Social Recruiting How to Effectively Use Social Networks to Recruit Talent

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1 White Paper Social Recruiting How to Effectively Use Social Networks to Recruit Talent

2 As a recruiter, you want to find the most qualified, talented, and largest pool of applicants. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have over 1.2 billion combined users. That equates to a lot of potential talent for your company. As more and more people join social networks and leverage them for job searching, social recruiting is becoming an imperative for companies. Recruiters are leveraging social networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, to attract potential job candidates. But what are some of the other benefits of social recruiting? And how do you get started? Benefits Build Your Employment Brand Social media is a mechanism for conveying your company culture to potential recruits and attracting new staff. You can brand your social media channels, post photos, and host videos. Customers and job seekers should be encouraged to participate in discussions, and employees should promptly address questions and comments. The use of social media allows potential recruits to get a feel for what the company is like before they apply. By encouraging potential recruits to get to know the company culture before accepting a position, you ensure the candidate is the right fit for the company. Reach Passive Candidates Many people that are not currently looking for a job are still using social networks. But some of these professionals may be a great fit for the role you are looking to fill, and might be tempted to apply if they knew you had a vacancy. Even if many of these passive candidates have no current interest, you can begin building relationships before they decide to look for a new job. By using social media, you can greatly expand your talent pool by getting your jobs in front of passive candidates. Supplement Your Employee Referral Program Employee referral programs are a highly effective recruiting tool. In fact, studies from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reveal that more than 80% of organizations rank employee referral programs as the number one source of high-quality hires. 1 You can use social media to engage existing employees in the hiring process. Educate your employees and managers on how to use social networks for professional purposes and encourage them to get involved. Employees can then post open requisitions to their own social networks. They can also post relevant industry news that may interest potential candidates. Learn More about the Background of Candidates A recruiter can understand a great deal about a person by evaluating their LinkedIn profile. For example, a LinkedIn member will usually include a resume of past and current jobs. You can see recommendations from peers, managers and colleagues, as well as what groups the person has joined. You can also determine if you have any second or third degree connections, so you can get a more personal referral. 1. Laurano, Madeline. Employee Referrals 2.0. HRO Today. HRO Today, Oct Web. Mar <

3 Similarly, on other networks, you can learn a lot about a person s interests and professional standing. However, be careful not to expose your organization to potential legal risks. Information that candidates post on social networks such as religious or sexual preference could be argued as used against them in the screening process. Your company needs to be able to demonstrate that a hiring decision was made based on a candidate s skills and experience. To avoid the risk of civil rights lawsuits or OFCCP violations, you can use applicant tracking software. Robust applicant tracking systems allow recruiters to tap into the power of social networks while tracking the parameters considered relevant by the OFCCP. Users can request EEO information from every applicant and accurately capture reasons for non-election for every applicant. They can also easily generate reports required by the OFCCP. Lower Recruitment Costs Accounts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all free to set up, so one advantage of social media is its potential to lower recruitment costs. Posting job openings through Facebook or LinkedIn is more likely to deliver results than a single description on a job board, because social media job postings can be shared with others. Many organizations have saved large sums of money by leveraging the power of social media, which allows them to cut back on recruiting agencies and expensive job boards. Choosing Your Channels All social sites are different, and all warrant different approaches. As a first step, decide who you are trying to attract and tailor your strategy to that particular group. You may want to start with one social media site, familiarize yourself with it, and grow your presence gradually. Here is an overview: Twitter: Twitter is a microblogging social networking site. Messages, or tweets, are no more than 140 characters. Twitter has over 300 million users, generates more than 300 million tweets per day, and handles more than 1.6 million search queries per day. According to the website, Twitter connects businesses to customers in real-time. Businesses use Twitter to quickly share information with people interested in their products and services, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and influential people. From brand lift, to CRM, to direct sales, Twitter offers businesses a chance to reach an engaged audience. Twitter is meant for updates about what is happening at the current moment. It offers a way to broadcast information widely about positions that need to be filled. LinkedIn: LinkedIn operates the world s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 155 million members in over 200 countries and territories. LinkedIn is the most popular social networking site for professional recruiters. The site is focused on fostering professional networking, and its user profiles can amount to ready-made resumes. Facebook: Facebook is the largest of the social networking sites with more than a billion users worldwide. According to Facebook, Millions of people use Facebook every day to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet. Although Facebook started as a

4 social utility to connect people with friends and family, it has expanded to include connections to organizations, businesses, and interests. Other Communities: While LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are still the giants in the social networking market, there are also many other popular and niche communities that you should consider including in your strategy. As the popularity of social media increases, employers are finding that working age potential candidates are participating in a variety of social networking sites. 2 Getting Started Here are some quick tips on how to get started with social recruiting in the three most popular channels: Twitter: Start by setting up an account with your company name, a photo, and a brief bio. Begin with a few interesting tweets, and then start following others. Run a quick search on Twitter for anybody discussing a specific keyword and you can find hundreds of contacts. Target people to follow who works in the industry, people who may have the skills you need, or people who may be linked to those people. Oftentimes these people will follow you back, and you ll build your list of followers. The easiest way to recruit is to tweet jobs you have available, i.e.: looking for a marketing coordinator in NYC. Apply at (include a shortened URL using bitly.com/). To make your job posting tweets standout, you can also use hashtags. Hashtags are used as a way to filter and find information on Twitter. Include the hashtag with a keyword in your tweet and it becomes instantly searchable. Here are a few examples of hashtags you may want to consider using: #job, #hiring, #career, #sales rep. In the same manner, you can search and source directly for job seekers, using keyword search. You shouldn t just use your Twitter account to post job openings; you should also use it to keep potential candidates interested and engaged. You can market events you will be attending, post company updates, or relevant industry news. Your tweets say a lot about your company and corporate culture. LinkedIn: Start by making your company profile. Go to www. linkedin.com/companies and click the add a company button on the right-hand side. Once your company profile has been created, make sure you keep it relevant and up to date. Edit regularly with job postings and updates on the company. You can actively search for candidates among LinkedIn members by searching on keywords for people with the required qualifications listed in their LinkedIn profile. It is also often a good idea to search for potential employees by past or current employer who may have employed people with the skills and experience you seek for your company. You can then send an In-mail to candidates directly, or if you share a connection, request an introduction. Joining groups is another effective way to attract potential candidates. Join industry or skill set groups and advertise your roles. Once you join a group, find ways to begin discussions with people in that group. You can contact people individually, or people may directly contact you. A final option you have is advertisements. With LinkedIn Ads, you can target a specific audience by job title and function, by industry and company size, by seniority, and by LinkedIn groups. 2. Royal Pingdom. Report: Social network demographics in Royal Pingdom. Royal Pingdom, Aug Web. Mar <

5 Facebook: Start by creating an engaging company page, and make sure that all content is relevant and up to date. You will want to create a public page where people can like your page, and will then be notified of jobs or any other updates you post. Encourage your employees to get involved and post comments to your page. Make sure you respond to all comments, good or bad. Don t just use your wall to advertise vacancies, use it to keep people interested, so when a job arises more people will be active on the page and will see the post. Another option is to post a Facebook ad. Facebook can target ads to the exact audience you are looking to reach. For example, if your company is in New Jersey, and you are not including relocation in the budget for this position, you can target the job posting to only be shown to people who live in New Jersey or bordering states. If the position is an entry level position, you can target the job posting to a younger demographic. You can also measure how social recruiting directly impacts the bottom line by reporting on: Top sources of hire Sources for high performers Time to fill Cost per hire Before you implement your social media strategy, start tracking key metrics on your current sourcing and recruiting efforts. Then, set goals that you would like to accomplish with social recruiting. Measuring Results The overall goal of social media is to build a large, high quality talent pool. To make sure that your goals are achieved, your company must first create goals against which you measure your success. Such goals may include: Increase traffic to career site Increase engagement of Facebook Fans Increase follower count on Twitter Increase traffic to job postings

6 How icims Can Help icims is a leading provider of innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition solutions that help businesses win the war for top talent. Scalable, easy to use, and backed by award-winning customer service, icims enables organizations to manage their entire talent acquisition lifecycle from building talent pools, to recruiting, to onboarding, all within a single cloud-based platform that is connected to the largest partner ecosystem of HR technologies in the industry. Supporting more than 3,200 contracted customers, icims is one of the largest and fastest-growing talent acquisition solution providers. To learn more about icims, visit us online at or watch the icims Talent Platform video demo. For more resources visit icims.com/hei Connect with icims on social media!