recruitment agency

10 ways Social Media can help your recruitment agency fill vacancies

There has never been stronger links between technology and the recruiting world. Finding the right employee for client vacancies in today’s tough economic market can be a difficult task. This is why many employers and job recruiters are now embracing the world of social media to attract potential hires. Together with mobile technology, recruiters are able to communicate via social media and find that star candidate.

According to recent statistics, 84 percent of recruiters now use social media with 79 percent of job seekers using social media to find their perfect job. Below we explore 10 ways in which social media can help you fill vacancies and build your own lucrative recruitment database.

Using Social Media to compliment your recruitment software

 

1. Boost your brand using social media
In order to be successful at recruiting the right candidate for the job, you really need a strong recruiting brand presence. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it drives traffic for every other type of recruitment activity that you do. So basically this means that the more attractive your online social presence is, the more that candidates will interact with your brand, increasing the response rate. Responses may include those of replying to your posts on LinkedIn or other job posting sites, no matter what media they are in.

The second reason that a strong social media brand will help to attract new candidates, is that with a strong brand you will gain followers and fans, who will watch your posts and interact with you. Think of these individuals as potential hires. They will also advocate for you and help to spread the word about your brand and vacancies.

2. Develop a community
Once you have a following you then need to engage with them and the best way in which to do so is to create an online community. Your followers need to feel a part of your company and be interested in what you have to say. But how do you go about creating a community? This is very easy, you simply need to interact with your followers and be active online. The major aim is for them to take a leap from being a mere spectator to that of being a creator.

One fantastic way in which to engage with your followers and create dialogue on twitter is by tweeting on business and recruitment threads while using the hashtag ‘#recruitment’ or other such synonyms. Setting up your own twitter account and creating its own hashtag is also a good idea. Just be sure to set the time and day and to be consistent.

Increasing your involvement on all social media feeds is very important. This will take extra effort and time but is worth the reward. Ways of gaining involvement are to hold competitions and to ask open ended questions so as to get the discussion started. No matter what you do, be active and do so on a daily basis. It is also important that you reply to all enquiries, as other followers will be watching closely.

3. Engage with social media influencers
As well as engaging and interacting with your followers and fans, it is also vital that you engage with those all important influencers in order for you to fill those vacancies. Find other similar businesses and organisations who have a large following and who recruit desired candidates. Find out who they are and follow them or friend them. It is vital that you build an online relationship with them to increase your own rate of followers, as by interacting and engaging with them, will influence their followers to follow you, helping to share and promote your brand.

4. Advertise on social media
Now advertising on social media is a major player when it comes to filling those vacancies. But you have to do it the right way as it is not simply a matter of dishing out job listings. This is not the image you wish to portray as you can look incredibly desperate. The way in which to advertise is to be specific and tailor your advert to a specific client base.

So you should ask yourself questions such as; what are the best social media platforms to use? What are their hobbies and interests? What are their experiences and what subjects did they study? All of the answers you receive will help you to target the right social media platform and therefore where you should be spending your time and placing that recruitment advert.

5. Create a social media referral programme
The world of social media has really embraced the employee referral programme and has in fact increased its usage and popularity. This is due to the fact that recruitment agencies can now reach a far wider audience through the use of social media. By encouraging your current staff to refer employees through the employee referral system, you are effectively immersed and able to utilise their social network contacts. This automatically increases your target audience.

It is also highly effective as it is a more personal way to do so. As all potential hires will receive an invitation from an employee, this also increases the chances of them accepting the position. Coupled with this is the fact that they will also be far more likely to succeed in their given role. Paying your employees, as opposed to an outside agency for advertising roles, is also advantageous. Employees will feel rewarded, revenue will be ploughed back into the company and you are more likely to get an ideal hire.

6. Embrace the realities of mobile recruiting
We live in a mobile digital world and the stark realty is that many potential hires will access social media platforms via their smartphone or tablet. If you wish to target these individuals with specific job offers, then you need to ensure that you are mobile optimised. Mobile recruitment really does seem to be the way forward and if applicants are unable to apply via their mobile device, after seeing the advert on their mobile, then you may be losing out on excellent candidates.

As well as the popular, professional social sites such as LinkedIn and Viadeo, recruiters are also now taking to Facebook and twitter to attract candidates and so mobile optimisation has never been more important.

7. Social sourcing and recruiting
The idea behind that of social sourcing and recruiting is very simple. This is because the barriers have now come down and social media has made the entire process that much easier. Members of the recruitment team can now approach individual candidates via social media and vice versa. LinkedIn and GitHub are excellent sites when trying to track top talent for a job vacancy, as are Google+ and Facebook, but how can you source talent more effectively? Well this is where you create a team who focus solely upon social recruitment. They hunt out those perfect candidates who have left LinkedIn and find them on twitter. They search on Facebook for relevant profiles and connect via Google+. The world of social sourcing is an exciting one and is the perfect way to find the right candidate.

Social recruitment via social media also offers a better candidate experience. As they will have interacted with your recruitment company on social media, they will feel more involved. This is in direct opposition to applying via a paper advert. The benefits of this are huge, as during the entire hire process, from initial interview right through to being accepted for the job, they will be interacting via social media and this increases the likelihood of them accepting the job and boosting your acceptance rates.

8. Targeting the passive candidate
This is were social media really comes into play with the targeting of the passive candidate. The first step in using social media to find these candidates is to know exactly who you are looking for. So, what vacancies need to be filled and what skills do they need? One example would be that of the care support industry. Many individuals volunteer for such roles but are not aware that vacancies are available for paid work. This is a fantastic opportunity to search for these passive candidates on related charity websites, Facebook pages and forums. You can also advertise on Facebook and recruit for a specified demographic.

LinkedIn is a also a fantastic resource for searching for specific qualifications and credentials that are needed for a particular job role. The beauty of LinkedIn is that you can also directly contact them. One underused resource is that of Instagram for enticing the passive candidate. Posting images that are related to the job role and show office space and other work areas can help to entice candidates in applying for the job. Posting photographs of recent recruits is also a good idea to show the potential candidate who you are looking for. Finally use social media to search for community events, coffee mornings and charity events that are showcasing similar jobs to the ones you are recruiting for, in doing so you can entice passive hires into applying for the job.

9. Know your target audience
When embarking upon any type of social media campaign you must know your target audience. Your entire social recruitment strategy is built upon this foundation. So for example you need to consider the age range of candidates who will apply for the job, the qualifications they will have and how they will spend the bulk of their time online. All of these answers will help you to target the relevant social media sites with your ad campaigns and involvement via your social media pages. For example, if you are looking to recruit a web developer you need to carefully consider what their main interests will be? Will they be designing webpages in their spare time? More than likely they will be a graduate so you need to engage with the graduate audience. Knowing your potential candidates will save you much time and money in the long run.

10. Make yourself visible
When posting anywhere online and accessing social media sites, it is very important that you consider the quality of your content and how you post. However what is even more important is that you need to be visible. If no one is aware of your posts or they are immediately forgettable then the time and effort you are putting in to attract candidates on social media will be wasted. With so much content being posted online, ultimately you need to make your content stand out from the crowd. So how do you do this? By far the easiest way is to attract more followers and the easiest platform for doing so is twitter.

The way to achieve more followers is by targeting the users who will be most likely to follow your ideal candidate and to then simply follow them. In most cases they will then follow you back. The only problem here is that it may take a little time to achieve large numbers of followers, but to make he process easier you can use a twitter tool such as Manage Flitter to make the twitter following process a little easier. A more expensive way of recruiting via social media, but will ultimately get you noticed, is through advertising and especially Facebook Ads. Often you also have the opportunity to be bumped to the top of related content pages so that your total reach is increased.

What you should try to avoid
Above we have listed all of those strategies and ideas that you can utilise in order to help you fill those job vacancies. But what about those things that you shouldn’t do? Below we list all of those things that are best avoided.

•Create any social media content without a strong strategy
•Substitute social media recruiting for traditional methods of recruiting, the social media aspect should complement and strengthen those strategies that you already have in place.
•Reject a potential hire based upon their social media profile
•Become competent in using social media for recruiting, keep up to date with the very latest developments.

By following these above hints and tips you are more likely to be able to fill client job vacancies by using social media.

 

eBoss Recruitment Software provides recruitment agencies with Applicant Tracking Systems and recruitment database tools encompassing advanced technologies like Semantic Search, that enable recruiters to find and place more candidates in less time. Couple that with the best support in the market, eBoss may be the technology you need to gain an unfair advantage for your recruitment agency.

14 day free trials and 1 on 1 online recruitment software demonstrations can be found at https://ebossrecruitment.com/wp/free-trial/