How an Active Social Presence Can Take Your Recruiting to the Next Level

December 20, 2012

To remain competitive, it’s vital to keep up with the online and social aspects of recruitment. Through social media and marketing job seekers and passive candidates have access to information on their future would-be employers. Companies should take advantage of this and give prospective employees something to engage with.

How should recruiters be developing an active social presence?

First, ensure that your talent team is clued in on corporate branding and messaging. Don’t take for granted that your talent team knows everything there is to know (old and new) about the organization. Instead, train them.

Create standardized messaging practices on how to pitch your company – what’s your company’s story and how did it get where it is today? This should include everything from the top-level vision, corporate structure, growth strategy, culture/environment, and benefits to new product rollouts, investments, great press, awards, etc. The more your team knows, the more they can help with the recruitment marketing.

Here are six tips for kicking your recruiting up a notch through outreach and developing an active social presence:

  • Maintain an Up-to-Date Job Site: Be sure that your talent team is tracking inquiries and applications from the job site and responding in a timely manner.
  • Give Candidates Easy Access to Your Talent Team: Post email addresses or other ways to get in touch with your internal recruiters to make it easy for candidates to engage.
  • Utilize Your Social Media Presence for Networking and Recruiting: When top employees look into an opportunity, they do their their homework. Keep your social media presence current and engaging with blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube to start. Additionally, be sure that your recruitment function is adding value to the social media presence with hot topics of discussion, tools for the trade, featured jobs, and overall great content.
  • Host/Attend Networking Events: Get the buzz out about your company and network within the industry.
  • Participate in Relevant Career Fairs: Because really, why wouldn’t you?
  • Create Relationships with Universities/Colleges: Do your due diligence on what schools have programs that are relevant to your organization. Create relationships with stakeholders in these programs to drive top candidates to you.

So, you follow these tips, and you create an engaging social presence — now what? Measure it.

A great first step is to track the source of candidates — how did they hear about the company/opportunity? This will help you assess each avenue’s impact and tweak your recruitment marketing strategy based on actual results.

In additional to actively recruiting for open requisitions, creating a great social presence will help you build a talent pipeline with future prospects and warm leads. The more opportunities to create a touchpoint, the better.

 

Director of Talent

<strong>Carlie Smith</strong> was the Senior Talent Manager, Sales & Marketing at OpenView. She worked directly with hiring managers and key stakeholders within OpenView and its portfolio to lead vital searches and provided process guidance on recruitment strategy, including talent identification, strategic sourcing, relationship building, and competitive intelligence. Currently, Carlie is the Director of <a href="https://www.circle.com/en">Circle</a>.