8 Tips for Sourcing CandidatesThrough Social Media

When you want to be able to find the best and brightest in your space, it pays to take things social. The days of job boards and posting ads in the local paper are a long way in the past, social sourcing is the future. While you might not be surprised by this assertion, social goes beyond LinkedIn, and here’s how you can leverage other social networks to source and recruit candidates. 

1.Use Periscope to run live Q&A sessions to speak to prospective applicants

One of the best ways to recruit the most sought-after candidates is to take a proactive approach to find them. Don’t wait for them to come to you, take yourself to them with the click of a button.

A periscope is a powerful tool that you can use to host video Q&A sessions in real-time, with real people. Ideal if you want to be able to put yourself center stage so that you can turn the head of some of the most talented people in your industry.

2.Make page for your business on various social media platforms and optimize it for search

Create a page for your business, keep it up to date, and ensure that you optimize it for search. This will allow you to appear in front of the eyes of people who are actively looking for new opportunities, as well as those who are just idling away time at their desks and don’t yet know they need a new venture. Additionally, make sure to include a bio for your social media page to give your followers an idea of who you are and what you do.

PS: LinkedIn is still the king of business social platforms. There’s simply no excuse for not being on it. If you want to ensure that you’re easily contactable, then you need to be on there.

3.Get your team to post about your corporate culture to provide social proof

If you want to show people that you can offer them a great place to work, why not use the people who already work for you to do just that? The great thing about encouraging your team to post about what they’re doing is that it provides authentic social proof that potential applicants will immediately recognize.

4.Create hashtags that applicants will find with ease

The death of the job board has seen a rise in hashtag targeting, which allows proactive businesses to post links to jobs on far busier social platforms. The secret is to create something catchy and relatable so that people will want to search it, whilst also knowing straightaway what you’re offering.

Take some time to craft the right group of hashtags, review them periodically, and it’ll be your hiring process that reaps the rewards.

5.Recognize that your customers and your employees are often two distinct sets of people

A key mistake that people make when using social media, is thinking that their customers and their employees are likely to be the same people. Often this will not be the case, which means you need to tailor your social offering accordingly.

What many businesses do is create a distinct social page for their job vacancies? This can be a great way to direct people from your brand’s main page to a page that focuses on the specifics of your vacancies. That way you can separate candidates and customers with the click of a button.

Also, check our blog about candidate sourcing tools.

6.Use scheduling software to time your posts for optimal engagement

Different social networks have peak audiences at different times. What you need to do is figure out which times work best for your audience, and then use programs like Socialbee, Buffer, Hootsuite, or Hootsuite alternative to queueing up your posts for the week. Ideal if you want to be able to maximize your engagement with a little forward planning.

7.Create custom images that you can share to advertise your vacancies

Any talent sourcing strategy needs to have the creation of eye-catching material as one of its fundamental ideas. The great thing about social media is that you can distribute visual material extremely easily, and people love to engage with it.

Stock image libraries offer a good starting point but because of their saturation usage, it can prove difficult to create something unique using them. If you can brand your own images and give people an introduction to your brand and the business behind it, then you’ll be onto something truly powerful. Just what you need if you want to be able to attract the best people in your field.

Run branded videos where team members talk about their role in the business

Branded videos are another visual tool that will allow you to connect with many more people on social media. A quick 2-minute interview and a tour of your headquarters are often all it takes to put your first piece of content out there.

After that, you can shoot on location at events, conferences, and exhibitions, and allow the viewer to paint a picture of themselves working for you. Once you’ve done that, they’re a lot more likely to apply.

8.Make the most of the channel with the highest engagement: Instagram

Most people will think that after LinkedIn, Facebook is the place to be for recruitment. What this misses is that Instagram actually averages more than 10 times as much engagement per post. It’s all down to the nature of the platform itself and the unwritten rules of the social community which inhabits it. You may also check this blog to grow your Instagram followers.

If you can create an eye-catching visual and post it on your company’s Instagram, then there’s no reason not to form a recruitment viewpoint.

This article is a guest post by Elisa Abbott. Elisa is a freelancer whose passion lies in creative writing. She completed a degree in Computer Science and writes about ways to apply machine learning to deal with complex issues. When she’s not engaged in assessing translation services for PickWriters you’ll usually find her sipping a cappuccino with a book.