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February 19, 2021 
12 min read
It’s practically impossible to be on social media without it influencing you in some way. In this case, we’re not talking about the latest fashion or health trends – we’re talking about social media recruiting.
In essence, social media recruitment is exactly what it sounds like – recruiting talent on social media. But it’s more than just posting links to your job descriptions. While that may lead to some applications, you’re playing to a pretty narrow audience. Mainly, people who already follow you on social media and are interested in applying anyway.
Social media recruiting is best thought of as a wing of your larger recruitment marketing strategy. It’s a more organized and comprehensive approach, one that relies on building brand and culture. In marketing speak, social media recruitment is top of the funnel.
Social media has become ubiquitous, and not just in the sense that everyone is on it. Rather, elements of social media have crept into nearly every online space from review sites to payment processors. Share buttons appear on news sites and food recipes have comment sections. From LinkedIn to Glassdoor, Instagram to Yelp, Google reviews to Quora, everything digital is becoming increasingly social.
There is a lot of digital real estate out there. Social interactions online are now the norm. This is especially true when attracting Gen Z talent who grew up in a completely digital world. Looking for jobs online is all they know. This is why many job seekers of all generations are starting their job searches on social media.
But they’re not just job hunting. They’re also talking. You might just be surprised where candidates are – and what people are saying about your organization.
Recruiting – hopefully – doesn’t start when a job requisition gets approved. While that’s often the case (and sometimes unavoidable), it’s far faster and cost-effective to start with warm leads. This is where social media recruitment comes in. By engaging potential talent on social media, you’ve given your team a head start.
If you’re a B2C business offering goods or services directly to consumers (think a chain of coffee shops or big box retailer), social media recruiting will lean heavily on your existing brand – and fans. This means things like sharing employee stories and posting about volunteer events alongside new products or locations. These should flow into one another and feel cohesive. Done right, the distinction between “regular” posts and your recruiting posts is virtually indistinguishable.
Things are a little different for B2B. You’re likely speaking to specific job titles and industries. You’re less likely to have a rapid fan base – and you probably won’t be competing as much for airtime with customer-facing content. For B2B organizes, it often makes sense to lean more on company culture, growth opportunities, mission and values.
All social sites are different, and all warrant different approaches. Different platforms reward different types of content, and typically attract different audiences. Knowing who your ideal candidates are – and where they spend their time – is a good first step.
For example, a software provider with big government contracts will probably find more of their ideal candidates on LinkedIn. By contrast, a chain of restaurants may find more success on TikTok or Instagram, where they can show off their locations and costumer experiences.
It’s also important to recognize that your goal (and therefore approach) doesn’t need to be the same for every platform. There’s a time to push job seekers to apply. There’s also a time to join your talent network.
We’ll get more into tips for successful recruiting on social media below. For now, here are the big social media platforms to consider.
X has evolved plenty over the years, but at its core it’s essentially still a microblogging site. It’s a place where people go to share ideas and videos, and its comments section is where a lot of the engagement happens.
Considered the world’s largest professional network and most frequented social media platform for recruiting. With a vast network of valued connections, your company can easily maintain a high-profile relationship with both active and passive candidates. You can even look to employees for a boost via social distribution, which automatically shares job postings on their profiles for greater exposure, promoting internal referral processes.
With such high user retention, Facebook is the perfect place to engage with job seekers, offer industry insights, and post all your open positions. Facebook offers companies a ‘Job Openings’ tab right from their profile, so candidates can visit one single repository and easily see what’s available.
With its video-only format distinguishing itself amongst the other members of this list, YouTube allows you to broadcast your brand. YouTube enables your company to showcase the value of producing employee and culture-focused recruiting videos regularly.
Instagram is a highly engaging way to promote your brand via pictures, videos, and text captions while appealing to job seekers’ youthful generation.
Growth on social media takes time. For every organization that dials in on great content and builds a thriving, engaged audience, dozens will let their social media dreams fall by the wayside. Distraction and competing interests for your team’s time can be hugely detrimental.
Whatever your social media goals are, your team needs a plan to get there.
Start with research. It’s helpful to find out how your company is already using social media platforms and its goals.
To attract candidates using social media, you could share photos on Facebook or Instagram of team accomplishments and how members are recognized. This shows candidates that your organization is committed to its employees.
As we discussed above, no social media strategy is complete without knowing which platforms you want to be on – and why. Often, this will come down to the type of talent you’re trying to attract, where they spend their time, and how they like to be engaged.
At the most basic level, this means knowing who your ideal candidates are. Knowing as much as you can about them makes it easier for your company to target better cultural fits and create interesting content. This requires some research to get a view into their interests, motivations, frustrations, etc.
Since recruitment is forever changing, keep in mind that levering social media goes beyond posting a job ad to multiple social media platforms. That said, it’s your organization’s responsibility to invest in a talent platform that takes recruitment seriously and supports the quality candidate engagement platform.
To connect with today’s candidates, you need to meet them where they are—on the go. Text recruiting and engagement is a modern, streamlined, and accelerated approach to communication with candidates and employees.
The overall goal of social recruiting is to build a large, high-quality talent pool. To ensure that you reach your goals, your company must first create goals against which you measure your success. Such plans may include:
You can also measure how social recruiting directly impacts the bottom line by reporting on:
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.
Evaluate how you can feature your company culture and brand on social media. The image you portray on social media will impact who applies for your company. A great way to get people excited about your company is by showing what makes your company a unique and exciting place to work.
Applicants are interested in learning about the types of people they would potentially work with at companies when they do their research.
Company social media accounts provide candidates with a glimpse into a company’s culture, employees, company morale, and unique offerings. These factors help candidates determine whether that company is a good place to work. Amp up your social recruitment efforts with a solution that makes it easy to cultivate a social media presence and connect with more job seekers. With the iCIMS Talent Cloud, social media recruiting can be your sourcing powerhouse.
A strong employer brand sets the tone for business success. It affects the candidate’s perception of your culture, so it’s essential to get it done right with effective recruitment marketing software.
Don’t be afraid to advertise for open positions on social media in an engaging way. This may bring awareness to potential applicants who may not even be actively looking for a job but are interested in connecting with your company for the future.
Employee referral programs are a handy recruiting tool. You can use social media to engage existing employees in the hiring process. Educate your employees and managers on using social networks for professional purposes and encouraging them to get involved. Employees can then post open requisitions to their social networks. They can also post relevant industry news that may interest potential candidates.
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.
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.
Many people that are not currently looking for a job are still using social networks. But some of these professionals may be an excellent fit for the role you are looking to fill and might 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. Using social media, you can significantly expand your talent pool by getting your jobs in front of passive candidates.
Accounts on X, Facebook and LinkedIn are all free to set up. Therefore, one advantage of social media is its potential to lower recruitment costs. Posting job openings on social networks are more likely to deliver results than a single description on a job board. Many organizations have saved large sums of money by leveraging social media’s power, which allows them to cut back on recruiting agencies and expensive job boards – thereby boosting their bottom lines.
So far we’ve discussed a lot of ways in which social media for recruitment is a good thing. And to be clear – it is. It’s hard to imagine a comprehensive talent acquisition strategy without it. However, there are some potential challenges and drawbacks to social media that recruiting teams should be clear-eyed about.
Social media is a double-edged sword when it comes to managing your online reputation. It’s a powerful tool to get your message out. However, it can also be a source of trouble.
It’s good policy to maintain an active defense. A slow response to a problem only makes the problem worse. Of course, it’s impossible to respond quickly if you don’t know there’s a problem happening. Social media is risky if your strategy is to schedule posts without ever engaging with the conversation happening in the comments section or on review sites.
It’s easy to get caught up in other responsibilities and let this slide. Understand that this does need to be a priority, at least for someone on your team. Consider creating a list of all social media and review sites that people have engaged with your brand – whether you have a profile there or not. Create a cadence for monitoring these places and a strategy for how to respond.
It’s a fact of life that certain corners of the Internet attract more negative comments than others. Fair or not, it’s an almost certainty that you’ll get critical feedback shared publicly in social media comments or Glassdoor reviews.
Responding to negative comments and feedback can be challenging. Each needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis. It is a good policy to respond in a timely manner and with the presumption of grace. Apologize when appropriate and offer the candidate, customer, or former employee an opportunity to reach out and discuss the manner further.
You have a couple of options for the more outrageous comments. There is a school of thought that says it is better not to feed the trolls. Often, this is good advice. However, outright falsehoods may need to be addressed. Keep things kind and factual. Social media is not a court of law, though it is often the court of public opinion. Typically, it’s going to be your word against theirs. Demonstrating empathy, grace and humility while sticking to the facts is the best defense.
As you can see, there’s a ton of benefit to using social media for recruitment. From building up your employer brand, to sourcing and engaging candidates. To learn more about this topic, see our Social recruiting survival guide.
