The Current State and Future Trends Of Social Media Recruiting

Categories: Other, Recruitment Advice, Trends and Learning

Social media recruiting is establishing itself as the go-to recruitment strategy for connecting with top talent. As difficult as it is in any recruitment process to attract quality candidates, companies are leaning more on this method to effectively sift through hundreds of applicants and create a pipeline of workers that fit their vision of an ideal employee.

Many businesses became aware of the way social media could be used for recruitment and have since relished in its successes. As more job seekers use social media to connect them with job opportunities, it would be in the best interest of all companies to explore social media’s role in their recruitment strategies.

Millennials and Gen Zers are the future of workplaces everywhere and happen to be the demographic most engaged on social media. So, if you have any desire to reach this huge pool of job seekers, you’ll need to adopt a social media recruiting strategy.

Here is a concise overview of social media recruiting, strategies currently being used by companies, and future trends to look out for in social media recruiting to help you use social media effectively to recruit the best talent in your industry.

Overview of Social Media Recruiting

What is social media recruiting?

According to Harver.com, “social media recruiting is the means by which candidates are recruited using social media platforms as talent databases, or for advertising openings and positions.”

Social media recruiting is under the umbrella of social media marketing because it involves using digital marketing strategies to appeal to job seekers.
Recruitment through social media is another opportunity to build your brand awareness and appeal to another facet of your audience: those who could be a potentially good fit to work with your company.

Why use social media recruiting?

This recruitment method is becoming increasingly popular among HR professionals from all industries. Business owners work with their HR and recruitment professionals to leverage the advantages that social media platforms have when it comes to recruitment. Companies use social media recruiting to:

  • Increase brand awareness surrounding company culture
  • Increase the visibility of vacant job openings
  • Reach a wider pool of top tier candidates
  • To engage with job seekers in a deeper way
  • Shorten the applicant screening process

How do companies use social media for recruiting?

Companies are using social media for recruiting by leveraging the platforms that can help them achieve their recruitment goals, engaging in conversation with job seekers via the different functions on each respective social platform, using targeted ads to promote job openings, sharing content that shows company culture, and so forth.

Using social media platforms to deploy an effective recruitment strategy is becoming more popular. For companies to adapt to the rise of millennials and Gen Zers in the workplace, HR professionals will have to learn how to connect with this generation of workers where they are most (on social media!) and be open to non-traditional ways of connection and communication.

Before COVID-19, recruiters were shifting to social media recruiting because they chose to. Now, it has been thrust upon most of them. Social distancing and mass unemployment have led both employers and employees to seek new hiring processes. With thousands of people in lockdown, social media targets them where they are: sitting in front of their computers, surfing and whiling away the time.

Strategies Currently Being Used in Social Media Recruiting

Tracking social media recruitment data

Not tracking the performance of your social media recruiting strategies is one of the most common mistakes HR and recruitment professionals make with this method of recruitment. Tracking social media recruitment data gives you the insights you need to improve your strategy. Strategically choosing the right platforms to use
LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform for recruiting professionals, with Facebook and Instagram rounding out the top three. HR professionals should understand the strategic goals of their company first and use this knowledge as a determining factor for which platforms to start recruiting on. Also, don’t be afraid to explore recruiting on platforms that aren’t first to mind in the social media recruiting world.

Creating a designated careers page

Most companies have a career page on their website, but designing a careers page for your best performing social media platform may be of great benefit as well. You can more closely connect with potential employees, share your brand’s story, and give insight into what it looks like to work for your company.

Using current employees as company advocates

The best way to show how awesome your company is to work for is by using your current employees as living testimonies. Current employees are the best advocates for your company because they give a ground-level perspective on what your company’s culture looks like on a day to day basis. Job seekers are tuned into employee reviews as a way of determining whether your company is worth applying to.

Social Media Recruiting Trends We May See in the Future

More direct strategies for reaching “passive” candidates

There are so many job seekers who are open to new opportunities but aren’t actively looking for them. HR professionals are crafting more strategies that directly address how to find this pool of potential candidates and approach them.

Using content marketing to tell the company culture story

Content marketing is a huge strategy used to attract your ideal customer to you. Now it’s being considered as a method to attract ideal employees to your company. Demonstrate your company culture or tell your brand’s story through content with the usage of graphics, videos, pictures, and other media.

Increased usage of targeted ads

Targeted ads are already being used in social media recruiting, but we will see more of this trend in the future as businesses continue to see a positive ROI in using targeted ads to share job opportunities.

Exploring social media recruiting opportunities on more social media platforms

As new social media platforms arise like Tik Tok, Twitch, and Clubhouse, HR professionals will explore other social media platforms to recruit on should research conclude their ideal employee is engaged on said platforms.

Wrapping Up

Ninety-one percent of employers use social media for recruitment. This number is expected to grow over the next five years and strategies for effective usage of social media to recruit will multiply. Improving your recruiting efforts relies heavily on how you leverage your social media presence to connect and engage with the section of your online audience looking for employment.