With the hiring landscape as competitive as ever, many companies are turning to different and novel recruiting methods to remain competitive. It’s no secret that social recruiting or social hiring -- recruiting candidates for employment through the use of social media platforms -- has grown to be an important aspect of the recruitment strategy for many companies. Hiring managers and recruiters are increasingly turning to these resources to market their companies to job seekers. Suffice it to say that these days, the importance of updating recruitment strategies to include social recruiting cannot be overstated.
For many years, Facebook has been the leader in social media ads, largely due to the platform’s advanced targeting capabilities. In the area of targeting job seekers, companies of every size and in nearly every industry became able to take advantage of Facebook’s complex and ever-improving algorithms for filtering job titles, industries, employers, and various candidate backgrounds. Considering the relatively low cost of social recruiting, if hiring managers are struggling to hire, it’s crucial to ensure that every social media platform is being used to recruit -- and a specific focus on Facebook remains a highly prudent measure.
For companies utilizing Facebook in their recruitment efforts however, it’s important to ensure that they’re optimizing all of their efforts. There are many benefits to advertising on Facebook, and companies should be aware of all the ways they can enhance their efforts to ensure that their social recruitment strategy is the best it can be. There are many methods that companies can implement on social media platforms to aid in their recruitment efforts. In this article, learn 6 things companies can do right away to enhance their engagement with candidates, statistics around recruiting on Facebook, the importance of using social media for recruitment, and more.
Who’s On Social Media? The Current Breakdown
Today, nearly 3.5 billion people worldwide use some type of social media, and over 84% of organizations are recruiting via social media (shrm.com). Job seekers’ use of social media platforms in finding new jobs has been increasing for well over a decade. Glassdoor states that 79% of job seekers use social media when conducting their job searches. According to Monster.com, each day 890 million people use Facebook and 300 million use Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) for this purpose.
According to the most recently-reported data, Facebook has 2.19 billion monthly active users and 1.3 billion active daily users. By way of comparison, LinkedIn has 610 million monthly active users. Indeed, one of the biggest job boards globally, gets around 360 million monthly visits. Monster.com averages around 23 million monthly visits, with CareerBuilder coming in at around 15.2 million hits per month.
So, while LinkedIn may be still considered the go-to for those seeking executive or more professional positions, the above numbers speak for themselves about how useful Facebook and Instagram can be for recruitment.
Here are 6 ways that hiring managers can foster more dynamic engagement with job seekers on Facebook (and, by extension, Instagram).
1. Advertising (Facebook And Instagram)
In addition to placing advertisements for products and/or services, the organization can place ads announcing specific or general open positions. The ads can be linked to the careers page, or to specific positions if desired. Depending on a user’s activity on the platform, if they’re looking for a job, Facebook’s internal algorithms can increase the likelihood that they’ll see an ad.
The Promotion feature (called “boosting” on some platforms) is used by many small and large businesses. It allows hiring managers to prioritize a given post (in this case, one concerning positions the company is offering) to ensure it ends up in front of job seekers.
Tip: Advertise by creating ads within the Facebook Ads Manager -- especially the Facebook pixel. By placing the Facebook pixel, hiring managers can maximize all recruitment marketing efforts and are able to create retargeting audiences of all career site visitors and create retargeting campaigns encouraging candidates to come back and apply.
2. Posting About Jobs On The Company's Facebook Page
Posting jobs on the company's Facebook page allows hiring managers to start acquiring applicants directly on Facebook. This is a somewhat more limiting method of recruitment compared to advertising, since the audience will be composed of people who are already following the company's Facebook page. Then again, these days, many job seekers proactively scour Facebook expressly for the purpose of finding a job. There is the networking factor: since Facebook is a social network, word-of-mouth interactions on the platform can help funnel candidates to hiring managers via followers’ connections with them.
Also, hiring managers can post open positions on Facebook Jobs. This is different from posting (or announcing) jobs on the Facebook News feed. Here, hiring managers can create job posts, review applications from the phone, and respond to qualified candidates. The best part is that this is a free offering. The only requirement is that Facebook Messenger needs to be set up, which is also free. Facebook gives step-by-step instructions on how to do this in their Business section.
Tip: Leverage the company's organic brand presence and partner with corporate marketing to post a few times a month about career opportunities.
3. Showcase Employees & Their Stories
A recent Harris Interactive Survey for Glassdoor revealed that 67% of employers think that their retention rates would be higher if prospective employees had a clearer picture of what to expect with regard to working for their organizations prior to taking a job. Actively seeking out and telling stories from inside the organization is a powerful way to be more transparent, build employer brand and enhance talent acquisition and retention. The stories hiring managers garner can be used across a variety of media, including video.
According to Forbes, real stories simply create a higher level of authenticity for the brand. “Don’t overlook the positive impact of your employees sharing their stories,” the business magazine admonishes. “Potential new hires want a glimpse into your corporate culture and how employees are empowered to make an impact -- at work and in life. Discovering and sharing these stories creates greater transparency into what it’s really like to work at your organization. This authenticity will help you find and keep talent.”
4. Use Facebook Groups To Source Talent
Facebook has groups for nearly every area of interest and endeavor under the sun, and that includes a wide array of business topics. There are many Facebook Groups that have been established in order to help recruiters find and attract talent. Facebook Groups are among the very few active online communities that allow hiring managers to get job postings in front of a targeted audience for free, so they’re an invaluable resource.
Each of these groups has a different tone, as well as different objectives and rules. Recruiters should get to know the lay of the land when they join a group, so as not to run afoul of the admin’s rules. In groups where job postings are permitted, it pays to know the required formats and information that’s acceptable in this regard.
5. Employ iCIMS Video Studio Videos
This is a powerful way to showcase employee stories using first-person raw homemade employee videos that’s gaining in popularity. iCIMS Video Studio allows companies to spotlight their own people and gain a competitive advantage with employee testimonial videos for career sites, job descriptions, email campaigns and of course, social media. It facilitates organizations’ ability to stay in-house while producing custom-branded video content “with intuitive, professional editing, integrated social publishing, custom templates, and real-time analytics dashboards.”
A great example of this in action is from CommonSpirit on their career site in the “Meet our employees of humankindness” section.
Tip: Produce content through iCIMS Video Studio, then add the employee-generated video testimonials to the Facebook company and jobs posts and Groups posts. This also goes a long way to enhancing the content through storytelling (#3 above).
6. What Diversity Means To Us (Highlighting Diversity Programs And Initiatives)
Finally, underscoring the organization’s commitment to DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) initiatives via Facebook and other social media is essential, as this has become an important criterion in the decision-making process amongst job seekers. As our nation’s demographics and sensibilities have evolved, job seekers are far more conscious of company culture. They want to work for organizations for which parity is a top ethical concern, and feel confident that they will be welcome, treated fairly and have equal opportunities for advancement.
Once again, using employee stories and video to convey these aspects of the company’s culture is one of the best ways to get this message across to candidates. Additionally, it will help hiring managers pull from a wider talent pool, enhance the brand, and keep competitive.
--
As with any other aspect of recruitment, strategic planning and execution are key. These 6 points should help to give a company a head start in refining social hiring and working toward attracting top talent!
Interested in fine-tuning your social recruitment efforts? If you’d like help in developing a more effective social media presence to aid in your recruitment strategy, feel free to reach out to us!
