The Art of Candidate Sourcing Part 4: Leveraging Social Media

Traditional candidate-sourcing avenues are no longer hitting the mark. With talent thin on the ground, it is time for recruiters to cast a wider net, experiment, and revamp sourcing strategies.

Despite the extraordinary skills shortage, social media holds great potential to unearth someone awesome, so it 100 percent must be in your candidate sourcing mix. If you’re not already building a credible presence on relevant social channels, it’s time you did.

In part four of our Art of Candidate Sourcing series, we share our insights on leveraging social media to keep your talent pipeline alive and kicking.

Social Media: The Mind-Blowing Facts

Did you know that 79 per cent of job seekers have used social media in their job search in the last year? For context, let’s remind ourselves that there are more than 4.62 billion users on social media globally! 

Another stat that recruiters will love to hear is that 52 million people use LinkedIn to search for jobs every week, and 101 job applications are submitted every second on this business-focused channel.

It’s also worth reminding ourselves that 73 per cent of jobseekers are passive candidates (read more about how to engage with passive candidates in part one of our candidate sourcing blog series here). Given that billions of people use social media, with the right strategy, there is no reason why you can’t engage with active jobseekers and tempt passive candidates.

So, while recruitment is hitting some roadblocks and challenges, social media offers fantastic potential to unearth hidden talent. However, reaching talent is not as straightforward as it might seem. There’s an art to turning social media into an effective recruitment tool; it takes time, effort, and strategy.

Here’s what you need to know to make social media a winning part of your recruitment sparkle.

Optimize Your Profile

Once you start putting yourself out there on social media, people will begin to look at your profile to see what you are all about. Therefore, you MUST optimize it. Ensure your profile is complete, up-to-date, and visually appealing, with clear descriptions, logos, and values.

In addition to your business pages, all team members should have up-to-date profiles, especially on LinkedIn. Include why they wanted to join your company and work with you in the first place (it gives off a good vibe about your business). Profiles should communicate values, achievements, and personality in a way that prospects can easily see and that represents your agency or company.

Here are our top tips for creating a profile to impress candidates (and clients).

• Craft an attention-grabbing but professional headline – if you are recruiting for a specific sector, ensure this is included.
• Showcase your value in the ‘About me’ section, which is the most crucial part of your profile. As a recruiter, you must show candidates and clients that you are a good fit and skilled at placing the best hires.
• Build your endorsements. This is where you can boost your credibility. Testimonials, recommendations and endorsements can showcase your strengths as a recruiter.
• On LinkedIn, there’s also a place to write about your skills and experience, which is a great place to show off your areas of expertise.

Start Building Authority

If you dip in and out of social media, results can be very hit-and-miss.

Our first bit of advice is to play the long game. Anyone who thinks they can spend a few days scouring social media channels, popping up a few posts and joining a few conversations to snap up hidden gems is kidding themselves. 

Engaging on social media should be high on your daily task list. Building authority and getting your presence felt takes time.

Follow these three steps to get your social media candidate sourcing on the right track.

Step 1: Create and share valuable content that showcases your expertise. Vary your content. Share insights, blog posts, reports, articles, and case studies. Promote testimonials. Try different formats like images, videos, podcasts, live streams, and webinars. Keep a schedule to ensure a steady stream of content. 

Step 2: Search for discussions of interest and engage. Be sure to respond to all comments and messages. Follow industry experts and join relevant groups.

Step 3: Scour industry-relevant hashtags (and get into the habit of using hashtags yourself to increase visibility). 

Your overriding aim is to build connections, and this is much easier when you position yourself as a thought leader in your field. As an authority, you can build trust, and people will listen to you. 

While social media does support paid advertising, growing an organic following is much more powerful. Social media planning tools like Buffer and Hootsuite can help manage your content flow. In addition, it is ideal to use recruitment software, like Tracker, that integrates with LinkedIn to capture leads.

Choose the Right Platforms

Don’t just go for the prominent platforms. LinkedIn is the premier platform for professional networking, so it is a rich resource for recruiters and job seekers, but its popularity means it is pretty saturated. Keep LinkedIn in the mix, but be aware that other niche platforms could also serve you well. Do some research into where your target demographic hangs out online. 

LinkedIn is particularly well-known for white-collar and senior roles, while X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and Instagram are great platforms for sourcing more niche and creative candidates. A recruiting video on TikTok could be a great way to reach younger audiences (stats on TikTokers show the majority are between 18 and 34). 

Facebook also offers recruiters access to an immense talent pool (40 per cent of jobseekers use Facebook to look for a new role). Features such as job listings and Facebook Ads make it a legitimate recruitment tool.

It will take some time and effort to test which platforms are right for you, but you will broaden your candidate attraction and job posting footprint by doing so. 

Remember, you don’t have to be on every social platform going. Find your sweet spot regarding platforms and audiences. From Facebook and LinkedIn to Doximity and Snapchat, depending on your market, you will want a unique approach to sourcing on social channels. 

Always keep in mind that the demographics on social channels might change. Your research on each platform should be ongoing so you can stay agile.

Spend Time Nurturing Relationships

Social media isn’t a one-way street. It’s not enough to simply put your content up and wait. If you want to source candidates on social media, especially passive ones, you can’t just spam people with job ads. Interact, share, and comment. Engaging demonstrates you are approachable and value communication. You can even send relevant, personalized messages. Your aim should be to offer value to potential candidates.

Here’s a list of top dos and don’ts.

DO:

• Be consistent
• Maintain a professional tone
• Respect privacy and ‘no thank yous’

DON’T:

• Be too salesy
• Bombard people
• Be too informal – remember your potential candidates aren’t your mates!

Above all, you must have a long-term view. Growing presence, building relationships, and establishing trust takes time. 

Utilize Each Platform’s Unique Features

Once you’ve nailed the platforms you think will work best for you, you then need to know how to get the best out of each of them. Every platform has unique features that recruiters can utilize.

For example, Facebook’s Job postings can be boosted for a fee to appear in the news feeds of your target audience according to location, education, and work experience. LinkedIn gives recruiters advanced search capabilities and offers a video meeting feature, making it quick and easy to set up initial conversations.

Social platforms are increasingly aware of the rise in their use for job hunting, so keep a close eye on updates as new features will inevitably be introduced to meet users’ needs.

Measure Your Results

As with all other recruitment strategies, you’ll want to measure the impact of your efforts. Establish KPIs, track who is landing on your application pages from social media and how many are converting (completing the application in full). It’s essential to A/B test your social posts to determine which type of content is getting the most engagement/pulling people in.

Tracker’s Social Media Sourcing Features

You can bring your A-game to social media candidate sourcing with the right recruitment software. That’s where we come in. Tracker’s combined ATS and CRM offers:

LinkedIn integration – our in-built LinkedIn X-Ray with Boolean search provides unfettered access to the entire LinkedIn database. Results lists offer options to create contacts or candidates within Tracker’s system instantly. Our LinkedIn Chrome extension allows you to work exclusively within LinkedIn, import candidates, and assign them to job lists without logging into Tracker!

One-click post – configure Tracker with your existing social media properties for 1-click job postings to your profiles from Tracker. 

Jobs+ is our supplemental service with built-in technology, enabling you to optimize and distribute job postings to your website and leading job boards and aggregator sites. Jobs+ can be configured with your existing social media systems such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more.

Paiger integration. We’re all about enabling recruiters to work smarter and faster. That’s why we’ve partnered with one of the premier social enabling platforms on the market. Together, we amplify your social media reach, pushing your jobs and relevant content out to all your channels simultaneously and to your employees’ profiles when required.

With Tracker, you can streamline workflows, build better relationships and be sure you are getting your jobs out to the world. We’d love to give you a quick demo and show you how. Schedule your demo here!