10 Reasons to Start Social Recruiting Today

0 Reasons to Start Social Recruiting Today

At this point in time, nearly every organization uses social media to promote its products and showcase its company culture. But did you know that 92% of recruiters use social media as a part of their recruitment strategies? With a number like that on the table, if you’re not including social in your recruiting efforts you may just fall behind industry standards. But, in case you need more incentive, read on for our list of 10 reasons to start social recruiting today. 

What is Social Recruiting?

Social recruiting, also known as social media hiring, and social hiring, is the practice of using social media channels to recruit talent. As of 2022, Facebook boasts over 3 billion active users, Instagram comes in at over 1 billion, LinkedIn claims 830 million, and Twitter has over 300 million. Social media is where people go to interact with friends, express their passions, shop for the latest trends, and, yes, find their next job. 

According to a recent study by our Work4 Research team, 87% of candidates use Facebook during their job search. Furthermore, a study from Captera shows that 73% of employees between the ages of 18-34 found their most recent job via social media. Now is the time to use these numbers to your advantage! When done right, social recruiting enables organizations to reach more candidates, gather more referrals, target desired candidates, showcase their individual culture, and save money. Now, on to our list. 

 

1. Reduce Your Recruiting Costs

Recruitment marketing can be expensive, especially when you’re advertising on multiple channels. Finding qualified candidates can be an extremely expensive process. But in comparison to traditional recruitment channels, social recruiting costs are considerably lower. Creating a social media page is completely free, and social ads are available for any budget. 

An older survey from Jobvite found that 43 percent of companies were spending less than $1,000 per month on social recruiting. But 60 percent of those companies valued their hires from social media at greater than $20,000 per year. That same study found that hires through referrals and a company’s careers page were more likely to get hired and over three times as likely to stay on board for more than three years. When replacing an employee costs the equivalent of 30% of that employee’s salary, and the Great Resignation has affected every industry, employee retention should be the highest priority for any company.

 

 

2. Target Specific Talent Pools

Unlike job boards or other traditional recruiting channels that push your open positions to the masses, social media can be targeted with advanced search filters to align with your ideal candidate persona. These criteria can be set based on location, industry, or specific keywords. Furthermore, Facebook ads can be designed to target candidates that are within your parameters, and it will immediately calculate how many of its nearly 3 billion members fit your search. 

Twitter and Instagram also offer targeting algorithms, with the additional benefit of hashtags, which can be used to further narrow down your talent pool giving you access to communities with an established following. These hashtags can be as specific as #salesjobindenver or as general as #hiring, depending on the habits of your ideal candidate persona. It’s also possible to create hashtags unique to your brand, to help you boost engagement and form your own talent community.

3. Connect With the Right Candidates

We live in an age where social and mobile technologies have made the world a smaller place. With over 3 billion people on Facebook, 229 million on Twitter, and 310 million on LinkedIn, you can now connect virtually anyone, anywhere around the world. This however does not mean that finding the ideal candidate for your open positions has gotten easier. 

But, with social recruiting, you can now go beyond the “spray and pray” technique of traditional job boards to find and engage with candidates on a personal level.  Social recruiting allows you to build real connections and relationships, as well as assess applicants’ skills, learn more about their personalities and understand how they’ll fit within your corporate culture.

4. Save Your Recruiters Time 

Social recruiting can not only save you money on recruitment costs but it can also save your recruiters time, and as the old saying goes, time is money. When you combine social recruiting with automation, your team can work more efficiently, communicate with potential candidates in real-time, and as a result, reduce time to hire. However, balancing multiple social platforms, along with your LinkedIn page, your careers page, and posting on job boards, can be a challenge for an already busy hiring team. This is where Work4 comes in to provide you with automation solutions that keep your team running optimally. 

Why you need social media in your recruiting strategy

5. Reach Passive Candidates

According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent. That means that although they are not actively seeking employment, they would be open to the right opportunity. With traditional recruiting, you post a job listing and wait for candidates to apply. However, with this method, you will never get your listing in front of passive candidates. This is the area where social recruiting outshines all other options. These ideal candidates may not be looking for a new job, but if your well-branded and enticing ad comes up in their feed as they scroll through updates chances are you can peek their interests. 

6. Boost Your Employer Brand

In a candidate-driven market, employer branding needs to be a top priority for brands looking to attract top candidates. 69 percent of job seekers say that a company’s reputation is a critical factor when considering a new job.  As candidates consider job opportunities, they want to know about a company’s work environment, work-life balance, benefits, corporate culture, and more. In other words, they want to know what it’s really like to work for your company before they apply. Social media is the key to building a strong employer brand because it gives you a platform to showcase your organization as a top employer where people want to work and where they can succeed. 

What is Employer Branding

7. Increase Your Reach

Unless your company is lucky enough to have candidates lining up, and let’s face it, in today’s market that’s only true for a few, it’s imperative that you reach as many potential candidates as possible. After all, the more qualified candidates you reach, the greater your odds of making a quality hire, and social media can help you to achieve just that. Furthermore, by allowing you to define targeting parameters, you can not only increase your reach but increase your reach to candidates who are likely to be the best fit for your company.

8. Improve Your Candidate Experience

Even if your company is a great place to work, if your candidate experience fails to meet expectations you could lose out on some of your best candidates and potentially damage your employer brand. Social recruiting makes it easy for applicants to search for, view, and apply to your open positions with just a few clicks from their social profiles. It can also help you stay in touch with them at every step of the process. 

9. Turn Your Whole Team Into Recruiters

Existing employees are often an overlooked resource but with the power of social media, they can become a big part of your social recruiting strategy. When it comes to social recruiting, the average Facebook user has 338 friends on the platform and an additional 31,000 people in their extended network. 35% of the user’s audience sees each post. Translation? If just one of your employees or recruiters shares your open job listing on their Facebook page, it could be seen by up to 10,850 people. 

The stats are similar for Linkedin and Twitter with the average Linkedin user having 400 first-degree connections and an average of 9,000 second-degree connections, 100% of which see user content.  For Twitter, the average user has 707 followers, and again, 100% of the audience can see user posts. 

To sum up, if each job post was shared to all three platforms it totals out to an average of 20,557 people seeing your open job. Furthermore, according to a study done by the Edelman Trust Barometer, employee voice is 3x more credible than corporate messaging. That means that each job shared by an employee will be received with much more trust than from other sources. 

Power of Social Job Sharing Ad

10. Gain Access to More Data and Measurable KPIs  

Another area where social recruiting stands out above traditional recruiting avenues is its insights and tools for tracking measurable KPIs. Aside from saving you time, effort, and money in your analyzing your recruiting efforts, these resources can also better inform you of which platforms and campaigns are performing best with your core audiences and candidate personas. With the constant data provided by most platforms, you can quickly and easily pivot a poor-performing campaign and turn it into a top resource for driving quality talent.

 

Start Social Recruiting Today With Work4

Social media was originally created to keep us connected in our personal lives, but it has evolved into a major asset to businesses and recruiting teams. In addition to being a cost-effective means of talent acquisition, it’s also a powerful tool for strong employer branding.

With 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide chances are good that your ideal candidates are among them. If you aren’t including social recruiting in your lead sourcing strategy, chances are you’re missing out on a vast opportunity. 

If you’re ready for social recruiting but aren’t sure where to start, contact us today to see how we can help. Our solutions include a complete lineup of tools to help you reach the candidates you need when you need them. With everything from Employer Branding to Candidate Nurturing and Candidate Lead Sourcing, we have the skills, tools, and know-how to guide you through. 

 

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