When it comes to your talent acquisition strategy, recruiting the best should be your top priority. Using social media recruitment as a key aspect of your recruitment and talent acquisition strategy is a great way to quickly and cost-effectively reach top talent. This might explain why 91 percent of recruiters use social media to source and screen prospective employees.
The digital information available from social media can be the difference between recruiting a great candidate and an applicant who may not be a good fit at your company. So, when using social media recruitment as a strategic sourcing method for hiring at your company, what should you be looking for in top candidates?
It is likely your company already has a robust employee referral program. This is because you understand the importance of your employee referral program when it comes to recruiting great talent to staff your organization.
According to a recent New York Times story, referred candidates are 40 percent more likely to be hired than blind applications. Plus, nearly 50 percent of all companies make at least one hire out of every five referrals that come through their employee referral program.
What does this have to do with social media recruitment? Job seekers who use their social media profiles to network are likely to be the same candidates who will refer talented friends and contacts once they join your organization. The top talent you need is using social media not as a one-way street merely to get what they want, but also to help others in a similar position.
These candidates demonstrate they care about cultivating their network and helping great people find equally great positions. When hired, these will be the employees willing to take part in your employee referral program to share great talent.
Social media is great for connecting with the candidates who are really thinking about your industry’s issues. This is why any social media recruitment should focus on job seekers who are passionate about your field. The digital footprint of your best candidates should be full of timely discussions and top-quality thought leadership centered around the pressing issues in your field.
You want to build up a talent pipeline for your company by engaging talent communities you’ve built through your sourcing efforts. You can build up your company’s talent pipeline by isolating where the best candidates are frequenting online, whether a LinkedIn discussion group or an industry-specific Twitter chat.
The best candidates — the ones you should be targeting with your social media recruitment strategy — are the job seekers who are so passionate about your field they think about it even on their off hours. These job seekers will have a digital footprint of top-quality thought leadership, because they’re always pondering ways to solve old problems with innovative new solutions.
Just because a tweet is only 140 characters does not mean you are looking for a candidate with a short attention span. You want someone focused on your industry and passionate about their career field.
Your ideal candidate is using social media as a research tool and a way to find out more about your company. The social space, your career site, and even your applicant tracking system can all tell talent something about your organization. Great candidates will use social resources to find out whether they are likely to enjoy your company culture and thrive in your workplace.
Looking at their social media profiles, from Facebook to LinkedIn, the passion of these candidates will be on full display. Look for candidates who run an industry-specific blog or are members of professional associations in your field. These are the people with clearly defined career goals who know what they want in a company and a position. This will make them much more likely to stick around, meaning low employee turnover for your company.
Cloud-based software for social media recruitment and recruitment marketing can be a powerful means for finding the best candidates for your open positions. The top talent you need is using social media just as strategically as you have developed your talent acquisition strategy. These candidates are using social media to demonstrate their honesty, their willingness to refer great people in your employee referral programs, and their ability to think outside the box.
How do you think the best candidates are using social media in their job hunt? How can you make this part of your talent acquisition and social media recruitment strategy? Share in the comments!
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