Twitter can be an excellent tool for recruiting candidates, but the main stumbling block many recruiters face when using Twitter is that they treat it like any other social media platform instead of playing to its unique strengths.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways recruiters tend to go wrong when recruiting on Twitter, and most importantly – how to do it right!
1. Spraying and praying
Of course you need to get those jobs filled, but endlessly posting about your roles and nothing else will be really unengaging for your followers.
Think about it from a candidate’s point of view: If they follow your Twitter account or come across your feed and it’s just job ad, job ad, job ad… this is going to be really boring for them to sift through – especially since so many of these opportunities will be totally irrelevant to them.
And if you’re posting the exact same role over and over again, it just looks like you’re struggling to fill it. Who wants a job nobody’s interested in? Candidates will just assume there’s a catch.
What to do instead:
Take the time to craft your job tweets, and mix them up a little. Include visuals, and make sure there’s plenty other content to encourage candidates to follow you too.
Deleting old job postings that are already filled is also a great idea as this avoids disappointment if a candidate enquires about a role that’s no longer on the market. If you’re worried about this taking up too much of your valuable time, use a tool like TweetDelete to automatically delete tweets after a certain period of time.
2. Sending all your traffic to job boards
Any job board you work with will give you the option to automatically post your roles to social media, but this can be a double-edged sword.
Sure, this means less work for you (or your recruitment marketer) to do, but too many automatic tweets will look dull as they all follow the same format and will look automated to candidates, which is pretty unengaging.
Secondly, if a candidate clicks on your role from a job board tweet rather than one you’ve crafted yourself, you’ll be sending valuable traffic to the job board rather than your own job pages!
What to do instead:
If you’re putting all that effort into your job adverts, direct your views and applications to your own job pages so that it’s your business that sees the return on them, not job boards. This will also mean you’re sending applicants straight into your own recruitment CRM instead of a job board’s database.
And finally, try to craft your own tweets when you’re promoting your roles – this will ensure they always reflect brand voice (if posting from a company account) and show you’re human!
3. Shouting into a void
There’s no point in crafting your personalised job tweets and spending time searching for valuable, insightful industry content to share with your followers if you only have four of them (and one of those is your mum). And even if you’ve got 100 followers, if 70 of those are spam accounts or irrelevant to your goals, this is just as bad!
What to do instead:
Work on your strategy to focus on building up a Twitter following that’s relevant to your niche and your end goals. Build Twitter lists and use the right hashtags to make sure your roles are easy to find by the right people.
If you’re yet to get round to creating recruitment marketing personas, this can be really useful for informing your social media strategy. Essentially, you want to be fishing where the best fish are – and if your recruitment marketing personas suggest the people you’re looking for aren’t hanging around on Twitter, focus your marketing efforts on other channels.
4. Shouting instead of interacting
We all know recruitment is a people business. The entire industry is built on the great conversations we have and the strong relationships we nurture with candidates. So why is it that this seems to go out the window so frequently when it comes to communicating on social media?
If you were at a job fair, would you stand and shout about your latest roles in candidates’ faces? Would you ‘network’ with people in the room without asking them questions, engaging with them and doing what you can to provide value?
You’d be surprised how many recruiters still seem to think that Twitter is a podium for shouting about how great their brand and current clients/roles are (and in which case, no one will be listening).
What to do instead:
Treat Twitter like a virtual networking event – use it as platform to have real valuable conversations, not just to drone on about yourself and your brand. Do this by engaging with your Twitter network – get involved in relevant discussions by commenting, liking and retweeting other people’s content. Show them you’re listening, and that you’re human too!
If you can show that you care about communicating with your audience in their language rather than just marketing to them, you’ll gain a lot more credibility – particularly in a candidate-led market where expectations are higher.
5. Not providing enough info on your profile
Twitter profiles are really easy to set up, but unfortunately this means a lot of recruiters will rush the set-up process so they can get started and never go back to it again. This can cause a lot of confusion for candidates and prevent them from wanting to interact with out – if it’s not clear who you are, who you work for and what your intentions are, they’re not going to trust your profile.
What to do instead:
Give your Twitter profile a quick once over: Is your company name included? Have you linked to your website or LinkedIn profile and remembered to tag your location? Do you have an identifiable profile picture? These things all really matter when trying to build a valuable Twitter network that will bring in top talent. For more tips on how to assess and improve your social media presence, read this blog.
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