If you are a recruiter, it is safe to assume that your applicant tracking system, email tools, and social media play an integral role in your recruiting strategy. Chances are you rely heavily on social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to identify potential candidates, share links to your job posts, and grow your network.
While all of these items are invaluable to the recruiting process, when was the last time you devoted time to your social media presence beyond these activities? Have you thought about how you could leverage status updates to market your agency or share content to promote your knowledge? Do you engage in communities related to your expertise or reply to the updates of the passive talent in your network?
It is a lot to tackle when you have limited time and resources, but it doesn’t mean you should ignore your social presence. While a long game, social marketing and social recruiting provide numerous benefits when done correctly, including:
Once you consider the benefits, it’s hard to dispute the value.
I find there are two types of recruiters on social media. There is a small percentage who are active. They post daily updates, comment frequently, and are involved in a number of relevant communities. Then, there is the rest. These people might occasionally share an update and like a post but are generally passive overall.
So, what is stopping most people from engaging more with their social networks? While some might have no interest in social media, most people fall into one of two categories.
If either of those sound like you, you’re in luck. With the right tools and a simple process, you can quickly boost your social presence and start realizing the benefits of social media.
Managing your social media presence can be daunting. In addition to the dozens of tools you use daily, you now have multiple profiles on multiple sites you have to manage. Sharing the same, or similar update, across all of these profiles can take time, and then you still have to check your newsfeed and reply to comments. With the right tool, none of this is a problem.
Take a note out of the marketer’s playbook and use the same tools they have been using for years. Social media management platforms, like Hootsuite and Buffer, allow you to simultaneously manage all of your social profiles from one platform, including responding to updates in your newsfeed and sharing posts to all of your profiles at once.
Best of all, both of these tools offer free versions and take less than 15 minutes to set up. Whether you’re a social media novice or simply strapped for time, these are tools are a must have to take your social game up a level.
Once you decide on a tool, it’s time to develop your social strategy and define what types of updates you want to share with your network and how you will engage your followers.
As you’re starting out, it’s important to be flexible. Social success doesn’t happen overnight but rather requires a lot of trial and error until you find the combination of timing and content that works for you. But, here are some things to consider as you get started.
When first starting out, you may have the best of intentions and hope to share updates and engage with your network multiple times a day. It would be amazing if you could sustain that momentum in the long run but its common for a lot of smaller businesses with limited marketing resources to have a sharp drop off in activity over time.
Nothing is worse than seeing a once active profile lay suddenly dormant for long periods of time. Instead of biting off more than you can chew, start small and commit to posting with a small but predictable frequency.
There are many different types of content you can share. Before you start posting, decide what your goals are. Decide whether you focus on business development, nurture the passive talent in your network, become a recruiting influencer, or a combination of all of the above. Then determine which type of content will help you reach those goals.
For instance, client testimonials and case studies are great for business development. While articles covering career advice and job search best practices can help nurture passive candidates.
Of all the things you can do, this is the most important. Social media is not meant to be one sided. It’s not simply a billboard for your services or a means of distributing your content. It’s meant to start a dialogue. So, don’t be passive.
Take a moment as your scroll through your newsfeed to engage with your contacts in a meaningful way. Congratulate the candidate you previously placed on their promotion. Share the blog post your client wrote or provide a thoughtful comment on a peer’s update.
What works for one person may not work for another. As you develop your social strategy for your recruitment agency or yourself, always evaluate how your efforts are performing. Check to see if certain types of posts are outperforming others or certain times result in higher engagement. Eventually, you’ll find the perfect combination that works for you.