Social media plays such a vital role in our everyday lives. The whole scenario and lifestyle of people have changed today. Where once people used to wait for newspapers or radio broadcasts, or watch news channels for current affairs update, they now roll out of bed every morning and scroll through their Instagram or Facebook feeds to look for the latest happening. People nowadays have this innate need to show people how they live their lives. Every small memory, achievement, and celebration is part of a huge social digital network. This offers huge potential for Social Media Recruiting.
Social Media Recruiting
In today’s day and date ‘SOCIAL MEDIA’ is everything. It is the primary factor that influences people’s choices and decisions. A person’s digital presence can showcase a lot of things about him/her!
So why can social media play the role of a great asset in recruitment processes?
Here is a list of few benefits that recruiters might gain by using social media for their talent hunt!
Social Media Recruitment Process
Here is a step-by-step guide to help Recruiters understand Social Media Recruitment process
- Identity Channels: Identify the social media platforms based on your target segment.
- Share Jobs: Post Jobs on this platform to attract top candidates. Feel free to share your Jobs in these Facebook & WhatsApp groups
- Search & Scout: If the social media offers search capability, look for candidates who match your criteria
- Approach: Approach them & share your interest in them. Everyone loves the attention!!
- Close: Gauge their interest, ask for resume if required and take it forward in your Recruitment process
How social media can be helpful in Recruitment
1. Job Visibility
Gone are the days of putting in printed advertisements in newspapers and magazines!
As mentioned before, any employee being sought for recruitment will definitely have a social media presence, at least in the majority of the cases. Social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter host almost 2 billion people of a wide age and generation demographic. Gen X and Gen Z actively use platforms like LinkedIn to score job opportunities with employers.
Wherever you look, you see social networks serving as incredible platforms for identifying and recruiting talented individuals for your organization!
2. Access to Street Smart Candidates
Survey analysis shows that employees recruited through social media platforms are more approachable and very quick on their toes.
In such cases, the employee is tech-savvy and digitally oriented, a factor of an advantage when recruiting nowadays. Additionally, such employees will also know the latest trends and patterns of business. Announcing recruitments through the employee’s social media will make them more productive and retentive at the company.
3. Employer Branding
The public trusts the quality of a brand or a business by its social media reach. Employing a strong and effective social media plan in order to scout potential employees will be equivalent to a double-edged sword as it not only attracts employees to your calls but also builds a trusted brand image in the viewers’ minds.
Hence, social recruiting is effective, not just in finding you the ideal candidate, but also in increasing the visibility of your brand.
4. Reducing Hiring Time
The orthodox recruitment methods generally take longer than social media recruitment methods.
This means that when you have an open slot to be filled in the shortest time possible, social media is the platform to consider. Social networking sites not only make it easy and fast to communicate with candidates, but it also allows them to respond faster. As a result, excellent work relationships often emerge.
What’s more, recruiting in a talent pool that has people who share common values, interests, and work styles with the hiring manager or company often accelerates the speed with which you will find the ideal person for the job. This is great news for both the hiring party and the candidates hoping to get an opportunity to work at your organization.
5. Easy Background Verification
Checking your candidates’ social media profiles for more information on them is nothing new. Interviewers usually check the internet for their candidates in order to see if they have any longstanding professional recommendations, issues with friends or the law, or even to look for any Google information about the candidates.
Social media can provide a huge insight into which your candidates actually are when they step through the door. Many candidates don’t feel the need to disclose any personal information on the interview and tend to keep things to them.
Some people have families and go through tough times that they don’t like to discuss with strangers. Others might have used the word point in order to write their resumes and translate them into foreign languages. You can easily overcome this by checking their backgrounds behind closed doors and making the final call about whether to hire them or not based on that.
Social media has laid out information about the employees on a silver platter, which makes the tedious background verification task so much easier!
6. Reduce Hiring Cost
Money is the driving factor behind most managerial and corporate decisions.
Recruiting can be a very expensive undertaking. Social recruiting is cheaper, but can still cost you significant amounts of money. All the same, the value you get from the hires you find via social networking platforms makes this approach extremely cheap.
Without a doubt, recruitment costs via social media are almost always, lower than those of other methods. A simple Facebook ad can for instance get you over two times more visibility than the traditional recruitment methods like classified ads in the dailies and job boards.
Recruiting anyone based on their resume and interview alone isn’t enough most of the time. Every once in a while you will come across a candidate that just seems “off” to you as a recruiter. They might be too ambitious, too scared, or simply unwilling to disclose past working experiences to you.
Candidates that are difficult but have hidden potential need to go through further screening in more detail and social media recruitment is perfect for the opportunity. The traditional ways of putting out a job vacancy and waiting for people to come to you are a thing of the past in most industries.
While the benefits of using social media in your recruitment strategies are numerous, it’s also important to point out that adequate content management is also needed. If you put a person without any internet advertisement experience in charge of developing and distributing content, you won’t reach the required number of people before your ad campaign starts.
Also, reaching the wrong audience is just as easy as reaching the right one and it all depends on the type of content you publish. Give social media advertisements a good look before denying its applications. You might be surprised by the results you get during your next recruitment cycle!