With over 3.6 billion users worldwide, it’s becoming more and more vital that social media is part of your recruitment strategy. When used for recruitment marketing purposes, social media can be a powerful tool. It can help to build your employer brand, influencing opinions of you as a place to work and helping you to put in the groundwork for talent attraction even if you’re not ready to hire. Social media advertising can also help you to attract specific talent through detailed targeting, ensuring any recruitment budgets you have been used effectively.
Throughout the pandemic, the average Brit spent a quarter of their day online and globally; we’re becoming more dependent on technology and the world of social media to give us, well, a social life.
However, like most things over the last six months, our relationship with social media has changed rapidly. Social media has become as much a part of our daily life as food and exercise; we’ve become almost dependant on it. However, there has also been significant changes in the recruitment landscape in the last few months. With more candidates looking for work, office workers spending more time at home and online and less competition in the recruitment market as companies try to recover from the crisis. Therefore, if you can recruit, there’s never been a better time to combine the two. If you want to attract the best candidates in the future, you need to be present where they’re spending time and provide them with content they can genuinely relate to.
So, we’ve rounded up exactly what you need to know about using social media as part of your recruitment strategy in a post-pandemic world.
Creating a connection is key
It’s reported that 91% of people believe in social media’s power to connect people. So, if you want to resonate with potential candidates, social media seems like the obvious tool to use. Connection is the new currency, particularly in a year when human interaction and face to face conversations have been a rare treat. There’s nothing more valuable than the relationship between a brand and the people it interacts with, whether they’re customers or candidates.
It’s becoming clear in consumer behaviour that the brands that thrive are the ones that connect through engaging with their audiences, starting conversations and creating memorable experiences. However, the same energy that you put into connecting with customers going forward should be translated into your recruitment strategy also.
To ensure that you’re able to hire the brightest and best talent in the future, you should be going the extra mile to connect with likeminded people, show them who you are and what makes you unique; forming those instant connections through shared values and experiences.
Focus on your people, real-life stories and bring faces to the forefront to humanise your business when promoting your employer brand. By promoting your employer brand using social media, you’ll be able to position yourself as an employer of choice for many candidates in a growing jobs market. This will help you form all-important connections with candidates, building loyalty and enhancing your overall desirability as an employer.
Build up relationships
If there’s one thing the coronavirus pandemic has shown us, it’s the importance of community and supporting each other. As we all strive to feel connections with both brands and the individuals working within them, social media provides an excellent opportunity to build communities and form relationships with candidates as well as customers. Brands are becoming leaders in connecting people; bringing together individuals from various backgrounds and beliefs. Social media provides the perfect tool to build these relationships after all the clue is in the name; it’s social and starts conversations. A recent survey found 62% of its participants thought social media could unite people with different beliefs, which means promoting your employer brand on social media platforms could also help to improve your diversity efforts.
Using social media for recruitment means you can build up a community of talented people who may one day be perfect for a role you’re trying to fill. A talent pool will be formed, and you can stay in touch with its members regularly to ensure their desire to work for you always remains. You can share advice for potential employees from useful articles to profiles on your staff. This will help build up their trust and give them an idea of what it’s like to work for you. Through a Facebook careers page or LinkedIn group, you can build a community that can not only talk to your brand quickly and easily, but members can also interact with each other. This will make the application process feel less lonely and enhancing the candidate experience significantly.
It’s not about the numbers
Previously, social media marketing has focused on building bigger audiences. It was always assumed that the bigger your audience, the greater your success. That means more people are seeing and engaging with your content, right? However, in the wake of the pandemic loyalty and the quality of your audience is more valuable than reaching large amounts of people. If you are advertising a job, for example, isn’t it better to reach a small number of relevant people through social media targeting than a large group of unsuitable people? It’s better to spend your time talking to a small group of people who are passionate about your business and would love the opportunity to work there, than a large group of people who have never heard of you.
Instead of putting all your efforts into building a broad audience when using social media for recruitment, you should focus on building up trust and loyalty amongst those that have shown an interest in working for you. This will, of course, in turn, spread the word about you and increase your following, but numbers should not be your primary focus. Instead, build a talent pool using social media, and post about your company regularly to build a relationship with potential candidates. The new normal is going to see businesses prioritise attachments. As much as loyal customers will be good for business, engaged and invested candidates will be great for your recruitment efforts.
Shared values build loyalty
The brands that customers feel a connection with both on a personal level or through shared values are the brands that are seeing the most significant success right now. In a society that is becoming divided in so many aspects, it’s the values a company upholds and causes which they care about which resonate with customers. Take Ben and Jerry’s for example, they step up to talk about issues like UK immigration on social media and their response to Black Lives Matter, and the death of George Floyd went viral. Likeminded people who agree with their social media statements will remember them when purchasing ice-cream, and view Ben and Jerry’s as a brand to support.
The same goes for your recruitment strategy; if a candidate can resonate with your values (whatever they may be), they’ll be more inclined to accept a role with you. If a candidate can genuinely support what your organisation stands for, they’ll be more excited to work for you and help to deliver your mission. Social media is the perfect place to make your values known whether it’s a more political stance or simply that you allow dogs in the office. It makes your values easy to find, available to all, and shows you have a transparent culture.
CEOs should have a voice
Another way to form connections with future employees is through CEOs and business leaders becoming more active on social media. One way to humanise your workplace and ensure that your values are clear is to give the people in charge a platform to speak clearly. CEOs and leaders can act as ambassadors for the business, as it’s assumed that their personal values are echoed throughout the organisation. Candidates want to know everything about the workplace. In the era of social media and reality TV, we’re used to getting insider knowledge and behind the scenes views. This applies to even the most senior people in the business; they want to know who they’re working for and what they value or are passionate about.
Having an open, vocal CEO on social media creates a company culture of transparency and clarity; if people outside of the organisation can learn about the people in the driving seat, then it creates the assumption that there are no secrets within the business. Plus, strengthening a CEO’s personal brand will establish them as knowledge leaders in the industry, which could not only help future recruitment but enterprise too.
If you’d like some guidance about using social media for recruitment from organic content to recruitment marketing campaigns, our team of experts are here to help. Social media can build brand awareness, leverage your employer brand to a wider audience and help you fill even the most challenging roles through specific targeting. Get in touch today to start your conversation.
