers page . You could also use paid job ads to attract your desired audience based on specific criteria, like location or professional interests.
• Share your company culture. Give candidates a glimpse of what it’s like working with you. Share pictures of your offices and company events . Keep in mind that your current employees may also be your best brand ambassadors. Encourage them to share their work experiences on Facebook, or spotlight them on your Facebook careers page.
• Source passive candidates. Facebook Search allows you to find candidates using filters (e.g. location or job title.) You can also browse and join relevant Facebook groups , where people with similar professional interests gather and share ideas.
• Network with potential candidates. Dedicate someone on your team as a page manager to respond to people’s questions. Participate in Facebook groups and interact with followers on a regular basis. You could also attract job seekers by sharing career advice and interview tips.
• Encourage employee referrals. Create shareable Facebook job posts your current employees can easily send to their contacts. People who know their future co-workers are more likely to apply to your open roles.

Here are the most common social media sourcing mistakes recruiters make on Facebook and how to avoid them:

• Making biased judgments about candidates. People use Facebook personally and professionally, so they don’t always expect to be found (and judged) by recruiters. Evaluate only job-related information you find and avoid discriminating against potential candidates based on their personal preferences.
• Failing to build relationships. While Facebook is good for quick communication, it’s best to take the time to invest in long-term, trusting relationships with potential candidates and industry professionals. Engage with people online to build connections for your future hiring needs.
• Ignoring your brand. Candidates will research you when you reach out to them, so build an attractive corporate Facebook page. Share industry-related content, show off your workplace and reply to comments to show that you appreciate feedback and strive to improve your hiring process.

Facebook is one of the top three channels for social recruiting and for good reasons:

• It’s a large database of potential candidates. Nearly 75 percent of all adult Internet users are active on Facebook with a mix of men, women, adults between 18 and 29 and people over 65. These people use Facebook to share their professional achievements and seek new job opportunities .
• It’s job-posting friendly. Facebook can help you advertise your open roles. The  Jobs tab feature (available in the US and Canada for now) allows you to create your job post within Facebook by simply using the status updater tool on your company page. Or, if you’re using Workable, a simple integration with your Facebook company page powers the jobs tab automatically.
• It helps you increase your brand awareness. Studies show that people are more trusting of companies that are active on Facebook and other social media. Having a strong web presence on the most popular social network gives you a competitive advantage and improves your employer brand – all important in attracting talented candidates.
• It can help you attract more diverse candidates. With its vast membership, Facebook provides the opportunity to reach candidates from all over the world. Build a diverse pipeline by recruiting candidates on Facebook.

With 328 million active users per month, Twitter is a solid source of potential candidates. Here are the Twitter features that will help you source candidates :

• Hashtags . These increase the visibility of your posts. When posting a job ad, use appropriate hashtags (e.g. #bostonjobs and #SaaSjobs) to reach a more niche audience.
• Advanced Search . This feature lets you look for candidates’ profiles, using criteria like location, profession and hashtags. Use keywords relevant to your industry to find profiles that match your roles.
• Twitter lists . These lists are curated groups of accounts categorized by topic or interest (e.g. attendees at an industry conference .) Boolean search can also help you find Twitter lists for particular fields.
• Chats . These are group discussions that occur at predetermined times. Use Twitter chats to spot passive candidates who exchange interesting ideas. Consider initiating your own Twitter chat to attract more followers and get a better feel for potential candidates’ concerns.

It can be challenging to build an effective social media sourcing strategy on Twitter because it limits posts to 140 characters . But Twitter is still an effective way to source and engage candidates. Here’s how to get started:

• Company accounts: If you’re using a company account, you might find it easier to attract more followers who are already familiar with your brand.
• Personal accounts: Personal accounts , though, may invite more interaction, as people prefer talking to other people rather than corporate accounts.
• Create engaging content. Good content that’s relevant and relatable will make your Twitter feed interesting and will attract followers. Tweet about current events and news, frequent status updates, links to interesting articles and retweet (RT) influential people. Also, using the “@” to mention other people will invite dialogue on the topics you’re tweeting about.
• Promote your employer brand. Play to Twitter’s strengths and use it to build your reputation. Showcase employees’ achievements to give you a competitive advantage and a strong employer brand . Promote your events on Twitter: for example, let your followers know you participate in job fairs and invite them to meet you there.
• Expand your search. Beyond attracting potential candidates to your page, go where they are. Follow conference hashtags to find Twitter users who attend industry-related events. You can also use Boolean search to identify Twitter lists with people who are interested in specific topics.

Here are some mistakes recruiters make when using Twitter to recruit candidates and how you can avoid them:

• Not expanding your follower base. If you’re taking your first steps into recruiting on Twitter, invest some time to build a strong network of followers . Posting a job opening on Twitter when your only followers are your current employees may not bring you many applications.
• Not uploading a photo. Twitter’s default profile picture alienates followers, as they don’t know who they’re talking to. Even if you’re using a corporate account, make sure your page has photos and your posts read naturally (e.g. Use “we” instead of “X company” and ask questions to prompt interaction with followers.)
• Just posting job ads. Using Twitter as another job board, where you only advertise your openings, doesn’t play to its strengths. Twitter is a place where you can reach out to potential candidates before meeting them in a more formal setting, like interviews. To attract more followers, produce engaging content. Announce company news, share thoughts on industry-related topics, spotlight employees and interact with followers .
• Low involvement from hiring managers. Your next hire might already be following your hiring managers on Twitter. Ask hiring managers to share your job ads and provide career tips to attract a larger audience of potential candidates.

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter might be the most popular sourcing sites among recruiters, but to step up your social recruiting game, consider non-traditional platforms as well.

Here are some underused social platforms you can optimize to recruit candidates:

• Instagram : Use hiring-related hashtags to promote your job ads and attract potential candidates. And comment on people’s profiles when they upload work samples.
• Google+ : Join or create Google+ communities to exchange ideas and have direct conversations with professionals from fields relevant to your open roles.
• Snapchat : Attract potential candidates with non-traditional job ads, using special effects and stickers. As part of your hiring process, ask candidates to send short Snap videos in addition to their application.
• Reddit : Post your ads on subreddits and engage in discussions with Redditors who’re interested in your company.
• Slack : Participate in industry-specific Slack communities to share relevant news and build relationships with potential candidates.
• Meetup : Browse member lists of events to find relevant candidates for your roles.
• YouTube : Create a channel with employee testimonials and videos that showcase your workspace.

Complement your social media sourcing strategy with some non-traditional platforms. These platforms are not technically sourcing tools, but have features that can help boost your sourcing:

• Instagram : Comment on candidates’ accounts and promote your job ads with appropriate hashtags.
• Google+ : Find candidates’ online portfolios and resumes and contact them directly (as Google+ links with Gmail.)
• Snapchat : Use features like special effects and stickers to create job ads and applications that grab potential candidates’ attention.
• Reddit : Post your job ads and interact with potential candidates in Reddit’s subreddit communities.
• Slack : Join Slack communities to meet potential candidates from a specific field in a less formal setting.
• Meetup : X-ray Meetup.com to find members who attend job-related events, without actually having to attend those events.
• YouTube : Illustrate what working at your company looks like to build a strong employer brand and promote your openings with video job ads.

Here are the keys to building a successful social media recruiting strategy:

• Use social networks as proactive sourcing tools. Social media sourcing is an ongoing, organized effort to build candidate pipelines. Book specific time slots in your schedule, e.g. 30 minutes per week , to network with people online and start building relationships with potential future hires.
• Show off your company’s personality. Candidates want to know more about your company, and you can use social media to provide this kind of information. Share photos of your workplace, describe the benefits you offer and introduce your company’s employees. Create social pages that are unique to your company’s culture.
• Measure your results and readjust. As technology advances and new tools emerge, not all social sourcing strategies will remain successful indefinitely. Measure your results often (e.g. your source of hire for each social network) and experiment with new techniques and platforms.

Companies with strong employer brands recruit faster and hire better candidates. These companies make a consistent effort to uphold their reputation on social media sites like Glassdoor, Facebook and Twitter.

Here are ways to strengthen your employer brand to make your social sourcing and recruiting more effective:

• Promote events: Use your social pages to promote all recruitment events you host or participate in to attract more attendees.
• Highlight your company: Showcase what a day at your company looks like to attract and hire people who will adapt well to your company culture.
• Respond to reviews: Respond to every candidate review – positive or negative – on Glassdoor and other social platforms, to show you care about feedback.

Here are some tools you can use to complement your social media sourcing efforts:

• Scheduling tools: Automate updates for your social media pages to keep an active online presence around the clock. Software like Hootsuite and Buffer will help you schedule your posts.
• Analytics tools: Measure your posts’ traffic and engagement (e.g. number of clicks and shares) using social media tracking tools, like Bitly and Google Analytics .
• Sourcing tools: Gather information from candidates’ social media accounts, including their qualifications and professional interests. People Search aggregates and organizes information from millions of profiles to build complete candidate profiles.
• Applicant tracking systems: If your ATS integrates with social platforms, like LinkedIn and Facebook, you can advertise your job openings and manage candidates’ applications in one central location, without logging into each platform.

Looking for recruiting software? Workable is the industry leader with recruitment features to find and hire the best candidates. Sign up for our 15-day free trial .

While it’s best to craft the specifics of your social media sourcing strategy based on your company goals and hiring needs, here are some general rules to follow:

Be active in various online communities

Invest in learning how each medium works. Join Facebook groups , engage in Twitter chats and comment on Instagram . Don’t limit yourself to one network. If, for example, you’re looking to hire a designer , scrolling through Behance profiles will only get you so far. Dig deeper and search for designers who hang out in related Slack communities and share their work on Instagram or Pinterest.

Build relationships before you need them

Social sourcing requires thorough research in one or more channels, followed by personalized outreach. This approach mightn’t be effective for positions with limited time-to-fill . So, be proactive. Interact with potential candidates who you feel would be great employees at your company. When you contact them with an open role in the future, they’re more likely to consider, or even refer someone else, if you’ve already established a relationship.

Narrow your search with Boolean and hashtags

Social networks host many members who could be potential candidates, but that can be overwhelming for your recruiting efforts, if you don’t know how to narrow your search. Targeted Boolean search strings will help you search for profiles that meet specific criteria.

For example, this sample Boolean string to source mobile developer candidates targets Twitter users who know Swift and live in Boston:

You could also use hashtags to identify people who discuss certain topics or attend industry conferences.

Think like a social media user

If you’re looking through a resume database to find a developer in Boston, you’ll probably use keywords, like “Developer,” “Engineer,” “Software Engineer,” “Boston” and “Boston, MA.” But the same people may describe themselves in their social accounts as “Java enthusiasts” or “Proud geeks” who live in “Narnia” or “Everywhere.” When sourcing through social media , follow trends but also use your imagination.

While your social recruiting strategy should reflect your company culture and hiring needs, use success stories from other companies to help inspire you.

Here are some case studies of effective social media recruitment campaigns:

• Dropbox and LinkedIn: Features like Apply Starters and Open Candidates help Dropbox teams reach out to passive candidates who started filling out LinkedIn applications but didn’t finished them.
• L’Oréal and Facebook: L’Oréal’s uses its Facebook page dedicated to careers to highlight employees, advertise upcoming Facebook Live events and respond to reviews.
• Nestlé and Twitter: Nestle’s USA Careers Twitter account is full of personality. Its tweets inform potential candidates about open roles.
• McDonald’s and Snapchat: The fast food giant is soliciting ‘ Snaplications ’, 10-second Snap videos, for its first-round screenings.

Here are the most common social media sourcing mistakes that recruiters make and ways to avoid them:

• Stalking instead of searching . There’s a fine line between stalking and sourcing and crossing it can turn candidates off. When looking through candidates’ online profiles, focus on job-related information. Even if you come across personal data, refrain from using it in your recruiting pitches. It can be illegal and invite bias and may make your candidates feel uncomfortable.
• Not measuring your recruiting results . When building a social media sourcing strategy, find out where your potential candidates are, how they behave online and how to best approach them. Then, you can track metrics, like numbers of sourced candidates from each network and decide whether you need more effective recruiting tactics.
• Spamming your followers . Conversations on social networks should resemble in-person discussions. Be courteous to candidates and respect their time. Leave genuine comments on their profiles, or express your interest with a personalized recruiting email to introduce yourself and begin building a relationship.
• Quitting too soon . The fruits of your social sourcing labor will take time to ripen. Don’t lose heart if you try to find qualified candidates once and fail. The more you interact with people online, the more you’ll understand how each platform works and learn the best way to attract potential candidates .

Yes. Social networks offer many opportunities to advertise your job openings to a broader or more targeted audience. You can post your job ads to niche channels, where most of your potential candidates congregate (e.g. Behance for designers) or make your open roles visible to the type of candidate you want to hire (e.g. with Facebook paid job ads or in private, industry-specific Slack channels.)

Keep your social recruiting strategy well-rounded. Beyond posting jobs, use social networks to establish your employer brand and connect with potential candidates for future openings.

Recruiters implement social media recruiting strategies, with the help of the entire organization. That includes current employees, hiring managers, executives and the marketing team.

Recruiters are responsible for creating a social media recruiting strategy. That’s because:

• They’re usually the first point of contact with (potential) candidates, so they know the best way to approach them both online and offline.
• They’re familiar with the company’s current and future hiring needs, so they know where to source qualified candidates.
• They represent the company at recruitment events, so they can better promote these events on social media.

However, a social media recruiting strategy requires organization-wide participation from:

• Current employees. Current employees can serve as ambassadors, sharing their professional achievements and showcasing their work environment.
• Hiring managers. Hiring managers can proactively identify qualified people on social platforms, evaluating portfolios or work samples.
• Marketing department. Marketing staff can offer valuable advice on how to respond to comments and measure results of social campaigns.

Recruiters can use social media during the first stages of the recruiting funnel and hiring process to:

• Advertise their open roles.
• Source passive candidates.
• Screen and contact candidates.

However, social media recruiting is an ongoing process. Recruiters should use social networks to engage candidates in the long-run by promoting company culture, informing potential candidates about recruitment events and keeping in touch with passive candidates.

Social networks give recruiters access to valuable information about candidate profiles to facilitate their jobs. Social networks help recruiters:

• Screen candidates. Recruiters use social networks to review online portfolios and resumes, before deciding to call candidates for interviews.
• Learn more about potential hires. Social networks help recruiters learn more about candidates’ professional interests (e.g. if they attend conferences or participate in side projects.)
• Evaluate candidate skills. Recruiters can gauge candidates’ communication abilities and creativity skills (e.g. with writing samples) based on the information candidates promote on social networks.
• Judge culture fit. Recruiters can use social networks to evaluate whether candidates would be a good culture fit .

Training courses, either online or in-person, will help you with the basics of social media recruiting. You can also take advanced courses and certifications to become an authority as a social media sourcer. Here are our picks:

• LinkedIn Certification : Everything you need to know about LinkedIn Recruiter and how to use its features. Plus, a certification to highlight your sourcing skills.
• Social Media Marketing Training for Recruiters from the Web Media University : An online course on how to make the most of your recruiting on social platforms, with a focus on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
• The Searchologist : Choose between webinars and full online training courses (Recruiting on Facebook and/or Instagram.)
• Social Media Marketing For HR & Recruitment by SocialB : A comprehensive training program on sourcing, attracting and engaging candidates through social platforms. You can attend the course at a SocialB UK location or schedule an in-house training.

If you prefer to study at your own pace, here are some books on social media recruiting:

• Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment: Theory, Practice, and Current Challenges by Richard N. Landers and Gordon B. Schmidt: How to use social networks throughout the recruiting funnel, including do’s and don’ts and legal risks.
• Social Media Recruitment: How to Successfully Integrate Social Media into Recruitment Strategy by Andy Headworth: How to implement and evaluate the results of your social media recruiting efforts.
• Recruiting with Social Media: Social Media’s Impact on Recruitment and HR by Raj Anand: How to get started with social media recruitment, when you’re looking to incorporate fewer traditional recruiting channels.
• Social Recruiting Case Studies e-book by Link Humans : How five companies use social media to build successful recruiting strategies and lessons you can learn from each case study.

Presentations, live discussions and conferences can give you tips on effective social media recruiting from industry experts. Here are some webinars and upcoming events to keep an eye on:

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Using Social Media for Recruitment: A Comprehensive Guide for Agencies

In the dynamic landscape of talent acquisition, one game-changer stands out: using social media for recruitment. This strategy has evolved from a novel idea into a fundamental practice for recruitment agencies worldwide. But why has social media become such an indispensable tool in the recruiter's toolkit?

At its core, social media offers a unique platform for reaching out to a diverse pool of candidates, enabling recruiters to tap into a wider, more varied audience than traditional methods. From LinkedIn's professional networking to the more casual settings of Facebook and Twitter, each platform provides a distinct avenue for connecting with potential candidates. This is not just about posting job ads; it's about engaging with communities, building employer brands, and forging meaningful relationships with professionals across industries.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll delve into the myriad benefits and practical strategies of using social media for recruitment. We'll explore how leading figures in the recruitment industry, like Anaïs Neumann and Lewis Maleh , harness the power of these platforms to revolutionize the way recruitment agencies operate. Whether you're a seasoned recruiter or new to the field, understanding how to effectively utilize social media is crucial in today's competitive job market. Let's embark on this journey to master the art of social media recruitment.

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The Importance of Social Media in Recruitment

Expanded reach and diverse talent pools.

• Statistics: A LinkedIn report reveals that 77% of recruiters have utilized social media, demonstrating its pivotal role in modern recruitment strategies.
• Impact: Platforms like Facebook and Instagram extend an agency’s reach to a global talent pool, including passive candidates who may not actively seek job opportunities but are open to compelling offers.

Enhanced Employer Branding

• Case Study: Consider the strategies of industry leaders like Google, which effectively use platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to showcase their unique cultures and values. These efforts attract talent and set a benchmark for effective employer branding on social media.
• Benefit: By actively promoting their work environment, success stories, and employee testimonials, recruitment agencies can leverage social media to strengthen their employer brand

Cost-Effective Recruitment

• Comparison: In contrast to traditional methods, social media offers more budget-friendly or even free avenues for job postings and candidate engagement.
• Advantage: This affordability makes it an ideal strategy, particularly for agencies aiming to maximize their recruitment campaign ROI.

Real-Time Engagement with Candidates

• Observation: The instantaneity of social media fosters dynamic interactions with candidates, crucial for engaging top talent in a competitive market.
• Example: Engaging in real-time with candidates, a key aspect of "online recruitment campaign best practices," enhances the overall recruitment experience.

Insight into Candidate Profiles

• Consideration: Profiles on platforms like LinkedIn offer a well-rounded view of candidates, incorporating their soft skills and personal attributes.
• Utility: These insights, essential for "digital hiring tools and techniques," assist recruiters in making more nuanced hiring decisions.

Networking and Community Engagement

• Example: For more insights, follow Anaïs Neumann on LinkedIn, where she shares her expertise in talent acquisition and recruitment strategies.
• Advantage: Actively engaging in these online communities, as highlighted in our article on recruitment strategy , positions agencies as industry thought leaders.

Developing a Social Media Recruitment Strategy

Creating an effective social media recruitment strategy involves careful planning, execution, and monitoring. Here are key steps and best practices to ensure your strategy is successful:

Identifying Your Goals and Target Audience

• First Step: Clearly define what you want to achieve with your social media recruitment efforts. This could range from increasing brand awareness to attracting a specific type of candidate.
• Best Practice: Tailor your approach to the platforms where your target audience is most active.

Choosing the Right Platforms

• Selection Criteria: Each social media platform has its strengths and audience demographics. For instance, LinkedIn is ideal for professional networking, while Instagram might be better for reaching a younger audience.
• Pitfall to Avoid: Keep your resources manageable by trying to be present on every platform.

Creating Engaging and Relevant Content

• Content Strategy: Share a mix of job postings, company news, employee stories, and industry insights to engage your audience.
• Common Pitfall: Avoid overly promotional content, as it can disengage potential candidates.

Building Relationships and Engaging with Candidates

• Engagement Tips: Actively respond to comments and messages. Participate in relevant discussions to build a community around your brand.
• Best Practice: Foster a sense of community by highlighting employee achievements and company milestones.

Monitoring and Adjusting Your Strategy

• Analytical Approach: Use analytics tools to track the success of your posts and campaigns.
• Continuous Improvement: Be prepared to tweak your strategy based on performance metrics and feedback.

Leveraging Different Social Media Platforms

Each social media platform offers unique advantages for recruitment. Understanding these can help you tailor your approach for maximum effectiveness.

• Advantage: Ideal for professional networking and targeting industry-specific talent.
• Best Practice: Utilize advanced search features and post in relevant groups to find qualified candidates.
• Advantage: Broad reach and the ability to create a community around your brand.
• Best Practice: Use targeted ads and join industry-specific groups to increase visibility.
• Advantage: Great for real-time engagement and sharing industry news.
• Best Practice: Use hashtags to increase the reach of your posts and engage with trending topics in your industry.
• Advantage: Visually appealing platform, perfect for showcasing company culture.
• Best Practice: Use stories and highlights to give a behind-the-scenes look at your company.
• Advantage: Ideal for sharing more in-depth content, such as company tours or employee interviews.
• Best Practice: Create engaging, informative videos that give insight into your company and its values.

Incorporating these tailored strategies across different social media platforms can significantly enhance your recruitment efforts. By understanding the unique advantages of each platform and applying best practices, you can effectively leverage social media for talent acquisition, attracting the right candidates to your agency.

Techniques and Tools for Effective Social Recruiting

In the world of social recruiting, the right techniques and tools are essential for engaging candidates and streamlining the recruitment process. Here, we explore some key strategies and highlight how RecruitingCRM, powered by TalentRoom, can be a game-changer in this domain.

Personalized Engagement

• Technique: Personalizing your communication on social media can significantly increase candidate engagement. This involves tailoring messages to the candidate’s background and interests, making them feel valued.
• RecruitingCRM Tool: The collaboration suite in RecruitingCRM allows for personalized interaction with candidates, ensuring each communication is meaningful and tailored.

Building a Strong Employer Brand

• Technique: Share stories, testimonials, and insights that resonate with your target audience, showcasing your agency as an employer of choice.
• RecruitingCRM Advantage: Use RecruitingCRM to manage and share content that aligns with your branding, ensuring a consistent and compelling employer brand across all platforms.

Efficient Candidate Management

• Technique: Organizing and tracking candidate information efficiently is crucial for a streamlined recruitment process.
• RecruitingCRM Feature: The software enables agencies to import candidate profiles directly from LinkedIn, manage them in a centralized database, and track each candidate through the hiring pipeline.

Client and Job Management

• Technique: Effectively managing clients and job openings is key to a successful recruitment strategy.
• RecruitingCRM Functionality: The platform allows for effortless addition and management of clients and job openings, all in one place. Learn more about this feature on the RecruitingCRM website .

Creating and Sending Proposals

• Technique: Crafting compelling proposals to clients is an essential part of recruitment.
• RecruitingCRM Tool: The system offers customized proposal creation and negotiation tools, enabling recruiters to send stunning client proposals efficiently. Discover how to create and send proposals with RecruitingCRM .

Advanced Candidate Search and Shortlisting

• Technique: Finding and shortlisting candidates who best fit your client’s needs is a cornerstone of recruitment.
• RecruitingCRM Functionality: Utilize the advanced search feature in RecruitingCRM to identify the perfect candidates for any job opening quickly.

Streamlining the Hiring Process

• Technique: Keeping track of candidates throughout the hiring process ensures no opportunities are missed.
• RecruitingCRM System: The hiring pipeline feature provides a consolidated view of all recruitment activities, making it easier to follow candidates through every phase of the process.

By incorporating these techniques and utilizing the comprehensive tools offered by RecruitingCRM, recruitment agencies can revolutionize their social recruiting efforts. From personalized engagement to efficient management of clients and candidates, RecruitingCRM provides a robust platform tailored to meet the dynamic needs of modern recruitment.

Measuring the Success of Your Social Media Recruitment

Evaluating the effectiveness of your social media recruitment efforts is crucial to understanding the return on investment and making informed decisions for future campaigns.

Key Metrics and KPIs

• Engagement Rate: Track likes, shares, comments, and clicks on your posts. High engagement rates often indicate content resonance with your audience.
• Quality of Candidates: Assess the number and quality of applicants originating from social media channels. Are they meeting the job requirements?
• Time to Hire: Monitor how long it takes to fill positions using social media sourcing. A shorter time could indicate higher effectiveness.
• Cost per Hire: Calculate the total cost spent on social media recruitment divided by the number of hires made through these platforms.
• Conversion Rate: Measure how many candidates sourced from social media move through to interviews and, ultimately, job offers.

Overcoming Challenges in Social Media Recruitment

While social media recruitment offers numerous advantages, it also comes with its own set of challenges. Here are common issues and solutions:

Challenge: Maintaining Consistent Engagement

• Solution: Develop a content calendar and schedule regular posts. Use automation tools to maintain a consistent presence without manual input every day.

Challenge: Navigating Platform Algorithm Changes

• Solution: Stay updated with platform updates and adjust your strategy accordingly. Engaging content that prompts user interaction can help maintain visibility despite algorithm changes.

Challenge: Balancing Personalization and Automation

• Solution: Use automated tools for initial outreach but ensure to personalize communication in later stages, especially when interacting with potential candidates.

Challenge: Measuring ROI Effectively

• Solution: Implement analytics tools specifically designed for social media to accurately track performance metrics like engagement rates, applicant quality, and conversion rates.

Challenge: Ensuring Compliance with Data Privacy Regulations

• Solution: Stay informed about data protection laws like GDPR. Ensure your recruitment practices on social media comply with these regulations, particularly when storing and processing candidate information.

Future Trends and Predictions

The future of social media in recruitment is dynamic and evolving. Here are some trends and predictions:

Emphasis on Employer Branding

• Trend: The focus on building a strong employer brand through social media will intensify, with storytelling and employee advocacy becoming key elements.

Leveraging AI and Automation

• Prediction: Artificial intelligence and automation will play a larger role in candidate sourcing and initial screening processes.

Increasing Use of Video Content

• Trend: Video content, including employer branding and job postings, will become more prevalent for engaging potential candidates.

Growth in Passive Candidate Recruitment

• Prediction: There will be an increase in strategies targeting passive candidates, using data-driven approaches to identify potential fits.

Podcast Insights

• Resource: For more insights into the latest trends, check out Lewis Maleh’s podcast, "The Recruitment Show" , where he discusses these topics with industry leaders.

In conclusion, using social media for recruitment is more than a trend; it's an essential component of modern recruitment strategies. Throughout this article, we’ve explored the significant benefits of social media in recruitment, from expanding reach and enhancing employer branding to effectively leveraging different platforms and overcoming common challenges. The future of recruitment lies in adapting to these evolving trends. For recruitment agencies looking to stay ahead in the competitive talent acquisition landscape, mastering social media recruitment is not just an option – it's a necessity.

Acknowledgment

As we delve into the intricacies of social media recruitment, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to industry experts who continually inspire and guide us with their insights and experiences.

Anaïs Neumann - A seasoned recruiter with over a decade of diverse experience, Anaïs embodies the spirit of modern recruitment. Her hands-on approach to sourcing and her eagerness to share knowledge make her an invaluable resource in the recruitment community. Her commitment to sharing her secrets, particularly in executive and tech recruitment, is truly commendable. For more of her wisdom on talent acquisition, career development, and productivity, follow her on LinkedIn and visit The Curious Recruiter .

Lewis Maleh - As the Founder and CEO of Bentley Lewis, Lewis has established a remarkable presence in the executive search domain. His dedication to building a diverse and inclusive team, coupled with his passion for connecting people and fostering communities, sets a high standard in the industry. Lewis’s insights, shared through his popular podcast, "The Recruitment Show," offer valuable perspectives on recruitment trends and practices. Follow his journey and gain industry insights on LinkedIn and tune into The Recruitment Show for his latest discussions with industry leaders.

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The ultimate guide to social recruiting

Written by by Shannon Burton

Published on  October 26, 2021

Reading time  24 minutes

Recruiting has changed drastically in the past decade. Businesses must rapidly grow their workforce in an increasingly competitive landscape. In order to attract top talent, social recruiting strategies are pivotal.

The job market is shifting. Not only are companies searching for new skill sets and talents, but the way that businesses find their ideal candidates has turned on its head. In fact, 49% of HR professionals say their organization plans to increase virtual methods of recruitment and candidate engagement.

The question for modern organizations is: how can you make this work to your advantage? As a generation of digital natives enter the workforce and Millennials transition into leadership positions, social media will continue to be an important source for employers sourcing new talent.

Social media recruiting through employee advocacy and referrals could allow companies to tap into brand new spheres of talent. In fact, plenty of businesses have already gotten into the social recruiting game. Nine out of ten brands now use some manner of social media to source, attract and engage their new recruits.

The most effective social recruiting strategies

Consistently engage your social audience, 5 companies that have mastered the art of social recruiting, building an effective employee referral program.

• How to create a great onboarding plan

Retention strategies to improve company culture

What is social recruiting and does it really work.

Yes, social recruiting works. Social recruiting can serve as a complement to traditional recruiting methods. However, social recruiting is also quickly taking over traditional recruitment as the norm.

Recruiters find that social media allows them to narrow the candidate pool more effectively and quickly find qualified individuals.

When businesses implement social recruiting strategies correctly, they get their brand message across numerous social platforms while showing potential candidates an enticing picture of what their company culture is like. In fact:

• 96% of job seekers use social media when conducting a job search ( CareerArc )
• 49% of professionals follow companies on social media to stay aware of job opportunities ( LinkedIn )
• 81% of jobseekers want to see job opportunities posted to Facebook ( Link Humans )
• 78% of recruiters expect social media recruiting activities to increase ( Jobvite )
• 46% of companies said social media recruiting investments are a focus in 2020 and beyond ( Jobvite )
• Instagram recruiting more than doubled between 2017 and 2020 ( Jobvite )
• Nearly 40 million people search for jobs on LinkedIn each week ( LinkedIn )
• 71% of U.S. hiring decision-makers feel that looking at candidates’ social media profiles is an effective way to screen applicants ( Express )

Why traditional recruiting strategies are no longer enough

Traditional recruiting relied on finding prospective employees in a way that was time consuming and expensive, making them less efficient than social recruiting strategies. While a lot of these methods are still in use, they come with significant disadvantages over a well-formed social recruiting strategy—primarily when it comes to cost.

For example, some job sites charge on a cost-per-click basis, such as between $0.25 – $1.50 per click. This may not seem like much, but if your job posting accumulates 2,000 clicks, costs can add up quickly.

Social recruiting can be done in both a passive and active manner. It is important to formulate a concrete plan before posting job openings on social media. Below are some social recruiting strategies to get you started.

Determine your goals

The path to success always starts by creating a solid foundation. It’s easy for companies to get tangled up in connecting with candidates through a variety of platforms as you work on your recruitment strategy.

If you start dividing your attention between dozens of sites without any clear ambitions, you’ll be setting yourself up for unnecessary struggle. Instead, make a detailed plan that focuses on the best social media platforms for your ideal candidates, and funnel prospects through a single communication channel.

Today, 92% of employers use social media to hire talent. However, the way you use social media to inform your recruitment strategy can involve several different tactics, such as:

• Using LinkedIn to learn more about a candidate’s professional experience
• Engaging candidates on Twitter to learn more about their interests and what they value—which also helps gauge culture fit
• Monitoring Facebook to get a glimpse into how candidates present themselves to strangers, friends and family
• Promoting jobs with hashtags on TikTok or Instagram and using these platforms to show audiences what it’s like to work for your company
• Creating YouTube videos that showcase your company values and culture

Tap into the right platforms

While LinkedIn or Twitter might seem like the obvious place to start your social media recruiting strategy , it’s important to research your ideal candidate profile and consider where they’re most likely to spend their time on social. For instance, a graphic designer might spend more time on visual channels like Instagram or Pinterest, while video editors likely enjoy YouTube and TikTok.

As a result, recruiters must be agile in where they plant their flag to find the most talented and qualified candidates. Finding high-quality employees means tapping into the right platform for the role you’re trying to fill.

Each platform you consider will require a slightly different approach for candidate sourcing. For example, on Twitter you’ll want to incorporate hashtags to join the right conversations and make it easier for your team to reach out to possible referrals. On Facebook, it may be appropriate to visit careers pages and job groups to seek out potential employees.

Update your approach and make applying easy

In the age of remote work and distributed teams, social recruiting has emerged as a powerful solution for companies not just because it gives them access to a wider range of potential applicants, but also because it could simplify the recruitment process. In order to thrive, businesses need to monitor and update their strategies regularly.

Companies are beginning to recognize that strictly posting on job boards won’t cut it. Eighty-six percent of job seekers use social in their search—a number that will only grow as more hyper-connected digital natives enter the workforce. Especially if your company embraces work-from-anywhere policies, you’ll want to take advantage of recruiting that reaches candidates around the world.

One particularly important factor to keep in mind is that your application process should be as intuitive as possible, with as few steps from the social recruiting post to submission as necessary. This might sound obvious, but you may be surprised by how many companies have slow, buggy application processes, or job portals that aren’t mobile-friendly.

Ensure your online presence reflects your brand

A work environment that’s both desirable and reflective of your employer brand will continue to climb the ranks of your future candidates’ list of requirements. Company culture attracts the top 20% of candidates, meaning a strong reputation and positive online presence carries a lot of weight, particularly with passive job seekers. In fact, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand.

To develop a more active and positive social media presence, think about your brand manifesto and how you can highlight your people, values and other differentiators. For most companies, this will be about featuring current employees—after all, if you have a strong brand identity, they’ll be your biggest advocates. By showcasing employee stories, team events and other company culture touchpoints through written, audio or visual content, you give candidates a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what they can look forward to should they join your team.

Involve employee advocates

Social recruiting through employee advocacy automatically increases your recruitment reach. Just by sharing job listings on their social profiles, your workforce exponentially boosts your ability to connect with new and diverse talent.

Employee social media content is shared 25 times more frequently than when the same content is shared by brand channels—that’s a wide reach.

The easier it is for your employees to get involved with your social recruiting strategies, the more likely they are to naturally share content on behalf of your brand. After all, 72% of U.S. adults use at least one social media site, and 40% of professionals use social media for business.

True employee advocates will organically spread the word about your company culture and use their own social networks to help fuel your candidate pipeline. If your employees are posting and Tweeting about how amazing it is to work for you, it will naturally draw a bigger audience to not only your recruitment efforts but also your overall presence online.

Potential candidates want proof that people enjoy working for you. Your employees are the only ones who can do that.

When it comes to social recruiting, it’s important not to lose sight of what this approach is at its core—social. This means that your conversations should be a two-way street, and you should always be prepared to both ask and answer questions.

At the same time, make sure that you don’t focus exclusively on job postings. You should always strive to spark conversations that engage different groups of people, share helpful resources and infuse your messaging with your company’s unique tone and values . Talented individuals should engage with your brand even when job roles aren’t available, helping you create a pool of talent to dip into whenever roles open up.

Participating in Facebook or LinkedIn groups helps you get the word out that you’re hiring to a potentially large group of individuals. Be an active participant in groups before making a one-off post about a job opportunity, however, to avoid looking promotional and drawing negative attention.

Engage with the communities you’re a part of and provide value to group members. Once group members get to know you, they will be much more receptive to posts that promote job opportunities.

Use social networks’ advanced features

Your target demographic on each network can vary greatly. Once you understand who is listening, tailor your message to reach the right individuals at the right time. Most of the major social networks have native features to support your hiring efforts—use these to actively target and engage prospective candidates on a one-to-one basis.

Facebook Job Postings

As one of the most popular social platforms, Facebook is an excellent recruiting channel for many brands. Facebook job posts appear on your business page under the jobs bookmark, as well as alongside regular posts. Employees can share job posts to their personal timelines or via Messenger. Job posts can also be boosted for a fee to appear in the news feeds of your target audience based on location, education and work experience.

LinkedIn Advanced People Search

Because of the business-oriented nature of LinkedIn, its advanced search capabilities give recruiters significant advantages over other networks. While about half of its advanced search features are free to use, some require a LinkedIn Premium account. Still, the free portion of their advanced search provides a lot of flexibility and power for finding qualified individuals who may be a good fit for the positions you’re hiring for.

Once you’ve identified potential candidates, recruiters can use LinkedIn’s native video meeting feature to quickly set up introductory conversations.

Twitter Advanced Search

Twitter’s advanced search feature is more limited than Facebook’s and LinkedIn’s, but can be powerful when used correctly. As you probably know, Tweets are limited to 280 characters, so this search is better for finding individuals who are Tweeting using a specific phrase or hashtag. Find what hashtags are used most in your line of work, use them in the advanced search and narrow your results by location if relevant.

TikTok Resumes

Recognizing a rise in career and job-related content, TikTok introduced TikTok Resumes in 2021. The pilot program lets select companies post open positions, while interested candidates can submit short video resumes. Using hashtags like #CareerTok and #TikTokResumes, brands can join in on the conversation and put out calls for video resumes from talented creators on the platform.

Measure your results

As with any strategy, it’s important to establish KPIs to gauge the impact of social recruiting. To measure your social recruiting efforts, focus on the following:

• Traffic: How many people landing on your application page were referred from social media? You can dive into this more and see which networks are driving the most traffic so you can focus your efforts on those that perform best.
• Conversions: How many applications were filled out and submitted from social referrals? This number will allow you to calculate the ROI from your social recruiting efforts. If this number seems to be significantly lower than expected, revisit your application process to see if you can improve it.
• Engagement: This number will allow you to A/B test your posts to see which types of posts are doing well and which are falling flat.

Notably, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply for a job if the company actively manages its employer brand. This often takes dedicated employees to populate the company career page with entertaining, culture-related content, as well as provide fast, thorough responses to reviews and inquiries. It’s an ambitious undertaking, but these five companies are totally nailing it.

1. NJ Transit

https://www.facebook.com/NJTRANSIT/photos/a.248211471925797/4285003604913210

With over 245,000 followers on their main Twitter account and 14 additional accounts for separate service lines, NJ Transit’s Tweets certainly have reach. In 2020, the public transportation provider leveraged this in its hiring strategy. They also used their social media presence to highlight existing employees and community initiatives. When they started using social media to assist with hiring bus operators, NJ Transit saw a 60% increase in resumes .

Verizon is one of many companies joining a growing trend on Facebook. Dedicated career pages such as Verizon Careers take advantage of Facebook’s page management tools to post jobs and share information about their company culture. Facebook pages include areas for reviews, photos, videos and more which Verizon makes the most of for its audience of 218,000.

"Research has shown that even when you create a culture that is strategically aligned and strong (that is, widely shared and intensely valued), it won’t help you over the long run unless you also develop a culture that is adaptive in real time." https://t.co/WynGqC2MbX — Inside Zappos (@InsideZappos) September 30, 2020

Taking a slightly different approach, Zappos turned heads with a strictly social approach to recruiting in 2014. The shoe company launched dedicated accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube under the name “Inside Zappos” with the goal of sharing company culture, information, news, events and open positions with prospective employees.

The move was better suited to some platforms than others. While Inside Zappos is still active on Twitter and Facebook , the YouTube channel eventually migrated back to Zappos’ main YouTube account, and Inside Zappos’ last Instagram post was in 2018.

Making the most of its video content, film giant Disney has perhaps unsurprisingly dedicated an entire YouTube channel to their career opportunities and boasts over 9.5k subscribers. The Disney Careers channel uses video collections to describe positions in technology, engineering, “Imagineering” and more. This is an excellent example of a brand playing to its strengths with recruiting.

5. Cactus Club Cafe

@cactusclubcafe Coffee breaks on the HQ rooftop ☕️ 👏🏼 #cactusclubcafe #lifeatcactus #joblove #handchallenge #handclapchallenge #fyp ♬ Hands Clapping – 😈89😈

For an example of recruiting on TikTok, look no further than the Cactus Club Cafe. A completely recruitment-dedicated account shows behind-the-scenes footage of what it’s like to work at the venue. In between fun dance videos and drink pour reels are widely shared hiring announcements. Cactus Club Cafe has undeniably mastered the use of video to capture and keep its audience’s attention, fostering interest in employment.

Using social recruiting to top up your talent

Companies have discovered that using social media for recruiting isn’t just a useful way to expand the applicant pool—it’s also an excellent way to find great candidates. One survey found that 92% of recruiters use social media to find candidates they consider “high quality.”

For most businesses, social recruiting and employee advocacy are programs that go hand-in-hand. When you focus on building a positive company culture where employees can share their thoughts and feelings about their careers in a focused and productive way, you attract referrals who are more likely to be a perfect fit for your work environment.

Brands across the US continue to peg talent recruitment as one of the most difficult business needs to fulfill. In fact, 73% of employers claim they have difficulty attracting employees. As a result, many companies domestically and abroad are rethinking their hiring solutions.

Employee referral programs are one outcome of this new approach to hiring. Companies use them to revitalize their recruitment strategies and enrich their talent acquisition programs as a whole. Not only does the right referral program improve the quality of the applicants you receive, but referred employees come with higher engagement levels and higher retention rates , among other benefits.

We’ll show you the necessary steps for creating an employee referral program that drives measurable value and yields results for both your company culture and your bottom line.

Why you need an employee referral program

Not only is it increasingly difficult to find the right candidates for crucial roles, but it’s also often a challenge to convince those people why your company stands apart from other employers.

The best referral program examples lead to significant results for growing companies. This includes:

• A higher quality of applicants: Research shows that referred candidates are of a higher quality than applicants from the general public. After all, your current employees are unlikely to recommend just anyone for an open role. They want recognition for an exceptional hire.
• Better employee engagement: Employees referred by a friend stay 70% longer than non-referral hires. Additionally, the effectiveness of referrals is rising. Between 2020 and 2021, the percentage of workers likely to click on a job opportunity posted by someone in their social network rose from 74% to 82% .
• Time saved for recruiters: With an employee referral program, your colleagues become an extension of your hiring team. This reduces cost in time and resources usually attributed to talent acquisition.

Participation in referral programs is on the rise. Seventy-one percent of workers were likely to share job openings at their company on social media in 2021 compared to 63% in early 2020, and 38% participated in a referral program compared to just 27% a year before.

So, how can you create a program that works for your business?

Create an environment employees are proud of

Any exceptional referral program begins by designing a work culture that makes employees feel recognized, engaged and inspired. In other words, you need to create an environment that people actually want to refer their friends to.

You need to cultivate a positive environment that encourages strong internal communication and healthy employee engagement. Ensure that your company is worth recommending by communicating with staff, rewarding hard work and providing growth opportunities. Without these elements in place, no amount of effort will prompt workers to refer your brand to others.

Pay attention to little things in daily employee interactions, and identify meaningful ways to recognize key contributions. These actions strengthen relationships with employees, which are the pillars of your employee referral program.

Develop clear messaging for referrals

A disjointed message can be a threat to even the best referral programs. When you’re tapping employees as an extension of your hiring team, it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page about company goals, motivations and aspirations.

One way to achieve this is by creating an employee referral program outline (along with referral program examples) to guide the process . Detail how you want employees to describe your company and its culture, as well as more practical details like:

• How employees can make referrals (e.g., with links, social media posts, emails, etc.)
• What you’re looking for in referrals (who is your ideal candidate, which characteristics do you want to avoid?)
• How employees will know when job roles become available
• How employees will learn (and even be rewarded) if their referral is hired

It may also be helpful to educate employees on the value of an employee referral program. This will help them understand what they’re giving back to the company and may make them think more carefully about the suggestions they make.

Share statistics, such as how 50% of referrals stay with companies for three years, to show employees the value of their networks and the opportunity they have to make your business a better, more successful place to work.

Celebrate program participation

Just as employee engagement programs are improved with regular rewards and acknowledgment, referral programs can benefit from incentives as well.

Employees are more motivated to refer hires if they know what’s in it for them. Though there isn’t a list of hard-and-fast rules to follow when deciding which incentives to offer or what achievements to recognize, many organizations offer bonuses once a referral is hired or once they’ve stayed on the team for a certain period of time.

You don’t have to instantly hire candidates sourced through an employee referral program, but it’s important to at least offer them an interview and communicate quickly and effectively. Provide referral candidates with a strong hiring experience to reduce the risk of tainting the relationship between you and current employees.

You can also establish a feedback system for referrals to improve employee engagement. This lets employees know that you truly value their suggestions and establishes a benchmark for future referrals.

Set and track the right goals for your referral program

Referral programs can save you thousands of dollars per hire , but it’s equally important to make sure your strategy yields the right results for your company.

When implementing an employee referral program, consider what long and short-term goals you, your team and your leadership want to achieve. This will help identify which metrics to use to measure success. For instance, your goals might include:

• Improving the quality of job applicants
• Increasing employee retention
• Boosting employee satisfaction
• Fostering alignment with company culture

There are various ways you can track each outcome, from measuring the costs of referrals against traditional hiring practices to quantifying the amount of time saved by your referral program. You can even look at the productivity and production levels of new employees to determine whether referral candidates yield better outcomes than external applicants.

Building the right employee referral program

The right referral program can do wonders to help a talent acquisition team better source candidates within your existing employees’ networks.

For example, an employee advocacy tool allows you to easily share open roles internally and provide employees with approved messaging to share with their own networks. This streamlines the hiring process and reduces cost-per-hire.

Referral programs increase hiring frequency, provide access to better candidates, produce greater ROI and reduce turnover. That means that these programs work, surfacing better candidates delivered by people who are familiar with the characteristics and skills most essential to your company.

Once you’ve identified new hires from social recruiting and employee referrals, make sure the rest of your onboarding experience is equally streamlined and reflective of your culture.

Successful onboarding leads to improved productivity

Bringing on new talent takes significant time and money. While the true cost of hiring new employees has been long debated, a recent report by the Society of Human Resource Management found the average cost of hiring a new employee was $4,425. Replacing an entry-level employee can cost roughly 30% of the person’s annual salary, and mid- and senior-level roles cost even more.

Clearly, the cost of a new hire can’t be ignored. This is primarily due to the investment that goes into onboarding and training. The onboarding process sets the tone for a new employee’s experience with an organization.

This is especially important in the case of remote workers. In these situations, employers must make sure that their virtual onboarding programs are structured, thorough and accessible (or risk new team members falling through the cracks).

Studies show that burnout and emotional exhaustion can occur if employees go through a poor organizational socialization process. Effective onboarding has a significant impact on job performance, employee engagement, satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Welcome new employees with a comprehensive onboarding strategy to make the most of your hiring investment.

Ease onboarding with Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social

Not only can Employee Advocacy   by Sprout Social support your social recruiting efforts and lower your cost-per-hire, it can also improve your onboarding process.

Employee Advocacy   makes the onboarding process more efficient and much simpler for everyone involved. When new employees come on board, you can upload materials such as the employee handbook into the platform and direct new hires there. This same technique can be used with corporate guidelines, company policies and benefits and wage information.

Employee Advocacy   is also a great way to share company culture with new hires and get them engaged with other team members. Its embedded content curation tools allow new hires to read and share their peer’s content on social. This gets new employees engaging directly on the first day, which leads to a happier and more connected team.

How to create an effective onboarding plan

Onboarding plans have many facets. Each one will be different depending on your company, but all onboarding plans need to accomplish a few common goals.

It’s extremely important to create an onboarding plan with purpose. Organizations potentially lose tens of thousands of dollars on ineffective onboarding. Most failed onboarding plans revolve around a sink-or-swim approach where new employees get thrown into work with no context or resources. Others fall back on an excessive hand-holding approach, with new hires monitored without any room for independent growth.

We’ve put together a list of five onboarding best practices to help you avoid the pitfalls of welcoming new employees:

1. Have an organized process

While it may seem like a no-brainer, it’s important to make a plan. You’d be surprised how many businesses don’t put a lot of time and effort into welcoming a new employee on board.

This step includes logistical items like making sure on-site employee workspaces are set up and that they have access to the building and the company intranet. For remote workers, it means ensuring they have access to the tools, software and platforms necessary to communicate with the team and do their job effectively (a little welcome gift doesn’t hurt either.)

It’s a good idea to have some sort of employee welcome packet. This packet should introduce new hires to your company culture, provide information about your onboarding plan and detail what to expect over the coming months. It should also include a point of contact for any questions or issues new hires encounter along the way.

2. Explain your culture and vision

Every new hire needs to be informed about your company vision and goals. This will help them better understand the direction of your organization as a whole, and how their role and work fits into the bigger picture. This will give new employees an immediate sense of your corporate culture and start planting the seeds for engagement early.

Getting new employees in touch with your overarching strategy is important for empowering your team, sharing core values and helping them assimilate into the company. Carve out time for new hires to meet with other departments and leaders to better understand how each facet of your business works toward your company goals.

3. Clearly define expectations

Outline clear goals and expectations with new hires so they know what success looks like at your organization. Set aside time to explain how your team measures its impact, including which KPIs you track and how frequently you report on them. When you’re transparent with your expectations from the start, it’s easier for new hires to stay positive and productive.

4. Introduce and connect peers

Giving new hires a point of contact, peer sponsor or “buddy” gives them a safe space to ask questions. Choose a mentor who interacts with them on an equal level, such as a member of their department, but not a manager.

If your organization onboards multiple new hires at a time, you can also try moving them through the process together in groups or cohorts. This way, new team members won’t feel alone and can ask each other questions as they get familiar with the company. This also makes it easier for new employees to support one another and bond.

5. Build out an extended onboarding schedule

It can take one to two years for a new employee to become fully productive. Having an onboarding plan that lasts 30-90 days will give new hires time to get familiar with the tools, processes and responsibilities associated with their new roles. An extended onboarding process also gives new employees time to lay the fundamental groundwork for success.

Here is what a typical 90-day onboarding process for new employees could look like.

• By 30 days: Your new hires will be introduced to the people and tools they’ll work with every day. Set small goals and have them start working on initial projects. One of the most important things for them to do within the first month is to get acclimated to the company culture. At the end of this period, they should have a solid understanding of their responsibilities, their role and expectations.
• By 60 days: During this period, employees should take on bigger responsibilities. The bulk of training should be done by now and the focus should be placed on what they do. They should be collaborating with other team members in different departments and contributing to larger projects.
• By 90 days: New employees should start to work more independently. They should accomplish bigger tasks and take on more responsibilities. This is the period where they’re able to complete tasks with limited guidance from you or others and become more accountable for their work.

According to Bankrate, 55% of Americans expect to look for a new job heading into 2022. In a phenomenon dubbed “The Great Resignation,” workers are seeking more flexible employment arrangements, higher pay and job security.

If businesses want to not only hire the best talent for their organization but keep that talent around for the long-term, they need more effective employee retention strategies.

Employee retention is all about holding on to the people that you’ve worked hard to recruit into your network. This might seem like an obvious factor for companies to consider, but 20% of HR departments report that competing priorities prevent them from focusing on their employee retention rate.

Don’t think this will be a temporary battle. Historically, 27% of employees change jobs each year, 46% passively look for new careers and 17% actively job hunt. The key thing to remember is that your employee retention rate isn’t exclusively based on compensation issues. Instead, it often hinges on the ability to keep employees satisfied with tactics for growth, security and appreciation.

Why is your employee retention rate suffering?

To ensure an effective employee retention strategy, businesses need to listen to the needs of their employees and implement strategies for success from onboarding to exit interviews.

Approximately 88% of employees leave their roles for reasons other than pay, but 89% of employers think that employees leave entirely for salary-related reasons—clearly there’s a disconnect.

Common reasons for turnover often include:

• Mismatched company culture
• Insufficient feedback
• Limited growth and advancement opportunities
• Lack of recognition or work/life balance
• Loss of trust or confidence in senior staff

By developing an employee retention strategy that addresses the root causes of turnover and employee engagement, you can reduce your cost-per-hire significantly. Here are some best practices for your retention strategy.

1. Use metrics to provide feedback and motivation

Many employee retention strategies hinge on feedback. While positive feedback can motivate employees to do their best work, constructive criticism can help rectify issues in the workplace. Both forms of feedback boost engagement, which is key in a world where employee engagement has decreased since 2019 .

People have a desire to feel they’re succeeding in their goals, and vague feedback isn’t enough. Find a way to share key metrics like profit and loss, customer engagement, and brand growth with your employees through your business intranet or collaboration platform. This will help to not only engage your employees but establish pride in your company culture.

As engagement increases in your company, you’ll find that productivity starts to grow. Measure the speed at which projects are completed in your company and whether your business becomes more efficient over time. You can also conduct surveys and polls to ask your employees whether they feel they’re getting the right information to measure their performance.

2. Encourage work/life balance

If you want to ensure that your employees continue to stay motivated and work efficiently, you need to be an advocate for work/life balance.

Since today’s workers are more concerned about flexibility, work/life balance solutions such as opportunities for remote working or support for their health and wellbeing make your business more appealing to job candidates. Discuss the idea of work/life balance with people in your company and find out what appeals to them most.

3. Create and emphasize opportunities to grow

Though they are some of the most notorious job-hoppers in the current market, the average Millennial in 2020 planned to work for their current employer for 10 years . Millennials are happy to stay in a job when they know they’ll have access to advanced technology, upward career mobility and annual raises.

Providing opportunities for your employees to grow and evolve in their roles not only helps to improve retention but also significantly reduces cost-per-hire. After all, the more you use in-house training solutions to boost your employee retention rate, the more you develop highly skilled staff members who can naturally advance when new positions open up. By implementing training programs and promoting from within, you create powerful incentives for team members to stick with your company.

4. Empower your team

Today’s employees want to work for a company that understands, trusts and respects them. In fact, 94% of employees say that they would stay at their company longer if it simply invested in helping them learn.

Empowering your team with upskilling and reskilling at work is essential to improving your employee retention rate and minimizing cost-per-hire. By developing your team’s skills, you allow each member of staff to take full ownership of their careers. This means that you’re not micro-managing and you enable your company network to innovate, create and take chances where necessary.

You can also empower your team with other strategies. Offer employees stretch or reach projects that both interest and challenge them. Make a point to create 1:1 face time with your organization’s leadership. Offer employee resource groups where colleagues can connect with people they don’t usually work with and band together to enact positive change in the organization or wider community.

Use social recruiting to retain top talent

From recruiting to retention, ensuring your employees are engaged at every step of their career helps create a productive, rewarding work culture. Social recruiting is a great match for the needs of today’s job seekers, but employers need to follow up with a streamlined recruiting process and meaningful onboarding and retention strategies.

A well-designed strategy that covers recruitment through retention is essential if companies want to build a great team and stay ahead of the competition. It’s hard to implement a new framework for promotion and growth if you’re constantly backfilling roles or fixing the productivity and morale challenges that stem from frequent turnover.

It’s not the salary or bonuses that matter most in your culture, recruiting and retention efforts—it’s the ability to engage your employees in an atmosphere that offers respect, room for growth and empowerment.

Ready to revisit your approach to social recruiting? Swipe these 11 LinkedIn recruiting tips to stand out from the crowd .

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Social Media Recruitment 3.0: Toward a new paradigm of strategic recruitment communication

Journal of Communication Management

ISSN : 1363-254X

Article publication date: 8 May 2018

Drawing on a unique case of a Web 3.0 recruitment campaign, the purpose of this paper is to explore how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influence, add value to and challenge conventional recruitment communication management.

Design/methodology/approach

The study draws on a reflexive dialogical research approach, which means that it is methodologically designed as a critical dialogue between on the one hand an empirical case and on the other hand theories on social media and strategic communication.

The study points toward a fundamental new approach to recruitment communication. The application of a Web 3.0 strategy entails what we term an open source recruitment strategy and a redirection of employee focus from work life to private life. These insights point toward ontologically challenging the basic assumptions of employees, work life and the employing organization.

Research limitations/implications

The paper presents a single-case study, which prepares the ground for larger, longitudinal studies. Such studies may apply a more long-term focus on the implications of applying Web 3.0 recruitment strategies and how they may be integrated into – or how they challenge – overall corporate communication strategies.

Practical implications

A turn toward Web 3.0 in recruitment communication affects the degree of interactional complexity and the level of managerial control. Furthermore, the authors argue that the utilization of a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment communication put forth precarious dilemmas and challenges of controllability, controversy, ownership and power relations, demanding organizations to cautiously entering the social media 3.0 employment market.

Originality/value

This study indicates how the value and potentials of social media as facilitating participatory processes and community conversations can be strategically used in and fundamentally alter recruitment communication, and hence offers new insights into a paradigmatically new way of understanding what strategic social media recruitment is, can and do.

• Social media
• Strategic communication
• Communication management
• Communication strategy
• Employee communication

Aggerholm, H.K. and Andersen, S.E. (2018), "Social Media Recruitment 3.0: Toward a new paradigm of strategic recruitment communication", Journal of Communication Management , Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 122-137. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-11-2017-0131

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Helle Kryger Aggerholm and Sophie Esmann Andersen

Published in the Journal of Communication Management . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

The uses of social technologies and digital media (i.e. blogs, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, etc.) were initially introduced and creatively used within marketing and brand communications ( Fournier and Avery, 2011 ; Hanna et al. , 2011 ). Currently, we are witnessing an increased awareness of and focus on the strategic potentials in adopting social media in employee communication processes, e.g. in recruitment and selection ( Nikolaou, 2014 ), as mean to knowledge sharing ( Gibbs et al. , 2013 ) and employee engagement ( Rai, 2012 ).

Surveys indicate that companies increasingly turn to social media as a preferred recruitment source (e.g. Brotherton, 2012 ). HR professionals increasingly and extensively use social networking sites to screen and select applicants ( Nikolaou, 2014 ; Smith and Kidder, 2010 ), e.g. in order to verify information provided by the applicants ( Levashina, 2009 ) or merely because of the social media accessibility to applicant information to a low cost ( Jacobs, 2009 ). However, in a study on the perceived fairness of using social media for screening applicants in the hospital industry, results show that applicants generally rated the use of social networking sites as less fair which would ultimately affect their job intentions negatively ( Madera, 2012 ). In addition, the study suggested that applicants perceived social networking sites as not providing any information relevant for either new or current employees. The study by Nikolaou (2014) supports this, as it shows a mismatch between job seekers’ social media use and the recruiting companies. The results indicate that whereas companies increasingly turn to social networking sites in posting jobs, job seekers are using specific job boards more extensively and, in addition, consider them more effective than both LinkedIn and Facebook. The same study shows that social networking sites are effective in reaching passive job seekers compared to online job boards.

From a recruitment perspective, social media are also used as part of a corporate communication strategy to promote employer brand image ( Sivertsen et al. , 2013 ; Carrillat et al. , 2014 ) and studies show that a favorable brand image positively affects recruitment outcome (e.g. DelVecchio et al. , 2007 ). A study by Allen et al. (2004) on whether and how the media used to communicate recruitment messages influence outcome concludes that the employed media strategy affects both cognitive and affective responses to the message as well as pre-hire outcome (including attitudes, intentions and behavior associated with joining the organization). The mere social media presence, thus, seems to positively affect corporate reputation, which again positively affect employer attractiveness, and which positively correlates with applicants’ job intentions and their expectations toward the employment company ( Sivertsen et al. , 2013 ; Carrillat et al. , 2014 ). Consequently, social media seem to make a difference in recruitment contexts and may positively affect recruitment processes and outcome.

Additionally, in a case study of a social media recruitment campaign, Henderson and Bowley (2010) have explored how organizations can build authentic dialogue and stakeholder “friendships” through social networking sites. The core idea of the campaign studied by Henderson and Bowley (2010) was to reposition the industry image and portray the industry as a “cool” career option by means of creating authentic dialogue and friendships between existing and potential employees, thus increase identification between the organization and potential job applicants and to develop a sense of shared community. However, the authors conclude that since the organization behind the campaign adopted a taken-for-granted assumption about social media and the use of social media as automatically developing relations and generating authentic conversation, the campaign failed to strategically utilize the social aspects of social media.

social media are first and foremost a channel to broader reach in recruitment processes;

social media are manageable and controllable; and

social media presence automatically gives rise to co-operative practice and fosters collaborative engagement.

In this paper, we use the in-game recruitment campaign entitled “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” as an exemplary case to discuss the shortcomings of the above-listed assumptions and suggest a paradigmatic shift in the use of social media in job recruitment communication, which breaks with the predominant assumptions guiding the current use of social media in strategic recruitment communication as outlined above. Accordingly, the paper aims to explore the characteristics and nature of this new emerging recruitment communication practice and show how it fundamentally challenge previous assumptions on employee, organization and work life. However, the use of social media in recruitment communication is not entirely unproblematic, and hence the analysis also points toward some of the critiques and challenges emerging as employment relations transcend the conventional employee-employer relationship and includes private spheres, value identification and identify performance. These pitfalls are pivotal for managers to keep in mind before embarking the wonders of the recruitment communication practices.

How does a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influence, add value to and challenge conventional recruitment communication management?

In the second part, we introduce to the methodological considerations. Applying a research strategy of dialogical reflexivity ( Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007, 2011 ), the research process is designed as a reflexive dialogue between on the one hand existing theories and on the other hand an empirical case, which continuously challenge the theories and push forward new avenues to pursue theoretically. Thus, the third section, which includes case description and analysis, consists of a dialogical interplay and discussion between case and theory as means to illustrate how the case challenges existing and renders new theoretical insights possible.

The fourth section includes a concluding discussion and suggests how the value and potentials of social media as facilitating participatory processes and community conversations can be strategically used and how it fundamentally alters current recruitment communication and challenges recruitment communication management. The study, thus, offers new insights into a paradigmatically new way of understanding what strategic social media recruitment is, can and do. The paper is rounded up with a critical discussion of implications for research and practice.

Social media and strategic recruitment communication

Social media is increasingly acknowledged as part of the field of strategic communication, namely, their contribution to the fulfillment of an organization’s mission ( Hallahan et al. , 2007 ) and is widely adopted within a variety of practice disciplines, including marketing and brand communication ( Hanna et al. , 2011 ), investor and financial communication ( Koehler, 2014 ), political communication ( Macnamara, 2012 ), public relations ( Kent, 2013 ), crisis communication ( Schultz et al. , 2011 ), CSR communication ( Kesavan et al. , 2013 ) and organizational communication ( Huang et al. , 2013 ). Research generally emphasizes how the usage of social media in strategic communication adds value to organizations as it enables corporations to accomplish citizenry collaboration and transparency and thus to perform democratic ideals in both corporate and governmental contexts ( Avery and Graham, 2013 ; Kent, 2013 ), to facilitate stakeholder dialogues ( Koehler, 2014 ), to empower consumers ( Füller et al. , 2010 ) and to facilitate co-creation and participatory processes ( Novani and Kyoichi, 2012 ).

However, the notion of social media adoption in strategic communication seems to rest on an underlying assumption of social media being social per se and collaborative and transformative by nature ( Grunig, 2009 ). By virtue of its social presence, social media connect people, create democratic processes and collaborative innovations – and ultimately corporate value. However, as argued by Fuchs et al. (2010) , social media encompass different forms of sociality, which manifest as three social media modes with respect to a distinction of different social media qualities: a tool for thought (Web 1.0), a medium for human communication (Web 2.0) and networked digital technologies that support human co-operation (Web 3.0). The distinction builds on the idea of knowledge as a threefold process encompassing elements of cognition, communication and co-operation, realizing that “all communication processes require cognition, but not all cognition processes result in communication, and that all co-operation processes require communication and cognition, but not all cognition and communication processes result in co-operation” ( Fuchs et al. , 2010 , p. 43). Consequently, the authors argue that a Web 3.0 strategy is the ultimate and most efficient utilization of the qualities of social media. The three different approaches to social media will naturally manifest in different communication strategies and tactics, as they promote various goals and objectives. Therefore, the distinctions can serve as a fruitful frame for understanding and systematizing current organizational use of social media in strategic recruitment communication.

In order to distinguish between the different approaches to the notion of “sociality” in social media, i.e. understanding of what makes social media social, Fuchs et al. (2010) draw on classical social theories and define “sociality” from within a Durkheimian, Weberian and Tönniesien perspective.

The Durkheimian, or structure-based view on sociality defines social media as fixed and objectified social structures, imposed upon humans, which form and guide actions and behaviors. Applied to a recruitment communication contexts, the rationale of a structure-based use of social media is that organizations must be present where (potential) employees are, and thus, social media represent a basic term for navigating within the social world and therefore include no strategic considerations.

The Weberian, or action-based view on sociality draws on the categories of social actions and relations, suggesting that in order to be considered a social relation, meaningful symbolic interaction – i.e. communication – must take place between involved actors. Weber states, that “not every type of contact of human beings has a social character; this is rather confined to cases where the actor’s behaviour is meaningfully oriented to that of others” (Weber, in Fuchs et al. , 2010 , p. 45). In other words, sociality is defined in terms of interaction and communication, and social media technologies are defined by means of their ability to support communication processes between relevant people and content. Applied to a recruitment communication context, the rationale of an action-based use of social media is that organizations are able to reach potential applicants across time and space and potentially build relationships and positive brand reputation through dialogue and communication of (employer) brand values.

Social media presence may create a positive employer brand image and expand the potential pool of job applicants (e.g. Carrillat et al. , 2014 ). However, social media are not social per se and do not automatically create candidate engagement and collaborative relationship as the case study by Henderson and Bowley (2010) also suggests. According to Fuchs et al. (2010) , the Tönniesian, or co-operation-based view on sociality draws on the notion of “sociality as community,” hence the feeling of togetherness, values and shared meanings. Thus, social media is valuable insofar as it “enables the social networking of humans, brings people together and mediates feelings of virtual togetherness” (p. 49). Though potentially carrying strong strategic values, such communities and feelings of togetherness do not automatically emerge in recruitment contexts. Rather, it requires strategic efforts to utilize the community values and potentials of social media. Fuchs et al. (2010) argue “that the turn towards Web 3.0-technologies that foster co-operation should not only remain a technological turn, as for example the Semantic Web or wikis, but needs to be accompanied by a transformation towards a fully co-operative society” (p. 57). The quote highlights that a fully utilization of the Web 3.0 qualities and characteristics assumes fundamental corporate changes and an alternative understanding of how power is distributed and strategic value is created (cf. Macnamara and Zerfass, 2012 ).

Methodology

The paper argues that the in-game recruitment campaign entitled “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” represents a unique example of a Web 3.0 in-game job recruitment campaign, as it breaks with the predominant assumptions guiding the current use of social media in strategic recruitment communication as outlined above. Hence, it provides the opportunity to explore and discuss how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influences, adds value to and challenges the existing strategic recruitment communication practices in general and recruitment communication management in particular.

Methodologically, the study of the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case applies a strategy of dialogical reflexivity ( Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007, 2011 ). Alvesson and Kärreman (2011) view “empirical material as a resource for developing theoretical ideas through the active mobilization and problematization of existing frameworks” (p. 4). In other words, they argue that theory development is produced “through recognizing the fusion of theory and empirical material in the research construction process” (pp. 3-4), thus, dissolving the classic methodological polarization between inductive and deductive research designs. The notion of induction and deduction builds upon a clear separation of theory and empirical material in the research process. Given our reflexive dialogical methodology, the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case is not used to verify or test existing theory or to provide a “thick description,”, but to illustrate new theoretical issues and challenges through empirical material ( Stake, 2005 ; Thomas, 2011 ). Berg (2009) introduces the notion of a spiral research approach, arguing that the research process is continuously pushed forward in the interplay between empirical material and existing theoretical constructs as new questions keeps arising as a result of the interplay. Consequently, the role of the empirical material in reflexive methodologies is to “challenge, rethink and illustrate theory” ( Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011 , p. 4). Accordingly, the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case is chosen purposively as it offers important learning points ( Stake, 2005 ) when it comes to challenging and broadening our theoretical knowledge of social media recruitment communication. In other words, we argue that the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case challenges predominant theoretical assumptions on the use of social media in recruitment communication.

The empirical material consists of a two-minute long digital case presentation provided by the recruiting company (available on YouTube) as well as user comments on YouTube [1] . The case study is methodologically designed as a critical dialogue between on the one hand the empirical case and on the other hand theories on social media and strategic recruitment communication. As the case continuously challenges the conventional understandings of how online media and social technologies are approached and utilized in the recruitment of new employees, new exploratory questions continue to arise, offering new insight into understanding the characteristics and strategic potentials in adopting a Web 3.0, which thus not only understands social media as a new medium by employing its structural and communicative characteristics, but also incorporates the co-operational dimensions of social media. Subsequently, the paper discusses the strategic challenges as well as ethical concerns in adopting a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment contexts.

“CODEWARRIOR WANTED”: a Web 3.0 recruitment communication campaign

In 2011, Uncle Grey, a Danish division of the worldwide advertising agency Grey, introduced a new, creative approach to social media recruitment, as it turned to online social gaming and merged itself into the gaming community to recruit a front-end developer. Having had no luck in job advertisement via traditional media channels (newspapers, job boards and industry websites), the agency had to rethink its recruitment strategy. An analysis of the ideal potential employee touch points revealed a high affinity toward online gaming, and consequently the agency moved their recruitment campaign into the digital space ( Plate 1 ).

To ensure that their recruitment message would fit unobtrusively in the digital gaming environment, Uncle Grey teamed up with the most popular Team Fortress 2 players to serve as ambassadors for the Uncle employer brand by adding Uncle.dk/developer to their avatar profile name ( Plates 2 and 3 ).

Like a peer referral, players added “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” posters within the game to promote the job and recommend players to apply for the job. The posters provided a direct link to apply for the job ( Plate 4 ).

Within the first week of the campaign, Uncle Grey received more than 50 qualified applications and ultimately hired a highly qualified and experienced front-end developer as a result of the campaign.

From traditional HRM to open source recruitment strategy

Social media are often used as a key element in viral marketing strategies or so-called word of mouth/mouse strategies ( Grifoni et al. , 2013 ) to spread corporate and brand messages among relevant stakeholders (e.g. Kesavan et al. , 2013 ). In marketing communications, such strategies are driven by the selection of loyal customers – or fans – to act as brand ambassadors to spread and circulate brand narratives among peers (e.g. Hanna et al. , 2011 ). Similarly, in an HR context, Henderson and Bowley (2010) describe how an organization initiates employee spokespersons – or ambassadors – to enter into dialogue with potential candidates on a selected social networking site as an integrated part of its recruitment strategy in order for them to experience the organizational culture and values through current employees, hence creating an authentic relationship and organizational identification. Thus, current employees are used strategically as culture bearers and company representatives.

However, the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case takes on a different approach as the company “outsources” its voice and values to be represented beyond organizational employment. As a result, the company and its cultural values are not constituted by means of its current employees; rather the company represents and manifests itself through peripheral external actors by merging itself into relevant markets and circulating conversations. Consequently, the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case performs what is suggested to be termed an open source recruitment strategy, i.e. a recruitment strategy, where strategic decisions on recruitment are made in collaboration with the total brand ecosystem, beyond HR and marketing departmental walls and organizational barriers. Fournier and Avery (2011) introduce the idea of open source brand management, arguing that whereas traditional branding rests upon the notion of differentiation, i.e. claiming and occupying a market position different from those of its competitors through unique value propositions, branding in open source contexts is about creating resonant cultural conversation. This idea seems transferrable to a recruitment and employment context when looking at the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case. In addition, several researchers argue that the notion of empowerment and brand co-creation not only adhere to consumers, but to stakeholders in general ( Hatch and Schultz, 2010 ) and employees in particular (e.g. Aggerholm et al. , 2011 ).

Hence, we argue, that the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case provides an example of the creation of cultural resonance in recruitment communication as it seamlessly integrates the recruitment message into an existing online community culture of passionate gamers; a culture which the company aims to create organizational affinity toward, thus ultimately becoming the natural choice of employer for community members. The case seeks to tap into naturally occurring social conversations among potential employees, hence (potentially) creating organizational identification through cultural and community resonance.

From work life to social life

The performance of an open source recruitment strategy suggests a broader perception of the organizational boundaries in that such a strategy inherently turns the organization into a brand ecosystem ( Bergvall, 2006 ) where internal and external stakeholders converge. Plate 5 illustrates how stakeholders converge in the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case, as the Team Fortress 2 avatar discursively articulate himself as part of the organization with the use of the pronoun “we” (“ we are looking for a front-end developer” – our italic), though not actually employed by the company in a traditional sense.

As the organization expands its organizational boarders, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a clear distinction between the organization and its surroundings; between the corporate world and society; between work life and private life. Consequently, with the performance of an open source recruitment strategy, the value creation activities occur within the (employment) market, detached from the organization, and, organizational values are performed and enacted in community relations in non-corporate settings. The “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case thus builds upon a strategy where organizational identification and professional sympathy with the organization is created beyond organizational boarders; detached from the organizational culture. Or it could be suggested that the notion of organizational culture is enacted beyond traditional organizational membership. Hence, authentic dialogues and relationship building between current employees and potential applicants is not what is assumed to create organizational identification (as with the case provided by Henderson and Bowley, 2010 ). Rather, the gaming community in general and the assigned Team Fortress 2 players create a link between the job seekers and the Uncle Grey brand, which renders new forms of organizational identification possible. In other words, we argue that organizational identification is potentially created because the potential job candidate identifies with the community and its members and not the corporate culture and values as such. The Uncle Grey brand broadens the notion of organizational culture by merging itself into an alternative cultural setting. Consequently, the creation of employment values is detached from the organization and created by means of this alternative culture through existing social relations and conversations between the Team Fortress 2 gamers. Accordingly, the employing organization do not enter into recruitment conversations with potential applicants; rather the organization approaches (using key Team Fortress 2 gamers as extended organizational members or recruitment ambassadors) the job seekers as they are in the midst of performing a private, non-work-related role.

Aggerholm et al. (2011) suggest that one of the most important concerns for employer branding in sustainable organizations is to understand, interact with and address employees as whole human beings and not simply as strategic resources acting as channels to markets and defined by means of their embodiment of corporate values. Along this line of thinking, Bourne et al. (2009) rearticulate the employee as human beings with moral, values and opinions beyond the employee identity. From a recruitment perspective, and as the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case illustrates, such reconceptualization of the employee redirects the communicative focus. Whereas traditional recruitment messages seek to convey job descriptions and communicate corporate values to potential job candidates, the case suggests an alternative path to communicate realistic job previews through insights into the social and private life of the potential employees as human beings: who are they, what do they do in everyday life, what are their passions and interests? Not as employees and hardworking laborers but as human beings.

These insights manifest themselves in the strategic social media choices as a corporate presence where the potential candidate performs his social identity. Such presence carries certain employment expectations. Thus, a strategic utilization of social media is not a mere creative broadening of media channels possibilities, but carries significant meaning and value in itself, influencing the nature of and expectations toward the unwritten, mutual psychological contract that operates the exchange relationship between both parties and form the basis for every term of employment ( Rousseau, 1989 ). As an alternative to the more traditional transactional and relational psychological contracts, Thompson and Bunderson (2003) introduce the concept of an ideological psychological contract, which is constituted by the notion of the organization as one that is committed to and invests in a certain value-based cause, or advocates certain ideological principles. The “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case can be seen as a way of carrying such ideological and value-based expectations to the job through its social media strategy. As a strategic choice, the in-game presence as means to search for new employees suggests a well-balanced employment relation, where the employee will have the time and energy to pursue and outlive private passions. In other words, the strategy sets up an expectation of a balanced relation between work life and private life and thus invites the employee into the organization as a whole human being and not a mere strategic resource and corporate asset.

Reciprocally, the in-game recruitment strategy implies an expectation toward the potential employee to invest himself as a whole human being and not merely his professional competencies. However, different studies suggest, that such focus on embracing the whole human being in the employment relation does not come without critiques. In a study by Land and Taylor (2011) on corporate and managerial interventions in private and leisure lives, the authors introduce to the company Ethico, branded as an environmentalist and value driven company with an authentic bottom-up culture, where employees live the brand and “managerial discourses suggest that work and life should be balanced by making “work” a place where you can really be yourself” (p. 36). As part of an incentive system, the Ethico company introduced a “too nice to work day” voucher system, which rewarded exceptional performance (i.e. employees working especially hard during sales or Christmas) with a voucher for a day off over and above the standard annual leave entitlement. Still, the authors observe that many employees have several vouchers in stock, which could suggest that in reality employees had not found a valid reason to take a day off or had not been able to negotiate the time away (p. 49). Interestingly, the authors further observe a blog entry from an employee who had cashed in a “too nice to work” voucher to go sea kayaking, which was seemingly validated by means of writing a blog entry. Thus, the employee may not have been at her desk, however, her activities did contribute to reinforcing the brand value. The authors provocatively reflect: “what would happen if an employee took a day off to lie in bed, smoke, masturbate, watch day-time TV, or organize a trade union branch” (p. 49), implying that the notion of embracing the whole individual is a balance between employee emancipation and corporate control of employee’s lives in accordance with brand values.

The case thus points toward some of the critiques and challenges emerging as employment relations transcend the conventional employee-employer relationship and includes private spheres, value identification and identify performance. And the case points towards the importance of employer and employee to enter into an open dialogue to match their respective expectation toward the employment relationship. Such employment dialogues have always been crucial, however, the introduction of social media reinforces their importance, since the usage of social media is not just a questions of channel selection and market reach, but carries with it fundamental reassessments about employees, work life and organizations.

Concluding discussion: toward a Web 3.0 social media recruitment strategy

In this paper, we draw on the social media vocabulary of Fuchs et al. (2010) , who argue that social media encompasses different modes of and approaches to sociality. On that notion, they distinguish between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, reflecting a development toward a broader and more extensive understanding of the concept of sociality, ranging from social media as means of cognition, to social media as modes of communication and finally to social media as co-operation, articulating social media as facilitating community relations and establishing a sense of shared community among its members.

As a basic strategy and drawing on a Web 1.0 approach, the paper argues that the CODEWARRIOR WANTED case illustrates and acknowledges new means to distribute recruitment messages and consequently new ways of reaching potential employees. In line with this, the case illustrates how digital media and social technologies represent a new channel in the recruitment communication mix. From a Web 2.0 approach, the usage of social media enables the employer to reach potential employees and subsequently create basic forms of meaningful interaction. It can be argued that the case not only demonstrates the establishment of communication between the organization and the individual job candidate, but also facilitates meaningful interaction and dialogue between human beings, thus offering an ontologically new way of understanding what recruitment communication is and is capable of.

the focus on job competencies as part of a personal and private passion breaks down the conceptual line between an employee and a human being;

the focus on the potential employee outside employment related contexts breaks down the distinction between work hours and social life;

the focus on employment messages merged into private and social online communities breaks down the boundaries between the organization and its surroundings; and

the focus on the values and relations of an online (gaming) community breaks down the notion of employees as individuals and reinstall the employees as networked and social human beings.

Fuchs et al. (2010) argue that a turn toward Web 3.0 ontologically changes the understanding of human actions and relations, and assumes fundamental corporate changes as well as an alternative understanding of how power is distributed and value is created. Drawing on the above, we suggest that a social media 3.0 recruitment strategy thus breaks with fundamental notions of employees (as the notion of employees as individuals are rearticulated into networked and social human being), of work life (as the distinction between work hours and social life is dissolved) and of the employing organization (as the boundaries between the organization and its surroundings are broken down).

In the following, we discuss how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment campaign such as the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case fundamentally influences and challenges traditional recruitment communication strategy and practice.

From organizational control to communicative complexity

Introducing social technologies and digital media in strategic recruitment communication adds considerable complexity to the planning processes and execution of recruitment communication. On the one side, when organizations begin to understand potential applicants beyond representing a homogenous group of raw brainpower towards being whole, human beings living heterogeneous lives and performing non-work-related identities, the pool of applicants becomes more diffuse and blurred, hence the communication network becomes more complex. On the other side, entering into dialogue with such complex communication network also decreases complexity in terms of vagueness and diffusiveness ( Nothhaft and Wehmeier, 2007 ) as the understanding of applicants’ stakes, interests and life worlds become more accurate. At first glance, from the inside constraints of the organizational walls, the pool of applicants might seem as a diffuse, impenetrable collective entity, however, through interaction and co-operation facilitated by use of Web 3.0 technology, the pool of applicants come to appear a nuanced system of subsystems and actors with coalitions and interest (of which the Team Fortress 2 community is just one of these systems).

From a sociocybernetic viewpoint as formulated by Nothhaft and Wehmeier (2007) , “persuasion” of (potential) employees has its limits in the complex world of Web 3.0. The idea of controllable persuasion might work in clearly delimited, manageable groups under the authority of the HR manager; however, it is challenged in an inherently co-operation based, pluralistic and complex social network as the Team Fortress 2 community. Within such networks it is impossible to control social and cultural phenomena such as the employer brand or company reputation ( Nothhaft and Wehmeier, 2007 ).

In addition, it is not the (HR) employees, who act as “ambassadors” but third persons with no direct organizational attachments, obligations or psychological contracts, which adds even further to the authenticity and credibility of the communication, but also implies a redoubtable lack of communicative control. It is of course possible to take precautionary, monitoring measures with regard to the “life” of the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” poster within the game, however, the entire purpose with and flow of communication mediating feelings of virtual togetherness ( Fuchs et al. , 2010 ) would be short-circuited if the organization interfered in the interactions and co-operation characteristic of a fully co-operative Web 3.0 society.

From creative execution to ethical balancing

As the traditional boundaries between an organization and its surroundings are broken down when applying a Web 3.0 social media strategy in recruitment, the recruitment messages of the organization unconsentingly invade the private sphere of (potential) applicants without the knowledge and consent of the involved actors, which give rise to ethical concerns. Martin and Smith (2008) discuss the notion of stealth marketing, defined as “the surreptitious marketing practice that fail to disclose or reveal the true relationship with the company that produces or sponsors the marketing messages” (2008 , p. 45). Stealth – or covert – marketing thus means that the intention of the message or sender’s identity is not openly displayed and states as premise that word of mouth/mouse is an effective promotion tool and that peer group recommendation is an ultimate marketing weapon ( Kaikati and Kaikati, 2004 ). It can therefore be difficult to distinguish between creatively sophisticated marketing executions and ethically challenging activities.

Martin and Smith (2008) analyze three cases of stealth marketing based on the concepts of deception (e.g. whether it fails to disclose the commercial or corporate affiliation of the message), intrusion (e.g. whether it violates the privacy of the involved actors) and exploitation (e.g. whether it exploits the goodness of mankind). The analysis shows that from a non-consequentialist ethical perspective, there may be positive intentions related to the use of stealth marketing, including sharing knowledge on useful information about product or services, and entertainment. However, from a consequentialist ethical perspective, all consequences of the action must be taken into consideration, including the potential creation of denigration of the brand and a heightened distrust in business in general ( Martin and Smith, 2008 , p. 48). The authors also point toward a more far-reaching and socially harmful consequence as stealth marketing may potentially create inauthenticity among and ultimately distrust in human relationships as a consequence of the increasingly widespread commercialization of human interaction.

Consequently, it seems relevant to ask whether the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case is an example of what one might term stealth recruitment? On the one hand, it can be argued that the recruitment messages and posters appearing in the game do not try to cover their corporate agenda – on the contrary, the messages rest on the ability of the potential job candidate/player actually being able to identify the employment company and thus ultimately apply for a job. In order to reach communication objectives, the message must necessarily be decoded as a recruitment message. However, when browsing through user comments on the case on YouTube, several comments suggesting skepticism toward the placement of recruitment messages in the game can be found (see Box 1 ).

Selection of negative user comments and responses to the “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case presentation on YouTube

“WTF is this shit. I am being marketed to in games by other companies? Looks like I will have to put my posters up covering theirs”

“fuck this shit, i DON'T WANT fucking ads on my tf!”

“This is actually a pretty neat one-off thing, but i hope it doesn’t become standard for shooters to get plastered with ads of any kinds, even ones made by skilled players”

“I will cover these ads with my own spray to the best of my ability if and when I see them”

In addition, Grimes (2013) suggests a general trend toward a commercialization of digital gaming, most prominently including product placements and in-game advertisement. The “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case indicates that the commercialization also includes other corporate messages, e.g. recruitment messages. The gamers strongly react to the messages and the comments (see Box 1 ) point toward a feeling of intrusion and exploitation among the users. At best, the stealth recruitment messages create distrust and skepticism toward the (employer) brand and recruiting company, resulting in users covering the corporate messages (as the comments suggest). However, in worst case, the commercialization creates a general distrust between the users and thus potentially violates the very essence of the online gaming worlds, i.e. the strong sense of community. Consequently, what creates value for a Web 3.0 social media recruitment strategy is what ultimately may also be destroyed by the strategy.

Accordingly, we can conclude that from a strategic communication perspective, a turn toward Web 3.0 in recruitment communication affects the degree of interactional complexity and the level of managerial control. Hence, we conclude that the utilization of a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment communication put forth precarious dilemmas and challenges of controllability, controversy, ownership and power relations, demanding organizations to cautiously entering the social media 3.0 employment market.

Naturally, this paper has its limitations since the above conclusions are drawn on the basis of a single-case study, and as such we only offer a limited contribution to the initial understandings of how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influences, adds value to and challenges traditional strategic recruitment communication management. Hence, the conclusions may as such call upon a need for larger, longitudinal case studies, including studies on the long-term implications of applying Web 3.0 recruitment strategies and their integration with or challenges of overall corporate communication strategies. Such studies on the long-term strategic values and implications will contribute to pushing the boundaries and traditional assumptions in terms of how social media can be used strategically in relation to value creation and facilitation of truly participatory processes and community conversations.

The “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” poster to be placed in the Team Fortress 2 game

Screen dump from Team Fortress 2 featuring “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” posters

Screen dump from Team Fortress 2: a player has added a URL of the employment company website (“Uncle.dk/Developer”) followed by his game name tag (“Stoffer”)

Screen dump from Team Fortress 2 with direct link to applying for the job

Screen dump from Team Fortress 2: an online conversation between two players (an Uncle spokesperson and a potential employee) on the job posters, followed by an invitation to apply for the job

The “CODEWARRIOR WANTED” case and pictures are used and reprinted by kind permission of Lars Samuelsen, Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Digital, Uncle Grey, Aarhus, Denmark. An agency prepared case presentation can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTAdGBg1TvY .

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2024 social media trends in talent acquisition

By Jemma Karle, Director – Global Social Media

When it comes to candidate attraction, social media is a winning choice for organizations. Talent uses it to explore job opportunities, discover company culture, and establish connections with recruiters and hiring managers. Taking advantage of these platforms can create a faster, more engaging recruitment process and bring your employer brand into the spotlight.

Is your organization’s talent acquisition strategy keeping up with the evolving world of social media? To gain many potential benefits, you need to know what’s popular now – and what’s to come. Get started with these predicted social media trends in talent acquisition for 2024:

Growing use of AI AI is already being used to support the recruitment process on social platforms in numerous ways, and this is only expected to continue into 2024. There will be more intelligent talent acquisition tools on the market that scan social platforms to source candidates who match specific criteria, such as skills, experience and location – giving recruiters back valuable time that can be spent on more business-critical tasks. Personalized outreach messages will become easier than ever with quick, auto-generated drafts that recruiters can refine, helping your company form meaningful connections with candidates and making them more likely to engage.

Video still reigns Video is one big label for a lot of things – animated, live action and more – but the format is being leveraged more than ever and is core to any social media marketing strategy. Videos generate 1,200% more shares than text and images combined, with short-form videos garnering 2.5 times more engagement than long form. With a competitive job market likely continuing, it’s no surprise that video content remains an effective way to showcase your employer brand . Candidates will increasingly seek insight from current employees to understand a workplace’s true culture and environment. By featuring employee stories, testimonials, and day-in-the-life narratives – organizations can boost employee advocacy and authenticity to outshine competitors.

Turning up transparency Candidates are now regularly using social media to fact check what a company is saying versus what employees are saying. They expect to find clear, accurate information on a company’s roles and benefits – especially around pay. If something doesn’t line up, you may lose the interest of quality talent and even risk damaging your company’s reputation. Improving transparency where possible will help your employer brand stand out from the competition, so top talent chooses – and stays at – your organization.

Captivating Gen Z Social media, particularly TikTok, has emerged as the go-to source for information about brands for Gen Z – the generation that’ll account for more than 25% of the workforce by 2025. The platform’s visual appeal, coupled with its short-form video content and interactive features, perfectly caters to the preferences of Gen Z. Leveraging paid ads on these visual platforms, in addition to expanding your overall employer branding strategy, will help gain the attention of the growing early career talent pool.

Social media will remain crucial for hiring top talent in 2024.The most successful companies are embracing evolving solutions that boost talent marketing and employer branding. And it makes sense: proactive and adaptive TA strategies are key to keeping up with the ever-changing preferences of candidates.

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3 of the Best Social Media Recruiting Examples We’ve Seen This Year

If your social media recruiting is just about recruiting, you’re missing out. Learn how three very different companies use social media to achieve a broad range of goals.

In This Article…

Case study #1: Waste Management (WM) Careers on Twitter

Case study #2: hirewell on linkedin, case study #3: marriott careers on twitter, how to invest in social media recruiting without adding to your workload.

According to Pew Research, about seven in ten American adults use social media every day, making it a powerful channel to recruit, build your employer brand , provide insight into the employee experience, promote programs and perks, and more. Having a defined strategy or purpose, posting frequently and highlighting your employer brand are just some of the ways you can up your social recruiting game, even if you’re tight on time.

Learn what social media recruiting can do for your organization by looking at what three very different employers accomplished in January with their social media posts.

Waste Management is a Fortune 250 company with more than 40,000 team members, providing comprehensive waste and environmental solutions in North America to residential, commercial, industrial and municipal customers through its subsidiaries. Based in Houston, Texas, WM provides collection, transfer, disposal services, and recycling and resource recovery. It is also a leading developer, operator and owner of landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States.

While Waste Management may not be the first to come to mind when you think of big brands, this company knows how to communicate its values, culture and work environment in just 280 characters a day. A quick scan of its recent career posts on Twitter highlights what’s important to Waste Management:

• Waste Management puts people first . The company is committed to diversity, safety, education and training, and actively recruits customer service center staff, mechanics, salespeople, management and veterans.
• Deeper insights about Waste Management as an employer via links to other content pages and short videos featuring employees talking about the employment experience.
• Clear calls-to-action engage candidates to join Waste Management’s talent community, attend a recruiting event, or enter a contest.
• Close-ups and group photos in facilities and around Waste Management equipment show diverse, happy employees with a down-to-earth feel that reinforces a “people first” mentality, and shows off real work environments.

Waste Management also uses other social media channels to promote its business and values, cross-promoting Twitter content on other platforms to meet candidates where they are.

Hirewell, a national 50+ person staffing and recruiting agency based out of Chicago, specializes in technology, sales, HR, executive leadership, digital experience and marketing, and finance and accounting placements for Fortune 500 companies, start-ups and everything in between.  

So, what’s the genius behind their social media strategy? Hirewell targets their messages to specific audiences that are relevant to their brand — current employees, companies looking to hire, or job seekers. A post may appeal primarily to:

• Current employees : For example, there are short videos celebrating work anniversaries and promotions. This also lets clients and job seekers know that Hirewell has experienced people on staff, and shows prospective new hires that Hirewell celebrates its employees.
• Clients : Hirewell consistently shares HR best practices that help their clients be stronger employers. A post may cover employee retention and engagement tips, information on what new HR laws may mean to them, and how to handle tough situations (like when a candidate is right for the company but wrong for the job). 
• Job seekers : Hirewell attracts job seekers by highlighting clients and offering best practices for the search. For example, podcasts feature advice from industry leaders on marketable skills and weekly job updates. 

Taking it one step further, Hirewell leverages content across multiple social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook), so they get a lot of mileage and value out of every post. Brilliant! Did we also mention Hirewell’s posts are creative and entertaining?

A weekly video podcast is used to announce company news, share insights from special guests, feature one open job from each line of business, and help you get to know Hirewell’s staff. Set in a makeshift radio station with cutout images of their own employees in the background, the format is laid back, authentic and fun, but also manages to convey the knowledge, expertise and professionalism Hirewell’s staff brings to the table.  

Marriott is a well-known brand. The name conjures up welcoming, comfortable, modern, and clean places to stay when you’re away from home. What more is there to say about this employer? Go to Marriott Careers on Twitter to find out.

Marriott markets themselves as an employer where you can “Explore New Opportunities.” One of the first things you learn after arriving to their Twitter profile is that Marriott has 7,300 hotels and 30 hotel brands, spanning 134 countries and territories worldwide. The opportunities are endless for employees to experience new places and move around if they’d like.

Marriott’s Twitter doesn’t stop there. They highlight the breadth of positions available to job seekers, sharing that they signed on 800 new hotels last year, translating to 70,000 jobs. They hire chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, hospitality staff, housekeepers, guest services, loss prevention and safety leaders, and more.

Paulina Hernandez recently celebrated 19 years with the company! What keeps her working at the @MHEastSideNYC ? The opportunity to interact with guests and learn about other cultures along the way. Broaden your horizons when you join our growing team: https://t.co/vQb2ptZk5D pic.twitter.com/yZDYN6wm2a — Marriott Careers (@MarriottCareers) December 30, 2019

Each role makes a difference. Chefs are encouraged to be creative, participate in training opportunities, and top chefs are recognized quarterly by sharing their expertise with other staff. Employees are valued for going the extra mile, like leaving handwritten notes for guests. Marriott develops their leaders and encourages their employees to bring their whole self to work.

Employees are also offered unique perks, like discounts at Marriott locations. People matter (there’s a video of the HRO talking about inspiring and empowering employees). They want to help you succeed and even provide resume tips for applicants. They care about the environment and wellness.

While there’s the periodic recruiting post, Marriott does a stellar job conveying its brand and employment experience via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Even if you’re not actively looking for work, after reviewing Marriott’s posts, no doubt you’ll remember its positive, empowering and professional employment experience.  

When you’re ready to do more than post job openings on social media, you don’t have to start from scratch or go it alone. Educate colleagues about social media recruiting goals so they can feed your content pipeline and create a win-win situation. Employ a few time-saving social media best practices , and repurpose content from other areas of the business. For example, let’s say:

• Your sustainability director just found out your company won a prestigious zero waste award and is planning to promote it via a press release. With just a few more clicks, this content can be repurposed to build your brand as an environmentally responsible employer via a social media post. 
• Your benefits department just launched a truly unique perk. Take content from the perk’s marketing materials or get a video clip of an employee talking about the perk to share on your social recruiting channel.
• A training and development team is creating a video to promote a new leadership development program to employees. Can they capture a clip that will also work on your social recruiting channel?  
• Your customer service department has its own employee recognition program and develops content to announce the monthly winner internally. Can they give their employee added recognition by repurposing content and photos for use in social media recruiting?

Social media recruiting doesn’t have to be a time-consuming chore. By collaborating with other departments and repurposing existing content, it’s easy to communicate your employer brand online. Take a few pages out of these leading brands’ books to up your social media recruiting game.

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Does social media attract more qualified candidates? 5 companies speak

Here’s something we’ve talked about before: social media recruiting nets you more qualified candidates . We’ve explained about how social media allows you to speak to passive candidates (candidates not actively looking for a job ), and how social recruiting lets you share your employer brand to find candidates that fit better with your culture, values, and mission .

Today, we’re trying something different. Instead of telling you how social media helps you get more qualified candidates . . .

We figured we’d let these 5 companies and clients show you.

Using social media to find highly qualified candidates

Finding the right talent for your open positions has always been a challenge , and it’s one the Great Resignation has only exasperated . It’s a candidates’ market right now, and those candidates are proving themselves selective in the jobs they choose to apply for.

But you aren’t powerless in the face of this challenge . As these five companies will show, social media recruiting is the talent acquisition strategy that speaks to the qualified talent you’re looking for.

Social media gets you more qualified candidates in less time

“CareerArc has delivered us more qualified healthcare candidates in less time, especially when it came to our hard-to-fill positions: Through one CareerArc-powered Facebook post, we received over three times the number of nursing applicants in one week than we did the previous three months when we had relied on usual channels and methods. We are so impressed by the response and really appreciate that we now are establishing a social presence that is both effective at attracting talent and an easy process to manage, thanks to CareerArc.”

Susan Erickson, RN, MNSc, BC-NA, CHCR Recruitment/Retention Officer at University of Arkansas Medical Sciences (UAMS)

Read more here

Social media recruiting extends your candidate reach beyond job boards

Our main hiring challenge was finding and reaching qualified, credentialed healthcare candidates without overextending our lean recruitment team. With CareerArc we quickly began to see qualified applicants come in from previously untapped talent sources. CareerArc not only allowed us to effectively recruit beyond job boards, but they consistently came back with the results to prove our return on investment.

Jennifer Spry, Manager of Talent Acquisition at VON

Social media recruitment finds top talent at lower costs

“Thanks to CareerArc, we did not renew our contract with the job boards we had relied on for years. CareerArc got us more qualified candidates in less time and at a price that was unbeatable. Most importantly, CareerArc helped us cultivate and strengthen brand loyalty, which is particularly tough to do in our industry. While exceptional brand loyalty has always existed at DRS GES, Inc. deployed operations, our partnership with CareerArc has elevated our brand engagement and awareness, in both U.S. and international operations, higher than we had ever thought possible.”

Lisa Olden, Sr. Director, Human Resources, Leonardo DRS

Social media recruiting reaches passive candidates

“Sourcing talent has been a challenge over the past 18 months. CareerArc allows us to access a nearly-untapped passive candidate audience. It would be challenging to consistently maintain a presence on social media, but we can rely on CareerArc’s automation to do this for us.”

Cliff Wagner, Talent Acquisition Manager at Applied Industrial Technologies

Candidates found through social media last longer

“CareerArc has helped bring in a really awesome and healthy portion of applications for us. Over the last 12 months, we have seen a total of 115,000 applications come through from CareerArc. And even of those applications, 85% of the candidates that we received from CareerArc are still with us today. Those are quality candidates that we receive, and they match well with Boston Market—what we look for and what they’re looking for also.”

Arielle Gerard, Manager of Talent Acquisition & Culture at Boston Market

You can be next

You know what’s even worse than struggling on and on to find candidates?

Struggling on and on to find candidates that aren’t even the right fit for your jobs.

We can help. CareerArc’s award-winning social recruiting solution is designed exclusively for talent acquisition teams like yourself to help you build your brand awareness and find both more talent and higher quality talent for your open roles.

How do we do that? In short, by:

• Transforming your social media presence into a talent magnet that’s always on.
• Automating your social recruiting and auto-syncing with your ATS to strategically manage and post your open roles at scale.
• Leveraging the network power of social media to turn your employees and followers into brand ambassadors and advocates.
• Strengthening and broadcasting your employer brand across your various social media networks.

But that’s just in short. Wanna peak behind the curtain; see how it really all works?

Just click here to check out a free demo.

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