6 Benefits of using social media in your recruitment company

by in Social Media

As it’s known, social media is a hot platform for pretty much anything these days. Marketing, advertising, jobs, sales, chat and messaging and even recruiting are just some of the new ways people are using platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The use of social media for recruitment has grown 54% in the past 5 years and as a recruitment company, there are many benefits of using social media as part of your strategy, here are a few.

Employer brand

Employer brand is highly important to any business; whether its recruitment or other. What makes employer brand so important to recruitment companies is potential employees can have a clear insight into your company, the way you work and how you can be the best solution for their recruitment needs. Portraying a business personality through your social media channels can help you reach more candidates. According to Talent Works, 59% of candidates use social media to research companies they are interested in. Meaning more than half of your candidates would have seen your Christmas party pictures, which is a good amount of potential candidates you could be working with. With 67% of job seekers using social media to gain insights into company culture (according to Robert Walters) it just shows how the power of social media can be used to make a judgement of your business.

Social Recruiting

Social recruiting is becoming more popular amongst recruiters and there are good benefits when it comes to reaching more passive candidates through social media. Recruiters can get a further reach, enabling them to find candidates faster and at a lower cost because you can start using most social tools free of charge. Additionally, social media tools allow recruiters to engage with their target audience and focus on reaching candidates they may never find through traditional hiring methods. On a platform like LinkedIn, you can specifically target connections and an audience that relates to your business. Jobcast conducted a survey that showed 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn but only 55% use Facebook, this means there is space for recruiters to use Facebook to reach out to more candidates.  Another reason to use social media for social recruiting is there are less spam and more real people on social media, and recruiters can get a better and higher response rate when communicating with potential candidates.

Bigger Application Pool

Social media is also a great way to expand your recruiting pool because of the personal element. Social platforms can be used to keep in contact with people directly or used as a referral path for people to use. Referrals also have the highest chances to result in a mutual fit.

According to the Undercover recruiter, 84% of companies were using social media to recruit, which means recruiters probably have a good social network and application pool already.

Screening candidates

You may not think about it this way, but social media can also be used to screen candidates before an interview. The process of screening candidates is nothing new, but what social media does is give recruiters an easily accessible tool to view peoples personal qualities. Of course, you need to be cautious when looking up someone’s social media profiles without their consent. However, candidates are now more willingly including social media links in their CV for recruiters to search them on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media Advertising

For the most part, social media platforms are free to use. Essentially you have a free tool at your fingertips. However, there is a different way to utilise the advertising potential of social media channels. Facebook is a good example as it has a good Ad manager feature that allows you to post and promote jobs. What many recruiters don’t necessarily do is set up campaigns to promote a set of jobs. While advertising on job boards can, in theory, generate you more applications, what a Facebook advert can do for you is to target specific audiences that are best suited for your job requirements.

Facebook is by far the most popular social media advertising channel with 93% of social media advertisers using Facebook Adverts. Facebook allows you to achieve this by letting you adjust the audience by both demographics and location. For example, if you know you have jobs that are based in Northamptonshire you can target that area with the interest of the audience to target the most correct people.

The LinkedIn campaign manager is also simple to use but it doesn’t have as many options, for example about what format you would like to display your ads. However, LinkedIn is a singular platform that focuses on B2B and many people on LinkedIn only use it on a professional level to create a network of people.

Candidates can look for you and your jobs

By having a social media presence you are allowing candidates to look for your company and your jobs. Jobvite did a survey and that showed that 48% of candidates used social media in the search for their most recent job, showing that the candidates do take social media into consideration when looking for jobs. When it comes to your recruitment website you should always have your jobs displayed and this is the same with social media because it is an extension of what your company does.

Social media is something you should really invest in if you haven’t made it as part of your recruitment business yet. What is great about social is everyone pretty much knows how to use most platforms, you may just need some guidance to execute some of the features. Additionally, by having multiple social channels and having a social media recruitment strategy your chances of hiring better quality candidates can increase.