Some of the most powerful weapons in any recruiter’s arsenal are their social media accounts. It may be hard to believe, but social platforms have become effective recruiting tools.
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) conducted a study in which it revealed that recruitment through social media is widespread. Currently, 84% of firms are using it, and 9% plan to use it in the future – iDigic breaks these numbers down even further.
How you recruit via these social channels is important, however. Hiring professionals need to employ unique and exciting strategies in recruiting through social media platforms to stand out from the competition.
Let’s look at the ways in which you can use social media to find ideal employees for your business:
How to Target Prospects
Do you know how to source candidates through social media platforms? It is actually quite simple. The key lies in searching for the top-notch talent, which means you need to narrow down the sources of potential candidates. As per the 2016’s Global Recruiting Trends report published by LinkedIn, there are two sources – employee referrals and social professional networks. Combining these two sources will provide the results that you want.
When you’re trying to find the best and energetic candidate for a profile, you have options right in front of you. Your employees are one of the best recruiting tools you have – they all have social media accounts. Just get their help by motivating them to recommend and even research suitable connections on various professional social networks like LinkedIn. If use their combined networks to put out a job posting, you’ll likely get some quality applicants – one can hope that if you hire someone, they will have connections who are qualified.
Filtering Candidates
Irrespective of being a massive database filled with valuable candidates, social media platforms are some of the best screening tools. The research published by SHRM found that nearly half of respondents use social media sites to screen the candidate’s details. Around 61% of the firms feel that they can get more details about the candidates from social media platforms than what’s given at the time of the application or what’s present in the resume of the candidate.
As per the CareerBuilder survey published in 2014, more than 50% of the employers that used social media found something on a profile that made them avoid hiring a candidate.
Many people are aware of the value and risk involved in checking the details of candidates from social media while hiring. To counterattack the risk involved, you can employ a brand new strategy in screening through social media. Rather than emphasizing or concentrating the hiring decisions on the social habits, bad and good of candidates’, you can invite them to take part in friendly and exciting online competitions.
For example, you can run a contest where candidates are selected based on the 140-character description (the normal length of a tweet) of the reason why they want the job. Also, they can give reasons on why they should be hired for the given position using specific hashtags associated with your company. This makes it easy for current employees to identify and select their favorite ones.
The above approach is an interactive procedure that makes employees take part in the hiring process. The more you involve employees in the hiring process, the more they will try to find someone with whom they want to work.
Interviewing Candidates Via Social Media
Once you have gone through the pool of talent and screened each person, the next step is the actual interview. How does social media fit into the interview process? Of course, you cannot interview candidates through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. But, you can utilize these tools to invite candidates for the interview.
So, how can you actually get the interview done via new technology? Google Hangouts and Skype allow you to conduct a video interview – some people prefer this approach to a traditional phone screening.
Video interviews are a great tool present in the toolbox of the hiring professional. It allows individuals to take part in the interview and connect the hiring professionals to a huge talent pool. Even one-way interviews are an asset as candidates can record their answers for pre-set of questions. This method also allows candidates to take and complete the interview as per their convenience, which helps to accommodate busy schedules on both ends.
Many firms will even get a platform designed for video interviews. This makes it simple for candidates to take part in the interview through the interview link present in the social media profile of the company.
Offering the Job Via Social Media
Social media is a great tool to search, screen, and interview potential candidates. And there is no harm in taking one step further and employing this social aspect in the last stages of the hiring process: offering the job.
The social media profile of a firm is the best platform to recognize employees openly, especially the newly hired ones. Also, it is the perfect hub for job seekers to gain knowledge about the employer’s brand.
Make sure the actual offer is more personal. It must ideally take place in person or over the phone. Once the offer is accepted, use social media platforms to welcome and congratulate the new employee. Ideally, you should put out a message as soon as the employee completes his or her first week at the job. You can add a picture of the new hire along with some interesting information regarding their favorite food, quotes, or hobbies. Doing so not only welcomes the new employees with open arms, but also enhances the overall brand of the employer to the particular job seeker/new employee.
You may not want to do all of the above with regard to your hiring process, but you should use social media in some manner. Besides being less expensive, it expands your reach to a massive database of potential job seekers who are on the lookout for a career and job. Finding the right employee can transform your business, so why not use all available tools to do so?
Author Bio:
Nancy Grace is a social media writer at iDigic.net who also contributes for hundreds of other blogs. Her articles predominantly focus on social media and are widely followed by readers from all over the world.
