Devon Hoffman is a Digital Marketing Specialist for Site-Seeker. When he's not using his computer to find and visit every brewery in New York State, he is using it to help business partners achieve their digital marketing goals. These goals may include location marketing and optimization, digital advertising, search engine optimization or anything in between. Then he's looking for the breweries again.
Hiring has turned into a nightmare! Business owners and those of you in HR are experiencing it first hand.
Government-issued unemployment benefits, lagging COVID-restrictions, new work-from-home policies, a retiring workforce, and the economic bounceback have created a real problem.
That’s why it’s time to get creative. Posting jobs on Indeed.com won’t get it done anymore.
Instead, it’s time to turn to social media for help.
The right plan and efforts play a pivotal role in helping brand your company and make it more attractive to job seekers.
Being unable to fill open positions is a challenge facing many small business owners, there may be lots of candidates but are they ideally qualified for the position?
Many hiring managers are just throwing money at the problem – through hiring bonuses, referral checks, or just flat-out increased wages. These tactics are not necessarily going to fix the problem long-term, and it may just put you well over budget at the same time.
Instead, it would help if you built a hiring plan. Consider the following:
Once you’ve built your plan – you can determine how to incorporate social media to improve the overall results.
Social media can help build or strengthen your online brand (helping more potential candidates know about you), and it can help with actual recruitment. Finally, it can act as a customer service center to field questions that candidates may have.
Here are some specific ways to utilize social media as part of your recruitment efforts.
Every company has a personality. A voice. Something meaningful to say.
A lot of times, those stories aren’t always presented to the public and ultimately, they aren’t seen by potential hires.
Identify what your brand represents, consider what you have to offer candidates.
Your marketing team likely has a social media plan already in place.
Work with them to inject candidate-specific content into the mix.
Content is the lifeblood of any marketing program, it should play the same type of role in brand-building for recruitment purposes.
One of the most beautiful things about social media is its ability to host two-way communication.
Unlike traditional advertising, where it was a brand talking AT consumers, social media changes that dynamic. Brands can communicate WITH consumers. With that change comes the ability to directly reach out to qualified job candidates.
For larger companies with larger funds, you could hire a recruitment firm to help with this. For smaller organizations or those on tighter budgets, you need to get scrappy and do it yourself.
For management roles, LinkedIn will be your best tool.
Within LinkedIn search with keywords and review profiles to discover those who might be a good fit for the position. Actively reach out via direct message and chat about the position.
With LinkedIn Sales Navigator (paid add-on), you can get even more granular with your searches. You can search by geography, title, education, industry, and more to find the perfect candidates.
For technicians or laborers, you’ll need to turn to Facebook or Instagram.
Within Facebook or Instagram search by keyword, look through followers of brand pages, sift through those who checked in at businesses that make sense based on your industry.
Craft your outreach messages carefully. Make sure you’re communicating about the job and the company and explaining all the good things you have to offer.
Social media has quickly become the go-to resource for many customers to get in touch directly with companies, the demand among consumers is that they want swift replies.
Just as customers would seek support on products or services, job seekers can use these same platforms to ask questions about the company.
Embrace these tools. Staff them appropriately. Provide above-and-beyond responses.
Ensure you’ve set up your systems to reply to all inquiries quickly.
This can include:
Candidates are going to ask questions.
They are interviewing you just as much as you are interviewing them, be sure they get the info they need to feel good about applying or accepting.
Just as we, as consumers, explore the reviews of restaurants before going out to dinner, we size up companies before we apply.
Glassdoor, Google My Business, and Facebook all contain review areas that need to be monitored and attended to.
These are channels that are being seen and read by candidates and need to be part of your social media management efforts.
This is a two-step process:
By replying to reviews across social media sites, and actively pursuing positive reviews, it will build your brand’s reputation online and positively affect your application rates over time.
There are so many advertising platforms out there today, Google, Amazon, Spotify, Hulu; and many more.
Social media sites have proven themselves over the years as wonderful resources to find targeted individuals and at reasonable costs, too.
Using a “pay-per-click” model, you’ll only pay for results.
Beyond your traditional recruitment ads on Indeed or the local newspaper, consider how you can better promote your job openings among applicants on social media.
Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Job Ads are likely both good fits.
Not only can you promote the position and direct traffic to your job description pages, but these two platforms allow applications to be completed and submitted DIRECTLY on the platforms themselves. Facebook users can submit an application without leaving Facebook. And LinkedIn users can apply directly within LinkedIn. (TikTok just recently announced a recruitment element to their tool, as well.)
By allowing for direct submission within the social media sites, it will increase your applicant pool. Just keep in mind that you may need to tighten up your vetting process, as some unqualified candidates will surely come through.
Cost per click will vary, depending on your industry and the competition. In most industries, it will likely be between $4-8 per click. This means you might expect 166 applicants on a $1,000 spend.
Remember, if your application rate is poor, your ads may not be the only thing to blame.
Make sure to consider the other elements of your hiring plan, too, including your turnaround times, your job descriptions, your screening and interview processes, and what your reviews might currently say about you. All those things working together are what will drive the most qualified candidates to your job openings.
Social media – as part of your marketing efforts – helps to promote, attract, sell, qualify, and retain customers.
Job seekers are just like buyers in a sense. And social media must play that same role.
Don’t forget to measure!
According to the Harvard Business Review, only about 1/3 of companies monitor whether their hiring practices lead to good employees that stick around. It’s important that if you’ll be investing time, resources, and dollars into social media for recruitment purposes, that you measure that investment.
Track your efforts and track the progress of the employees you take on from those efforts.
That’s the only real way to measure ROI.
