Today, social media are so anchored in our society that they are impossible to imagine. Business use of social media has also been on the rise for years - and still is. An interesting aspect is the use of social media in your online recruitment. Your potential candidates come together on social media and tell you, for free and for nothing, their interests, skills and the network that they take with them. Indispensable information for online recruitment marketing.
A good recruiter would flawlessly respond to that information, in order to address the desired candidates in the most relevant way possible. But how do you approach that in a strategic, effective way? recruiting through social media? And if you've never done it before, how do you actually start recruiting on social media? In the latter case, you belong to the last eight percent of employers who still do not use social media in recruitment, so: work on the job!
Online recruitment with social media: 7 tips
Before we explode with our social media tips for you online recruitment, we are happy to give you general advice for using social media. Social media is just like recruitment people work. It is communication between equals. That means that you also listen as a company, and that you just say sorry if you make a mistake. Especially if you are just starting out with social media, you can have a certain image with How it should be. Drop that, just be your professional self. Using social media is simply a matter of do, learn, adapt. Are you ready for it? Here are our seven tips for online recruitment with social media:
1. Determine your target audience
Before you can even start recruiting via social media, you will need to know what type of candidate you actually want to attract. That directly determines the image you want to ventilate through your social media. Maybe your company already has an 'online identity' on social media? Then you normally join this, but it does not relieve you of the obligation to think about the type of employee that is needed. This will often also be described in the vacancy text, assuming that such a text is your starting point.
2. Choose the right social media for your recruitment
Online recruiting is more complicated than scrolling a bit of profiles on LinkedIn. Of course LinkedIn is the most logical platform to launch your recruitment campaign on, but nowadays it is anything but strange to also recruit via Facebook,
Twitter or
Instagram. Which medium best suits the type of person you are looking for? Young creatives are more likely to be approached via Instagram than via LinkedIn, to name just one example. Where is your target audience located? That's where your campaign should be.
3. Make sure your company's mission and culture are clearly visible online
Just like your candidates have a profile and therefore an image on a social medium, so does your company. You will never recruit the perfect candidate with an unpolished profile. Take a critical look at your presence on the various social media: are the profiles and information up to date? Connect everything to your current
identity? Is this a good, appealing reflection of your company? If so,
then you're all set.
4. Take an active stance
The best candidate for your vacancy is probably not unemployed. Throwing a vacancy online and waiting for the letters is a thing of the past. You will have to take an active stance and look for yourself to recruit that perfect candidate on social media. On LinkedIn, use the many filter options where you can create a database in no time with candidates who have the skills, education and work experience you are looking for. You get the resumes for free. Oh, and by the way: this whole process is free of charge!
5. Do your homework with social media
Don't be fooled by just a nice CV on LinkedIn. People on LinkedIn realize that employers are looking over their shoulders. Is that positive-critical, fresh young man on
Twitter and/or Facebook just as positive-critical? Mapping out how your – at first glance – ideal candidate presents himself online is not espionage. What people share publicly online, you are allowed to see and you can therefore also take notice.
6. Deploy your own employees
Your company has no network – your employees have a network. Use it. If the staff of your company expresses themselves positively on social media and draws attention to open vacancies in the right way, it comes across many times more effective than if your corporate account has to do it on its own. So let your most engaged employees do their part – they'll only love it if it turns out to be successful in the end.
7. Be patient, be creative and listen to feedback
Just like customers, not all candidates take the plunge overnight, especially if you first have to work with another employer. With a tweet here and there you are not there yet. Provide a continuous campaign where you keep reinventing yourself. Highlight different sides of your company (culture), use different media and be creative. Oh, and don't forget to keep in touch with the outside world! If your campaign stands out, you will receive continuous (free!) feedback. Learn from it, use it, and most importantly, respond to it.
Can you then muster a healthy dose of patience? Then you will notice that you are slowly but surely entering into a substantive conversation with the people you are looking for. In the end, that's many times more valuable than an awkward job interview on a late Friday afternoon, right?
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