Social media recruiting is leveraging platforms like LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram to find, attract, and engage with potential candidates. By sharing job openings, networking, researching candidates, and showcasing your employer brand, you can widen your candidate pool in a more natural and engaging way.

Unlike traditional recruitment, social media lets you reach candidates where they spend most of their time online. Now more than ever, social media is where people virtually gather, making it the ideal place for recruiters to connect with talented individuals and show off what makes their company great.

Globally, individuals use social media for an average of 2.4 hours a day, and a staggering 49% of professionals follow companies on social media to stay aware of job openings. While recruiters are familiar with LinkedIn, platforms like Facebook, X, and Instagram also offer immense benefits for social media recruiting.

Best of all, using these platforms to promote your employer brand and open positions is free (unless you decide to pay for an advertised campaign). Candidates trust brands more when they have strong social media presences, so now is a great time to get connected!

The Power of Social Media Recruiting

Company pages on platforms like Facebook, X, and Instagram give your company the opportunity to showcase its values and highlight why it's a great place to work. Here's how you can leverage social media recruiting to your advantage:

• Share Engaging Content: Post employee testimonials, company achievements, and behind-the-scenes glimpses to promote your company culture.

• Direct Engagement: Interact with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and liking relevant posts. Many of your followers could be prospective candidates.

• Highlight Corporate Responsibility: Share your company's community involvement. 64% of millennials won't consider taking a position if they don't feel the company has strong corporate responsibility practices.

Encourage your current employees to get involved too, by sharing job postings with their network and providing testimonials that bolster your employer image.

What to Share Beyond Job Postings

Wondering what you should share besides job postings? There are lots of options to enhance your social media recruiting strategy:

• Employee or Customer Testimonials: Authentic stories can resonate with potential candidates.

• Photos of Events: Share images from virtual or in-person events to showcase your company culture.

• Educational Content: Links to blog posts keep your followers up to date and engaged.

• Community Involvement: Highlight any volunteering or charitable activities your company participates in.

Choosing the Right Platforms

Let's dive into each platform individually, allowing you to pick the channel(s) best for your social media recruiting efforts.

Facebook: Tap into a Massive Candidate Pool

Facebook has over 3 billion monthly active users on a monthly basis. This presents a huge candidate pool ready to be tapped. Benefits include:

• Facebook’s Jobs Tab: Allows candidates to apply directly on your company's Facebook page.

• Join Recruitment Groups: Engage with groups like Recruiters Online or The Facebook Corporate Recruiters Network to stay on top of the latest trends and seek advice from other recruiters.

• Host Information Sessions: If you’re a larger organization and expect to get a lot of applicants, you can host candidate information sessions directly on Facebook.

No matter your size, it's essential your organization has a strong presence on the world's most widely used social media platform. Make sure you create a professional profile page and include a profile photo, cover photo, and other visuals like a humanizing photo to create a strong impression.

Effective Social Media Recruiting

To maximize the effectiveness of your social media recruiting efforts, it's crucial to implement best practices that ensure sustained success. Start by tracking your data; monitor which platforms and post times generate the most interaction to continually optimize your strategy. Staying active and engaged is equally important—launch polls on Twitter or run competitions on Instagram to encourage interaction, as those who engage with your content could be your future employees. Additionally, maintain consistent branding across all platforms to ensure that your employer brand is clear and uniform. Followers should easily understand what your brand stands for and what it's like to work for you, regardless of which platform they're visiting.

Looking ahead, the importance of social media recruiting will only continue to grow. With the number of social media users projected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025, the potential pool of candidates accessible through these platforms is expanding rapidly. By enhancing your social media recruiting efforts now, you'll be well-positioned to attract top talent and stay ahead in the competitive landscape of talent acquisition.