Social Recruiting Strategies: Tips for Recruiting via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest MARY GORMANDY WHITE, M.A., SPHR, SHRM-SCP MTI BUSINESS SOLUTIONS MTIBUSINESS.COM ● [email protected]

Social Media Recruiting Impact 

Social media has changed the way that people seek information - and that includes information about employment opportunities.  Gone

are the days where employers simply put an ad in the paper and got all of the qualified candidates they could handle.

 Today,

competition for qualified candidates is intense, and the key to a successful recruiting effort getting great candidates to learn about and want to work for your organization - involves social media.

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Social Media Recruiting Impact 

Remember: To market anything successfully, including job openings, you must:  Get  At

your message in front of the right people

the right time

 Where

they are

 In

a format they’ll be open to receiving

 In

a way that inspires action

Social Media Recruiting Impact 

While social media isn’t the only answer to where you should recruit, it’s definitely one worth considering – and many recruiters are.



According to the Capterra Talent Mangement blog, 94% of recruiters use – or plan to use – social media as a recruitment tool.  http://blog.capterra.com/top-15-recruiting-statistics-2014/

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Social Recruiting Key Benefits 

Reach more people than if you don’t use social media as a recruitment tool.



Connect/communicate directly with potential candidates.



Attract attention from passive job seekers



Increase visibility for your organization and its job openings



Ease of sharing information/potential for viral



Opportunity to build your brand as an employer of choice fairly inexpensively

Incorporating Social Media Into Your Staffing Plan 

Take a team approach:  HR

Team Members

 Communication

Team Members

 Legal/Compliance  IT

(risk management is essential)

(integrating social with website)

 Executive

team (commitment from the top is key)

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Incorporating Social Media Into Your Staffing Plan 

Key factors to know/decide up front:  Why

are you adding social media?

 Increasing  Driving

traffic to careers page/website?

 Reducing  Building

recruitment advertising costs?

a candidate database?

 Cultivating

 Who

applicant pool?

candidate referral sources?

is your target audience?

 Which

social media sites fit best?

 Establishing  Promoting  Engaging

your presence

employment opportunities

potential candidates

Incorporating Social Media Into Your Staffing Plan 

Key factors continued:  What  How

kind of content will you share?

frequently will you share content?

 What

other strategies will you use to engage people?

 What

kinds of negative interactions should you prepare for?

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Incorporating Social Media Into Your Staffing Plan 

Use a Push-Pull Approach  Push:

Promoting your opportunities to people who are already aware of/associated with your company.  Sharing

job openings with existing followers/connections

 Consistently

audience

providing relevant content to existing

 Pull:

Efforts to get your message in front of people who don’t have prior knowledge about your company.  Paid

promotions to reach new audiences (promoted posts, ads, etc.)

 Encouraging

referrals (creating viral content in the hopes that others will share to their own personal networks)

Determining Responsibility 

Who will handle:  Making

posts

 Content

curation

 Monitoring  Handling

comments

responses (comments, FAQs, inquires, etc.)

 Interacting

with connections made via social media

 Managing

paid social efforts

 Measurement/tracking

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Social Content Guidelines Don’t expect to benefit from social sites if you don’t legitimately, sincerely engage in them  Don’t be a SPAMMER 

 Don’t

only post job openings; use a mix of content

 Helpful

tips (interview tips, resume writing, etc.)

 Industry

events

 Interesting  Related

statistics

current events

 Don’t

over-post, but do maintain a consistent presence  Don’t send overly-personal or presumptive messages to people you don’t really know

Choosing the Right Sources 

LinkedIn is a powerful recruitment tool  According

to the Global Talent Acquisition Monitor’s 2014 research conducted in 45 countries, 87 percent of the labor force prefers LinkedIn over Indeed as a recruitment channel.  http://www.ere.net/2014/11/27/the-battle-for-global-

recruiting-domination-indeed-vs-linkedin/

 According

to the Capterra Talent Management Blog, as of February of 2014, 89% of recruiters reported having hired someone through LinkedIn.  http://blog.capterra.com/top-15-recruiting-statistics-2014/

 The

statistics were much lower for other popular sites (26% for Facebook; 15% for Twitter)

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Choosing the Right Sources 

According to Jobvite, as of 2014  About

34% of job seekers use Twitter to look for jobs

 http://www.recruitingdivision.com/use-twitter-recruiting/

 About

83% of job seekers “prefer and use” Facebook when looking for jobs  http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-

careers/2014/02/12/a-look-inside-the-habits-of-the-socialjob-seeker

LinkedIn 

Establish a company page on LinkedIn  Serves

the dual purpose of communicating interest about your company with potential customers, vendors, applicants, etc.

 The

page itself should provide relevant details about the organization.

 Share

updates via the page (articles, announcements, media coverage, job announcements, etc.)



Encourage company leaders to establish active LinkedIn profiles.

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LinkedIn 

Create an effective “recruiter” profile that establishes credibility.  Remember:

When you reach out to candidates or referral sources, they’ll likely “check you out” before deciding whether to engage.

 Does

your profile convey…?

 Why

they would want to work with you?

 How

you are different from other recruiters?

 Why

your company is one they’d want to work with.

LinkedIn 

Build your LinkedIn network  Accept

connection requests that are made to you

 Send

connection requests to people you meet as you network in the real world and online

 Reach  Join

out to people who view your profile

– and participate in – relevant groups

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LinkedIn 

Build credibility by engaging with the site and members of your network members consistently – not just when it serves your purpose.  Endorse

your connections

 Share

helpful content (not just information on job openings)

 Join

and actively participate in relevant groups

LinkedIn 

Engage on a larger scale  Use

LinkedIn Pulse to follow key influencers, news, etc. (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/discover)

 Use

LinkedIn channels to follow topics of interest to you (https://www.linkedin.com/today/channels)

 Follow

relevant company pages to keep up with major updates, key players, etc.

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LinkedIn 

Utilize your profile and contacts to get information about openings in front of passive job seekers.  Post

openings via your own profile, the company profile, relevant groups to which you belong, etc.

 Encourage

company employees to share information on open positions via their own profiles.

 Reach

out to contacts within your own LinkedIn network via personal messages.  Don’t  Be

sent cryptic messages.

very specific and direct.

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn Jobs: Purchase job ads via LinkedIn, and even sponsor postings to ensure they get the best placement  (https://business.linkedin.com/talent-

solutions/products/jobs)



LinkedIn Recruiter: Utilize LinkedIn Recruiter to find and engage the best passive talent via expanded search features, InMail communication and tracking tools for your talent pipeline.  https://business.linkedin.com/talent-

solutions/products/recruiter

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LinkedIn 

Recruitment firms: Additional fee-based services are available to recruitment firms.  Download

“The Recruiting Firm’s LinkedIn Field Guide,” a free ebook focused on making the most of the site’s recruitment tools.  (https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/c/14/9/the-

recruiting-firms-linkedin-field-guide-g)

 Consider

becoming a preferred recruitment partner by investing in LinkedIn Media Packages designed specifically for recruitment firms.  (http://www.slideshare.net/LinkedInRecruitmentFirms/linkedi

n-media-packages-search-recruitment-firms)

Facebook 

Establish a company page on Facebook.  If

your marketing team doesn’t want to blend recruitment messages into the marketing-oriented page, consider setting up one just for recruiting using a title like “Company Name Careers.”



Decide if you’ll utilize your personal Facebook  If

you are a recruiter, business owner or HR representative and you are comfortable blending work-related messages into your personal presence, you might want to share recruitment messages that way as well.

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Facebook 

When deciding to post content, consider how you are sharing and who the audience is.  If

using your company’s general Facebook page, you don’t want to come across as understaffed or desperate to find employees  If using your personal page, don’t bombard your personal contacts with job announcements. Balance is important.  If

you set up a careers-specific Facebook page, you can post job announcements more frequently, but you do still need to mix in other types of content.  Post  Do

several times each week

not go over three posts per day, and space them out

Facebook 

Set aside a budget to boost job opening posts and/or advertise on Facebook  Boost

posts to your followers so that more of them will see what you share. (this is “push”)  https://www.facebook.com/help/547448218658012/

 Purchase

Facebook ads, which allow you to extend your reach, targeting who will see your messages based on factors like location, demographics, interests and more. (this is pull)  https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-ads-

basics/

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Facebook 

Mix in other types of content with job announcements.  Look

for interesting information to share that is likely to encourage engagement (likes, shares and comments.)

 Vary

the types of information you are sharing (videos, links with catchy text, photos, etc.).

 Seek

information to share related to trending topics.



Avoid being too repetitive.



Only post what your target audience is likely to find helpful or interesting.

Twitter 

Establish a business presence on Twitter.  You

can share recruiting messages via your general business pages, but as you aren’t as limited to who might see your content on Twitter as with Facebook, there is no reason NOT to set up a recruiting-specific profile.

 You

can also set up a recruiting-specific profile for yourself, so you can maintain it completely separate from your own personal Twitter .

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Twitter 

You can share jobs and other types of content more frequently via Twitter than Facebook, because of how the chronological timeline is structured, but you still shouldn’t share identical or very similar posts too close together.  Avoid

pushing out the same post every day.

 If

you are posting the same openings multiple times each week, vary the hashtags that you use to increase the chances that they’ll be seen by different people each time.



Keep it short! 140 characters or less

Twitter 

Add relevant hashtags to your posts to help target the right people.  #jobhuntchat  #jobadvice  #jobfairy  #recruiter  Hashtags

for conferences or events likely to be attended by your ideal candidates

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Twitter 

Exercise judgment and good taste when selecting hashtags.  Don’t

jump in on off-topic conversations just because a lot of people are following them. This will backfire on you and damage your brand.

 Hint:

Check out the chatter surrounding the hashtag before you join in to make sure what you are doing is appropriate.

Twitter •

Build Connections 

Follow professional organizations and other groups likely to have other followers who represent your target audience and engage (i.e., mention, retweet, etc.)



Use Twitter’s advanced search feature (https://twitter.com/search-advanced) to search based on geography, keywords, terminology, mentions, hashtag usage, etc.)



If you’re looking to connect with people with certain types of backgrounds, use the bio tool on Followerwonk (https://followerwonk.com/bio) to search for specific job titles (use quote marks).



Once you authorize Followerwonk to connect with your Twitter account, you can follow people directly from the search page.

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Twitter 

Use paid advertising on Twitter  Target

your advertising dollars toward your specific objective (https://biz.twitter.com/ad-products)  Drive

website traffic – focus on generating website clicks

 https://business.twitter.com/solutions/gain-website-

conversions

 Generate

leads – add a lead generation card to your tweets (a great option for job posting tweets)  https://biz.twitter.com/leads-on-twitter

 Increase

followers – focus on growing your follower base

 https://business.twitter.com/solutions/grow-followers

Pinterest 

Establish a company ‘careers’ page on Pinterest



The idea is to let people know how to apply and what it’s like to work there in a visual way that links to content.

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Pinterest 

Include employment-focused boards, such as:  How  Job

to apply

announcements

 Recruiting

team

 Company

perks

 General

information and tips of interest to job seekers

 Company

departments/functions

 Employee

highlights (links to bios on company site, LinkedIn pages,

 Company

news (blog, publicity, newsletter, etc.)

awards, etc.)

 Topic-specific

boards of interest to ideal candidates

Pinterest 

Update your boards regularly, being sure there are great images with your content



Use hashtags to capture traffic from site users searching for this kind of content



Follow and build a following (keeping in mind that Pinterest is used primarily for personal purposes)



Make sure it’s easy for Pinterest users to pin content from the careers section on your website

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Responsiveness Is Key 

No matter what social media sites you are using, responsiveness is key.  When

people respond to your social recruitment efforts, they expect you to respond quickly.  How quickly and effectively you respond can directly impact how effective your efforts are.

You can’t log on and use social media when you have a need, then ignore it otherwise.  What people do via social media is engage in social networking – and everything you know about networking in person also applies in this context. 

Tracking Effectiveness 

Common social effectiveness measures include:  Monthly

increase of followers, connections, etc.

 Engagement  Clicks

rates, including items such as:

per links

 Activity

per link/post (shares, likes, retweets, comments, questions, responses, etc.)

 Average

response rate time

 Number/percent

of applications and hires citing social media as a source

 Third-party  Related

social influence rankings, such as Klout.com.

online chatter using socialmention.com.

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Tracking Effectiveness 

Of course, the ultimate success of any recruiting efforts lies with whether or not they lead to:  Qualified  that  are

hires…

perform well …

good fits for your company and

 stay

with you for the “long haul”

Expand Social Efforts 

You don’t have to stop with these sites!  YouTube

can be a great resource for sharing recruitment videos, tips, advice and other types of information with viral potential

 Instagram

can be used to share flyers related to job openings and pictures of what it’s like to work at the company



Who knows what is coming next? To compete for the best candidates, stay in touch with developments in social media and other communication tools.

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

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

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https://www.facebook.com/MTIBusinessSolutions/



https://twitter.com/MTI_Training

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https://www.linkedin.com/company/mti-businesssolutions

Mary Gormandy White, SHRM-SCP, SPHR 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgwhitemti



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

https://twitter.com/mgwhitemti

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