Attract and inspire your applicants
with social media recruiting
What is your opinion? Where is the easiest place to meet potential applicants? Correct. Right where they spend most of their time – on social networks. Even if the majority of users access social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or YouTube for private purposes, you can and should start recruiting precisely in that area. That’s because you can establish targeted contact with suitable candidates on these platforms and, at the same time, attract attention to your company.
In addition to the common social media channels already mentioned, you can also use the Xing and LinkedIn career networks to engage in communicational exchange with potential candidates. In addition, there are also industry-specific platforms on which you can present yourself as an attractive company and search for suitable specialist personnel in a targeted manner.
Your great advantage in social media recruiting lies in the tremendous reach that you can achieve to inform future qualified employees about your company and your vacancies. Or even former employees who are still in good standing with you. The trend is towards rehiring.
As a company, take advantage of the benefits of social media and give interesting insight into your everyday work. Show who works for you, what values you advocate as an employer and reach out to potential candidates.
Social media recruiting definition
Social media recruiting, also known as social hiring, social recruitment and social media recruitment, includes various methods and approaches. HR departments and personnel marketing are thus pursuing the goal of addressing candidates via selected social networks and drawing attention to themselves.
Many corporations, companies and organisations have recognised the benefits of social media for personnel procurement. With this additional channel you can address candidates, for example, through active sourcing and targeted employer branding measures, and inspire them with attention-grabbing, authentic content.
In addition, you can connect your online career pages and job ads to your social media channels, e.g., via LinkedIn. In this way, you can comprehensively inform potential applicants about your company and your culture – in a convenient and brief manner.
These are the advantages of social media recruiting
If you haven't already invested in social media recruiting, let alone built a social media channel, it's never too late.
Even if you would have to siphon off resources and capacities to do so, it still does not outweigh the advantages provided by social recruiting:
- You can address your target group exactly where they are in their free time.
- You can present yourself to your candidates as an attractive employer.
- Via social media, you can directly address candidates who are actively looking for vacancies.
- You can achieve high reach and reach talents who are currently passively looking for a job.
- You can precisely measure your own measures and optimise them accordingly.
How does social media recruiting work?
You can surely already guess that social media recruiting is multifaceted and is not something you can do on the side. It is recommended to initially focus on one social media channel. After you experience your first bouts of success and you and your team can handle this in terms of personnel resources and time, you should start using other networks.
A social recruiting strategyin which you record your goals, your target group(s) and coordinated measures is therefore immensely important both for the expansion of your employer branding and for contacting specialists and managers.
However, within the scope of social recruiting, you also encounter challenges. This is because, in social media, unlike in job boards, you will not only come across people who are actively looking for a job, but also those who are neither looking for a job nor have ever heard of your company. Therefore, your recruiting focus should be on arousing interest in your company and possible co-operation with you and promoting yourself as a potential employer.
A social media strategy helps you maintain focus, align internally and develop policies that contribute to your employer brand. The following components must be implemented:
- Determine who your target groups are while taking your vacancies into account.
- Define which values of your corporate culture you want to convey to the outside world.
- Develop targeted campaigns to fill vacant positions.
- Determine which social media channels you want to be active on and adapt your content accordingly.
- Build up your respective social media profiles, ensure editorial supervision and community management are provided and set communication guidelines.
- Track and analyse your actions, and record the results in a report to learn from them.
- Develop content formats to inform your community about your business and specify them in an editorial plan.
- Integrate existing job advertisements.
- Address potential candidates (active sourcing).
- Use employees as testimonials and build a corporate influencer programme.
- Please note the data protection and privacy requirements of the respective social media channel.
Clarify internally how communication with your users should take place and who will take over it. It is important to enable the exchange with your target groups both quickly and reliably. Because that's exactly what your candidates from social networks are used to – and that's exactly what they expect in dialogue with your company.
How to build your company profile for social media recruiting
Before you start building your company profile, first come up with a plan. Perform an analysis to determine what platform your target group can be found on, what goals you want to achieve and what measures you implement them with. Take a look at your competition. Surely you can orient yourself well on what works in your competition and adopt one or the other idea. But successful measures from other industries can also help you develop ideas.
Once you know what content you want to post, transfer it to a social media editorial plan. With its help, you can keep track of your social media activities and plan campaigns.
Which social media channel is right for my company?
Do you know exactly how old your target group is, what interests they may share and what platforms they spend their time on? Then you should also be present there as a company.
Don't just go by your feelings. Some statistics will show you exactly where your target audience feels at home.
Your social media profile
Regardless of which social media network you choose, the following rule applies everywhere: Set up your profile completely, maintain it and keep it as up to date as possible.
Be sure to use the full potential of your chosen platform. Maintain as many keywords and data as possible and optimise your profile so that they appear in the search queries of the respective platform. Create a positive overall impression and visually adapt your profile to your company website.
Content is still king. Be active regularly, offer your followers added value and provide insights behind your scenes. When creating content, think about what would interest you about other companies and give incentives to interact with them. This does not always have to be a complex video production. Small stories or spontaneous photos from everyday life can be just as interesting as in-house information that is not shared on your website.
Act with your community with your company profile. Ask questions or comment on other users' posts. In this way, you benefit from the reach of each social media platform and get attention for your company.
Social media recruiting – adapt to your platform
Have you decided on one social media channel or several? Then you should also pay attention to the respective behaviour patterns and the algorithm. Users are not addressed in the same way everywhere, and what works on one platform can become a complete flop on another.
On Instagram and Facebook, your users are more likely to share private content. They show photos and videos from holidays or give opinions on certain topics that you deal with in your free time. Instagram and Facebook are less used for job searches. But for employers, both platforms are still suitable for presenting themselves as an attractive company.
Create fixed formats for your followers and increase your recognition value. With content such as "Quote of the day" or "Employees of the month" you show how your company thinks and also who works for you.
Use entertaining stories in which you encourage your users to interact. Respond to comments or mentions and be approachable.
For companies, the advertising function of both channels is also interesting. In this way, even with a small budget, you can achieve tremendous reach and draw attention to your employer brand. With paid advertising you can also present vacancies and target your job advertisements.
On Instagram and Facebook, your users are more likely to share private content. They show photos and videos from holidays or give opinions on certain topics that you deal with in your free time. Instagram and Facebook are less used for job searches. But for employers, both platforms are still suitable for presenting themselves as an attractive company.
Create fixed formats for your followers and increase your recognition value. With content such as "Quote of the day" or "Employees of the month" you show how your company thinks and also who works for you.
Use entertaining stories in which you encourage your users to interact. Respond to comments or mentions and be approachable.
For companies, the advertising function of both channels is also interesting. In this way, even with a small budget, you can achieve tremendous reach and draw attention to your employer brand. With paid advertising you can also present vacancies and target your job advertisements.
Xing and LinkedIn are well-known career platforms. However, while Xing is increasingly merely becoming a job portal in its entirety, LinkedIn is much more about sharing know-how and experience from the job. The active exchange with users is in the foreground. Share company-internal content and your expertise to use the platforms for your social media recruiting.
On these platforms, you will be able to find qualified personnel quite easily. Because every profile includes the indication of the job or the professional skills. So, use the search filter to specifically locate qualified candidates. You can contact them quickly and easily by message.
Xing and LinkedIn are well-known career platforms. However, while Xing is increasingly merely becoming a job portal in its entirety, LinkedIn is much more about sharing know-how and experience from the job. The active exchange with users is in the foreground. Share company-internal content and your expertise to use the platforms for your social media recruiting.
On these platforms, you will be able to find qualified personnel quite easily. Because every profile includes the indication of the job or the professional skills. So, use the search filter to specifically locate qualified candidates. You can contact them quickly and easily by message.
YouTube as a recruiting platform? Yes; correct! This is because no other medium showcases your company as authentically and credibly as video. Give your followers realistic bouts of insight into your business. Present your members of staff, thereby featuring your team as well as the everyday work and the tasks performed in your company.
In addition, on YouTube, you can play your videos targeted to your target group via advertising. And even better: You can optimise the video for YouTube and Google search by choosing the right title and description.
YouTube as a recruiting platform? Yes; correct! This is because no other medium showcases your company as authentically and credibly as video. Give your followers realistic bouts of insight into your business. Present your members of staff, thereby featuring your team as well as the everyday work and the tasks performed in your company.
In addition, on YouTube, you can play your videos targeted to your target group via advertising. And even better: You can optimise the video for YouTube and Google search by choosing the right title and description.
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