Christmas has almost come, and we’re all winding down for some well-earned rest and relaxation. Before you pack up for the year though, here are 12 quick tips to help boost your online recruitment in 2012:
1. Recognise that each social network is different.
LinkedIn appeals immediately to social recruiters because it’s a great place to find a candidate to fill an immediate vacancy, but that doesn’t mean other networks like Facebook and Twitter aren’t valuable.
2. Use Twitter to direct traffic to your Careers Site.
Tweet links to your jobs and add searchable hashtags, which will help more candidates find your adverts. #jobs is a good general one to use, as are relevant skills like #java, and locations like #londonjobs.
3. Set up Google Alerts for your company name.
This free service from Google will send you an email whenever your company is mentioned, helping you to find out where potential candidates are talking about you online so you can engage with them.
4. Look your business up on Glassdoor.
It’s a website that allows employees to anonymously rate their employer. Try not to treat this as a witch hunt for unhappy staff; instead, use it to help identify the internal strengths and weaknesses in your employer brand.
5. Create a Google+ page for your business.
Although it looks like they’re not attracting vast numbers of followers, Google+ pages are proving valuable for online visibility and reputation management.
6. Sort out your LinkedIn profile. Recruiters spend so much time looking at other people’s LinkedIn profiles that they can forget their own. Practice what you preach: make sure your picture is high-quality, your information complete, and your activity business appropriate.
7. Create a talent pool with Facebook.
It’s easy to lose good candidates because you don’t have a vacancy for them right now. Keep them engaged by posting relevant news, articles, and resources that will keep them interacting with you until you have a place for them.
8. Search engine optimise your adverts.
You don’t need to be an SEO expert to get the basics right. Ask yourself: if I were the perfect candidate, what would I type into Google to find this job? Include that word or phrase in the advert title and again in the advert itself.
9. Don’t be afraid to use social media to screen candidates.
The way a candidate presents himself online is vital to the modern workplace – sometimes moreso than the way he presents himself in person. Get Googling.
10. Understand your own privacy settings.
Again, practice what you preach. Make sure that if a candidate looks you up on Facebook, they aren’t going to find anything that would put them off. Remember: candidates are checking you out too.
11. Run a referral contest on Facebook for one of your hard-to-fill roles.
Use Facebook to offer a desirable gift or cash prize to someone who puts forward a successful candidate for one of your hard-to-fill vacancies.
12. Leave nothing to chance.
Set online recruitment KPIs and keep track of them in the same way you would traditional recruitment KPIs. Your reward will be the gift of great results by next Christmas!
Ailsa Partridge
Ailsa is a technical writer and solutions engineer working at Instructure in London.
