Social recruiting seeks to maximize free social media to reach passive candidates. It is one of the biggest and newest trends in the recruiting field and it leverages marketing to reach candidates on social media, like Facebook or Twitter. It’s a process to reinvigorate the traditional posting of job ads and turn it into a more proactive way to reach candidates who haven’t applied yet.

Social recruiting is widespread; 92% of recruiters use the technique. Social media recruiting is different from other forms of candidate finding, because hiring teams can use these channels to connect with people in new ways.

Here are five examples of how you can use social media to expand your search and fill more open reqs.

Have You Tried These Techniques?

There are clear reasons why social recruiting is so hot today. You can use it to:

  • Reach passive candidates
  • Ask your social networks to pass along news of a job opening
  • Seek referrals from the community
  • Search and target your perfect candidate
  • Share details of company culture

Social recruiting is a low-cost method with big impact. Some of the best recruiting techniques to use on social media include:

  1. Use video on social media channels to engage your targets. Over half of marketing professionals say that video is well worth the investment of time and money spent. But video is the tip of the iceberg on social posts. There is all kind of useful and interesting content to share, from images and photography, to blog posts and how-to guides.
  2. Involve your employees in sharing social media posts. It’s a smart way to extend the reach of their social networks – and yours. Encourage employees to get involved in the push for new job candidates by reposting corporate job descriptions or other promotional materials.
  3. Join LinkedIn groups and participate in the lively discussion that can occur in these social forums. Try to join the groups that are relevant to your industry or the types of candidates you are seeking.
  4. Test other strategies on social media platforms to see what gets the most reach. It’s important to understand that one size does not fit all when it comes to these digital venues. What you say and do on Twitter may not work as well in a professional forum like LinkedIn.
  5. Share good quality content on social that stays on brand. Make sure the content isn’t considered spam, but instead seeks to entertain, engage and share knowledge. The whole point of the “social” in social media is to keep your audience interested.

The trick to social media recruiting is figuring out the target audience, and then determining the social media channel they utilize. Then use your social media reach outs to provide relevant content, cultivate relationships, and entice quality talent to your company. Another way to find talent is through the use of partnerships with companies like Exelare. We offer software to manage the candidate relationship. Schedule a demo to learn more.