Social Recruiting – Comprehensive Guide [Written by Experts]

Ah, so what’s about all that buzz around social recruiting? Let’s consider the following situation.

Mr. X quits the post of a senior executive in the production department.

The hunt for the new employee starts immediately. Did you realize the costs of hiring a new employee? Did the organization suffer from a loss in productivity of work and maybe a significant work loss that irked the clients and resulted in missed deadlines?

Did you feel the brunt of training a new employee and getting the employee acquainted with the new system and working style?

Mr. Y was finally hired but was an absolute misfit and had to be soon replaced.

The vicious circle of hiring, recruiting, and employee orientation starts yet again!

Now can you imagine this vicious circle being repeated every now and then for various posts? Then multiply the horror if different positions were vacant. What was the solution?

How could the hiring personnel focus on more concrete work and productivity? Technology gave rise to a new invention to fight the trauma. What emerged, as a result, is called social recruiting.

What is social recruiting?

Social recruiting or social media recruiting is the process of recruiting candidates through social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, now even TikTok, and others.

Social recruiting is often referred to as social media recruitment, social recruitment, social hiring, and similar.

The data on social recruiting highlights its ever-burgeoning relevance in the field of hiring. According to the SHRM survey, the usage of social hiring tools has been quick in fast-paced companies.

Social media recruiting has seen a rise of 54% in the last few years. In 2011, only 56% of companies were hiring based on social media, whereas the proportion has now risen to a startling 84%.

This is no surprise since everyone nowadays is on social media, and 22.6% of users have reported that they visit social platforms for work-related networking or work-related research.

Now social recruiting has spread from the big four, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, to all kinds of online forums and communities where the ideal employees could be found. Slack groups and Discord channels are only some of them, including Quora, TikTok, Medium, and Tumblr, depending on the type of talent you are searching for.

Why are traditional recruiting strategies becoming irrelevant?

The answer to this question is plain and simple. Because people’s behavior has changed tremendously. People have started using digital channels for everything, from looking up the news and ordering food to finding their soulmate and ideal job.

The idea of this would be bizarre in the 90s or even the beginning od 2000s, but today it is ingrained in our culture and society.

People don’t look for jobs in newspapers anymore, and most of them, especially younger generations, don’t look at the old boomer-ish job posting websites. Instead, they search for jobs inside their communities and the media they use daily.

This is why social recruiting is on the rise and so popular and effective nowadays.

Social hiring backed up by statistics

Let’s look at some social media statistics to back up our claims why you should start using social recruiting:

• Almost half of the world’s population uses social media, 3.8 billion to be precise.
• 91% of those users are accessing social media through mobile apps.
• An average person uses more than 9 different social media networks.
• More than 100 million job applications are posted on LinkedIn every month.
• 40 million users use LinkedIn to search for a job every week, and three of them get hired every minute.

And let’s look at the number of monthly active users on some of the social platforms:

• Facebook – 2.7 billion
• YouTube – 2.3 billion
• Instagram – 1.2 billion
• TikTok – 689 million
• Snapchat – 498 million
• Pinterest – 459 million
• Twitter – 353 million
• LinkedIn – 300 million
• Discord – 250 million

Advantages of social recruiting

Due to everything stated above, it is no surprise that numerous recruitment agencies and competitors are on the lookout for the best hires on social media. Therefore, your company has to be vigilant and popular on social media to avail the following benefits:

1. Increased job visibility.
2. Better quality hires.
3. Employer branding.
4. Shorter hiring cycle.
5. Screening candidates.

Let’s talk about each one of these statements more in-depth.

Increased job visibility

With a massive user base, social media accounts like LinkedIn and Facebook have increased job posts’ visibility. Millennials are extensively using the LinkedIn job hunting portal and being prompt and active for applying for the jobs they see.

Social media can reach more people than any other source and has been material in hiring quality caliber and talented candidate pool for many successful companies.

By creating quality content for your social networks like YouTube and Facebook, even TikTok, if you are aiming at a younger audience, in which you showcase your company’s culture and environment, you will definitely attract lots of talent.

An excellent example of a company doing this is Lemlist and its CEO Guillaume Moubeche.

All you have to do is identify all the channels your target audience spends their time on and build an online presence there. A good recruiter needs to think like a marketer too.

Better quality hires

Tech-savvy, educated, dynamic, and smart candidates are what companies are on the lookout for. This is a fundamental requisite which is fulfilled given that the candidate has a sensible social media presence.

The social media presence ensures that the candidates are adept at the latest trends and techniques, ready to add skills and have the knowledge to stay updated.

This is essential for any modern business that works in the digital sphere. Regardless if you are hiring for fashion brands like Zaful or big B2B SaaS companies like GetResponse, you will be looking for the ideal employee on social media. Which social media platform it will be, depends on the industry.

Employer branding

A lousy employer brand is good enough a reason to quit or not join the organization. Social media is an effective tool in increasing the perceived brand value of the product and the employer.

A level of trust and confidence can be built with positive endorsement on social media. This helps to garner a positive response among candidates applying for the job. In addition, social media makes the company favorable among employees, prospective candidates, and clients.

Shorter hiring cycle

The cycle of social media hiring is way shorter than the previous hiring techniques.

Communication is effective and fast when contacted through social media, giving rise to long-term dependable work relationships. Hiring candidates through social media is a win-win situation for both the company and the employee, as it is likely that the interests of the hiring manager and the candidates are similar.

Screening candidates

Social media platforms and profiles are mirror images of the company and the employee’s thoughts and ideologies. The concerns that they have voiced through their profiles speak volumes about the mindset of the employees or the company culture.

This gives a clear insight as to what kind of employees the company wants to hire. The company can screen out the candidates who are not in sync with the work culture and working style.

The best social recruiting strategies

1. Employee advocacy – Make employees active on social media. Inspire them to talk about their achievements at work and what they like about the company.

1. Build your online reputation – Create the brand that everyone wants to work for. Show the workspace energy, how employees work together, their stories and how they grow with the company. Don’t post online just when you have job openings, but do it continually and naturally. That way, people will want to work at the company, and you will organically attract high talent. This takes time but pays off in the long run.

1. Activity on various platforms – Be active on every platform your target audience is. This increases your chances of being seen and remembered. We will talk more about choosing the right social media network in the next section.
2. Paid advertising – Don’t run away from paid advertising. When done right, it can have great results.
3. Building community – This is a must. Building a community around your brand isn’t only a good marketing strategy but also a good recruiting strategy. Everyone wants to be a part of an amazing community.

You can read more about social recruiting strategies here.

Choosing the right social media network

You already know that LinkedIn is the most effective social recruiting tool. It is mainly created for the business world anyways and has Advanced People Search, which is used by every recruiter nowadays.

However, LinkedIn isn’t everywhere that’s there, and depending on which job position you are looking to fill, it might be a complete misfit. Just imagine looking for a creative video director or a makeup artist on LinkedIn. Not going to work, right?

Which network you will choose for your social recruiting strategy solely depends on which industry you are recruiting for.

Facebook and Twitter are often mentioned as good options, especially since they have good search options, but you shouldn’t be thinking in terms of searching anymore. Instead, you should switch your approach to attracting people with your content.

This is crucial nowadays since Gen Z is the primary audience for most of the recruiters today. They are a significant portion of consumers of digital content, and you have to attract them with good high-quality content.

Take the content of the following TikTok profiles for an example:

1. The Washington Post
2. Truly Beauty
3. RyanAir
4. Small Business Tips

Can you imagine any of these having problems finding a marketer or a designer? Well, probably not since there are at least a handful of people sending in their CVs and practically begging to work in some of those companies.

And here is an overview of the hashtag searches and views on TikTok (on 8th of June, 2021):

• jobsearch – 311,3M views
• jobsearchtips – 68,9M
• digitalmarketingtips – 33,5M
• managerproblems – 29,7M
• recruiting – 107,6M
• hiring – 134,3M

Just another proof of how valuable TikTok can be in social recruiting.

The same goes for Instagram, Snapchat, and the rest.

Another thing to keep in mind is the demographics of your target audience, the most crucial factor being location. For example, some social media are more prevalent in some countries and some less. This is especially important if you are recruiting globally.

Social recruiting examples

There are quite a few examples of good social recruiting campaigns out there:

Revolutionaries

Here’s a snapshot of their Instagram profile. So why is this a good social recruiting strategy? Because it is tailored to their target audience, both with the visuals, the choice of a platform, and a name of positions.

ASUS USA

Asus USA has a great TikTok recruiting video:

https://www.tiktok.com/@asus.usa/video/6856808925933751557

Spotify

Spotify does it just grat with their SpotifyJobs Instagram profile.

They are showcasing their company culture and the environment with fantastic content and employee advocacy.

Cons of social recruiting

Biased hiring may be the biggest con of social recruiting. While recruiters try their best with various blind hiring techniques to avoid hiring biases, recruiting over social media is the complete opposite.

You are introduced to a whole lifestyle of a person. You see them, their race, ethnicity, gender, preferences, political orientation, maybe even sexuality and religion.

So deciding to cut a potential candidate off because their lifestyle and opinions around specific topics like politics and social problems are not entirely unjustifiable.

It might be considered bad practice, but if it is a polar opposite from the rest of the workforce, it is still a smart idea, despite the whole concept of diversity.

However, keep in mind that you might be cutting out a very skilled person, just on the premise that they won’t fit well in a company because of their outlook on life. Either way, you should gauge the pros and cons before making a decision.

Another social recruiting challenge is managing all the potential candidates. However, that can be handled by an excellent recruiting tool.

More from our guides on social recruiting:

• Should you use Twitter for Recruiting
• How to find candidates through social media
• Social recruitment strategies
• Are LinkedIn endorsements and recommendations reliable
• How to use Instagram for recruiting

Social recruiting tools

There are various recruiting tools out on the market, especially those specialized for social recruiting. However, if you rely on multiple ways of recruiting and reaching out to your ideal candidates, you should opt for a more specialized ATS.

Recruiteze is an ATS that can:

1. Give you an insight into where your candidates are coming from or the source of hire. That way, you will know if your social recruiting is working and which channels perform the best.
2. Lower the costs of hire.
3. Help you increase your retention rates.
4. Help you personalize your emails.
5. Allow you to mass email.
6. Help you create a more diverse workspace thanks to the blind hiring options.
7. Maintain your talent pipeline.
8. Improve candidate experience and engagement.
9. Save you time, and many more.

With our online applicant tracking system, you can easily manage your job requisitions, applications, notes, communication, and scheduling. Recruiteze offers the most intuitive and straightforward interface to manage your hiring process.

It is primarily built for small to medium-sized businesses that do not want to pay through the nose for an efficient online ATS. All you need to start using Recruiteze is an internet connection.

Start using Recruiteze today!

If you’re already using a small business applicant tracking system, then iReformat makes for the perfect addition. iReformat allows you to format dozens of resumes in just a few seconds, freeing you time to devote your attention and energy to what is truly meaningful.