Recruiters are extensively using social media as an effective tool for recruitment’s. Gone are the days when recruiters had to give advertisements about job openings in various newspapers and job seekers had to scan the newspaper pages for finding a suitable job. With over 535 million people using social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, posting jobs and finding relevant jobs is as simple a sailing in calm waters. Social recruiting is the latest trend in this digital era. 77% employers are using social networks to mine the huge talent pool to reach out to the target candidates. Here are a few ways to use social media to find out discover your next employee.
- LinkedIn: With over 94% recruiters using this channel to find the most qualified and largest pool of applicants. You can either opt for spending $195 to post a job or buy more job credits and pay less for posting a job. The other alternative is to build your own network of connections including friends, local entrepreneurs, clients and co-workers and join groups having similar interests. By posting discussions and by participating in other discussions you will come to know the active responders who can be individually contacted for jobs. Other way of free advertising is to broadcast that you’re hiring in your network activity box, e.g. “Looking for a freelance content writer, contact me for more details”.
Once you find a suitable person then checking his recommendations will enable you to know more about his professional potentials.
- Facebook: Facebook is used by 66% recruiters, one in every four recruiters has found their employee on Facebook. Facebook page is used to directly hire and for indirect brand engagement. On your Facebook page, you can share your business and updates details with other Facebook users. Facebook has excellent targeting ability and by creating Facebook Ads you can choose the exact target audience. A series of questions to target the people whom you want to see your add like the age group, sex and location. You can choose from pay per click and pay per impression. The other way to post free ads is to join relevant Facebook pages that share similar interests. Like if you are in search of a content writer, by posting your add on “Freelance Content Writers” you will come in contact with many applicants.
The shortlisted candidate’s profiles can be checked to know most things about him.
- Twitter: 54% HR‘s use Twitter for talent search. A large number of small businesses are using it as a channel for recruitments. Build your companies Twitter account and Voila! You can increase the fan following as well as expand your relationships with clients, competitors and job applicants. Information can be filtered by using hash tags like #chefs, #jobrecruitments, #hiring, etc. Since you have to write your add in 140 characters, remember to use the hash tags strategically.
Once you find a potential candidate on Twitter, by scrutinizing information like how occasionally and what he tweets, quality of tweets and how big is his network you can come to know his personality and traits.
Has your HR team embraced social recruiting? If you are looking to fill the vacant positions in your company, this article nails down all the points worthy of mention.