Keeping up with the changes in social media is a challenge, even for the experts! What doesn’t change however, is the principles behind social media (or any marketing). Keeping those areas in mind will allow your recruitment team to make the right decisions to focus resources on the top social media platforms to recruit your ideal candidates.
To get the most ROI on your social media investment, recruiters need to focus on:
- Who is my ideal candidate and where are they spending time?
- What message do they want to here and how do I reach them?
- How easy is it to convert or track a KPI for my company?
Keeping those principles in mind, let’s take a look at the most popular social media platforms (the old ones and the new ones). We’ll determine which industries will find the most success and which tactics are the most effective on each platform.
With more than 200 million users in the United States, Facebook continues to have the biggest user base. Yes, people are still on Facebook.
When Does It Work Best?:
- For candidate recruitment, focus on light industrial, clerical/admin, call center, healthcare.
- For passive candidates and relationship building, literally focus on any industry. Why? If people are spending time on Facebook, they will connect with the right content – blog posts, eBooks, videos, graphics, etc. Our CEO has said numerous times that he will find interesting content on social media that helped with Haley Marketing.
What Tactics Are Effective?
- Facebook Jobs brings the most direct ROI. As Facebook Jobs continues to grow in popularity and acceptance, more candidates head to Facebook and think about finding their next job or employment opportunity. Light industrial, clerical/admin, call center and healthcare work really well here to drive candidate applications.
- Video continues to get more push on Facebook. The best content delivers its message quickly (think under a minute) and is easy to consume. You earn more consumption with subtitles or being able to understand the video without needing sound. What content should you create in video? Hot job posts, candidate testimonials, workplace visits and recruiter videos are just some of the examples. Video works well to recruit. Video works well to build your brand.
- Think about using Facebook Live. The platform will send out notifications if you are conducting a live video on Facebook. Go live for more than 10 minutes to help your audience build.
- Facebook Groups are the most natural and easiest way to reach your target audience organically. Facebook Groups are exactly that – groups of people with like-minded interests. In recruitment, focus on finding industry groups (Sterile Techs Looking for Jobs) or geographic groups (Buffalo Job Listings.) People join those groups looking for that content. Be active – share content and comment!
One final thought – to really reach your target audience, it isn’t enough to rely on organic (free) distribution. Create a paid strategy where you push out jobs or content to your audience and then back up that paid content with really strong organic content on your company page.
The “most professional” platform, LinkedIn continues to add new features that work on other platforms and constantly evolves.
When Does It Work Best?
- For candidate recruitment, focus on knowledge worker jobs. That would include office jobs, mid-level professional jobs, C-Suite jobs, etc. The people who will apply for jobs on LinkedIn are the people who log in to the platform every day or every week.
- For passive candidates and relationship building – it’s the same areas as candidate recruitment. LinkedIn users go to the platform during the work day, so what type of content do they want to see during the work day? It could be professional content such as blogs and videos. It could be helpful infographics. It could just be great stories about your business surviving during the pandemic.
What Tactics Are Effective?
- Right now, organic reach on LinkedIn is really strong, similar to what Facebook was 5-7 years ago. LinkedIn rewards content that receives likes and comments. Think about what type of content your audience wants to see. The content on LinkedIn has a longer shelf life than the other platforms. Even if you login to LinkedIn multiple times per day, it’s common to see content that is a week old. LinkedIn pushes that older content because its algorithm sees engagement (like and comments) on the post, despite its age.
- Jobs!
- Post your blog content from your website. Share infographics. Create video posts (try to include captions!). Write an article on the LinkedIn platform.
- Take it to the next level with some of the newer features
- Create a poll for your audience
- Apply for LinkedIn Live for your personal or company page
- Create an event and invite your connections to your webinar (you can invite 1,000/people per week.)
Those two platforms work best for most staffing agencies and recruiters. It’s where you should start because they are the most popular and that’s where people have the mindset to engage in recruitment content.
But, where do we go from here?
The Other Platforms
- Owned by Facebook, Instagram has a place in your recruitment strategy, but we shouldn’t just use any platform just because “it’s cool.”
- When does it work best? For branding purposes – it’s not a best practice to use Instagram for direct candidate recruitment. The Instagram platform evolved for its ability to show imagery, and then videos. This provides a chance to build your employer brand. Showcase your team. Highlight job fairs. Recognize anniversaries. Make your company appear like an awesome place to work.
- Becoming more of a news source, Twitter is another platform that feels popular but hasn’t delivered a lot of success in candidate recruitment.
- Companies create auto feeds of jobs, but it’s not leading to applications. You can send an automatic feed of your blog content as well, but that’s not going to look pretty.
- When does it work best? If you’re able to generate conversation with your target candidates. Jump in the replies on tweets. Engage your audience. Strike when they are interested.
Snapchat
- Direct candidate recruitment really isn’t going to happen here right now. Again, it works well for branding and reaching a younger demographic.
- When we get to go back to events again, Snapchat filters should return to having some effectiveness. A Snapchat filter is a logo that you can place over a geographic region. Anyone in that geographic place (think a concert, sporting event, college, etc.) can see your filter during a specified period of time and add it to their content.
TikTok
- This platform exploded in 2020 in the tween and high school audience.
- It’s not going to recruit candidates directly, but it’s another way to build your employer brand.
Outside of Facebook and LinkedIn, it’s really hard to get candidates to apply to jobs on the other social media platforms. That’s OK! It just means we have to stay focused on the right goals when creating and posting content on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.
There is value in employer branding (we’ve had physical billboards forever!) What will employer branding accomplish? During the long term, it should help you get better candidates faster! That’s the goal of your recruitment marketing program and having the right strategy on social media will allow social recruiting to help your company find those candidates.
