Social Recruiting: 6 Tactics for Better ROI

By Eyal A Katz

Recruitment practices have undergone a major change in the last couple of years. Social recruiting has become increasingly popular, and in recent years, it has taken center stage, especially for industries with high competition over talent, like tech.

Marketers and HR have both been tasked with creating and boosting employer branding on social media and leveraging this branding for social recruitment. But which social recruiting tactics will get your the best results? And what constitutes as social recruiting, anyway?

What Are the Best Ways to Get Results from Social Recruiting?

1. Know Your Audience

Adjusting your strategy to each social network is important. LinkedIn is where you go to share and gain professional knowledge, so it's only natural for a recruiter to send a message to a potential candidate on LinkedIn and see if they'd be interested in a position. Instagram, on the other hand, would be more suited for "softer" social recruiting techniques, such as posting job openings, team photos and reflecting company values through images and quotes.

2. Do Your Research

Your research should also include more granular insights. Try to understand what candidates consider to be valuable when picking a new workplace. Are they looking to learn new skills, or maybe they're interested in unique benefits, which your company offers? One of the ways to uncover those insights would be social listening, while other ways include surveying your current employees or candidates.

Arming yourself with this research will allow you to target candidates on social media better and see more success with social recruiting.

3. Invest in Employer Branding

This is why employer branding is a vital part of social recruiting. Sharing HR-related content on social media is paramount to social recruiting. Make sure candidates are able to discover your company culture, the value you provide to employees and all the reasons why your people LOVE working for your company.

4. Recruit Your Existing Employees

Referrals are a major part of any company's recruitment strategy. In fact,82% of employers rated employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best ROI.

Employee advocacy allows employers to tap into referral recruitment in the most effective way. Employees who share job openings or even general company content will be able to extend the company's reach to a new, extensive pool of talent and position the company as a good employer.

To help them do that and encourage consistent sharing, adopt and employee advocacy technology that is able to boost employee engagement but also provide in-depth analytics into the performance of advocacy, like Oktopost's employee advocacy platform.

5. Transparency Is the Name of the Game

In some rare cases, such as recruiting for a very senior position, HR managers will choose not to reveal all the details at first, but this applies mainly to executive recruitment. Candidates understand this nuance and expect to get the full details about a position if they're being approached on social media.

6. Create an Awesome Candidate Experience

A candidate experience for professionals coming in through social recruiting should reflect your company's recruitm

ent processes and leave a good impression. Remember that Glassdoor is only a click away, and frustrated candidates can take to social media to vent their anger at a bad recruitment experience.

As with everything in marketing, personalization creates better engagement, and engagement is key when trying to seek out talent in a competitive job market.

Boost Your Social Recruiting by Turning Employees into Brand Advocates

With social recruiting getting more and more traction, your potential employees will actually be expecting to be recruited using social media. To maximize your efforts, invest time in doing sufficient research, adjust your efforts to fit different candidates, and don't lose sight of the need to be transparent.

To boost your social recruiting efforts, tap into the potential of your employees' networks via employee advocacy. Have a look at this guide we created, which details all the ways employees can turn into top advocates - and share it with your colleagues, to harness them into the recruitment process.