Even if you're already successfully recruiting candidates on social media - are you practicing these habits that could be getting in the way of you achieving even better results? Kick these common social media habits from your daily routine to see a notable improvement in your social interaction, and make more placements as a result.
Habit #1: Lazy cross-posting
If you have something to share on social media (be it a job ad, a new blog post or a company update), you should of course be pushing it far and wide. But do you take the time to think about where you’re posting, and whether your message fits that particular channel?
One mistake a lot of recruiters make is treating social media as one homogenous lump, when in reality, it’s a collection of living, evolving networks that need to be approached quite differently from each other. So in other words, if you’re copy-pasting the same status from LinkedIn to Facebook; from Pinterest to Twitter, you’re not going to be getting the best from your efforts or gelling with your followers.
Think about which candidates you’re reaching on each platform, and what kind of content you’re used to seeing in your own social media feeds for each channel. This will give you a clearer idea of what works and what doesn’t, and you can tailor your social media messages accordingly.
Personally, I would normally grade each message using this Social Message Optimizer before I post so I know I’m doing what I can to give my social posts the best chance of getting noticed.
Habit #2: Thinking inside the (status) box
We’re sure you’ve got all the go-to social channels covered (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook), but have you thought carefully about which platforms you’d be likely to find the most relevant candidates for the roles you’re promoting?
LinkedIn is a great resource for recruiters… to connect with other recruiters! Research shows that whilst 96% of recruiters are active on LinkedIn, only 36% of candidates are...
While 94 percent of recruiters are active on #LinkedIn, only 36 percent of job seekers are #HCIevents #LHR pic.twitter.com/vNY9xjV0jw
— Dave Sumner Smith (@davesumnersmith) March 31, 2015
So, if you’re looking to hire developers, for example, you’d get better results heading for online communities like Reddit or StackOverflow rather than shouting about your opportunity at competing recruiters on LinkedIn!
A good way to approach this is to think carefully about where your ideal candidate is likely to spend their time, and what’s most likely to pull them in. Then, create a candidate persona that you can market to.
If you take the time to understand your market better, you’ll get much better results.
Habit #3: Inconsistency
We all know social media isn’t always going to be top of the priority list when you have important calls to make. But abandoning a social account completely because you've too many jobs on is a habit you can’t really afford to have.
On the other hand, if you find yourself with a spare ten minutes, don’t go drowning your social feeds in posts to make up for the past few days (or even weeks) of inactivity either. This will only lead to unfollows, as candidates who've gotten used to not seeing you appear in their feeds are suddenly overloaded with posts.
Consistency is really important here: Basically, you want to make sure you’re staying front of mind with your followers without being in their face all the time. It’s a balancing act that can be difficult to master, but using a social scheduling tool to maintain a presence on your social channels, even when things are busy.
Habit #4: Being too self-involved
‘Interesting content’ is one of the top-cited reasons people follow branded social media accounts, so it would be a big mistake to ignore this and solely focus on promoting your jobs.
Share content that will be valuable to your candidates and they’ll love you for it – tips on career progression, finding a role in their industry and interview advice will all go down well.
The ‘social media rule of thirds’ is handy to follow when choosing what content to share on social:
- 1/3 of your content should be promotional
- 1/3 industry relevant content
- 1/3 aimed at building relationships with candidates and/or clients.
Habit #5: Spamming feeds
We know, we know – you need to get jobs out there somehow, right? We totally get it, but there are things you can do to ensure you’re not filling up candidate feeds with irrelevant opportunities.
Candidates aren’t going to get excited about fifteen exceptional new opportunities for software developers appearing in their Facebook feeds if they work in hospitality – they’re going to unfollow you.
One way to avoid this to follow the solution to bad habit #2 above: Go further afield and post jobs on platforms where niche audiences that will be relevant to your opportunities are most likely to hang out online.
The only way to really ensure you’re getting relevant job ads in front of qualified candidates is to use paid advertising on social media. By putting a budget behind your job ads, you can tailor your audience based on current job role, industry, location and other key demographics, so you can be sure that you’re not spamming your followers with roles they’d never be interested in.
If you have a recruitment marketer on your team, they should have a budget for this so it's just a matter of having a chat to see how they can help you boost your stats. Otherwise, download the eBook below to find out how to get started!
