How social media is changing recruitment — and how to hire

Social media has become a mainstay of everyday life, and it makes sense that recruitment has adapted alongside these platforms.

With millennials making up the largest part of the workforce, and Ofcom finding that 99% of 16 to 24-year-olds use digital platforms regularly, branching out to social media recruitment is essential in attracting talent to your company.

While an existing digital presence will undoubtedly help your latest vacancy get attention, fortunately, you don’t need to have a CEO with the marketing power of Elon Musk to successfully use social media in an onboarding strategy.

As a concept, social media recruitment is relatively simple. By using platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, a business can let possible job applicants know they are hiring.

However, this process can also be elevated to give potential candidates a real insight into working at your company and allow you to reduce cost.

Using social media in your recruitment

Social media can enable a business to tackle hiring issues that impact HR staff.

Specifically, HR teams tend to struggle to engage the right candidate, hire quickly or make a fully informed decision as they sift through applicants.

This can be because people are simply missing the job vacancy. Similarly, candidates may not be found actively because there is no tangible insight into who the advert is reaching. Digital platforms can help, particularly when recruitment leverages additional technology.

However, before splurging on a new application it is important to begin following simple steps that will allow you to make the most of the tools available.

It may seem obvious, but setting an objective for a social media recruitment investment will allow you to decide what tone works and what the organization really needs.

It will also allow you to avoid the trappings of producing content just because it is popular or trending as this can damage your brand.

On the back of this planning, the target audience should become clear and like a job listing, you should have essential criteria that you want candidates to fulfill.

Once you know what you are looking for, it is worth investigating which channel is the home of the kind of people you want to hire. Naturally, multiple channels can be used, but no one wants to invest in a fruitless endeavor.

The next step is formulating an effective strategy that is focused on achieving the set objectives. From this point, it is essential to find the right internal HR staff to lead the project and train them in the tools you are going to leverage to make the process a success.

The key is to maintain the identity of your brand and find an approach that works for your business. If your business does not post video content, it probably isn’t a good idea to follow a trend and begin doing live streams of the office. This transparency will also allow the hiring team to find candidates that are suited to your business.

Furthermore, it is important to check that the advertisement is reaching the right people. Otherwise, implementing a social media recruitment strategy could be costly. This is when technology can begin to ensure social media recruitment can save time and money.

Social media tech can save time and money

Whatever approach you decide to pursue, you will want to make sure that you are not shooting in the dark. Technology can reduce the workload through data collections, AI, and applicant tracking systems.

Rather than using a suite of applications to enable your social media recruitment process, the likes of Avature ATS allow employers to do multiple tasks to find the perfect hire as quickly as possible.

The applicant tracking system allows every area of the business to have tangible insight into the onboarding process. This is done through data collections in areas like advertising costs, agency fees, employee referral bonuses, travel costs, and recruiter budget. With a focus on usability, the software allows recruiters to leverage that data and conduct semantic searches for candidates.

There are also custom dashboards that show progress and push alerts for pressing matters. Furthermore, through automated screenings of CVs Aventure ATS allows users to quickly scan applicants and save time.

This kind of software not only saves time for the recruiters actively searching, but it also assists other staff who need information through its dashboard systems. The bonus of an ATS is that it can inform everyone involved in the hire.

While most services boast impressive cost-cutting statistics, Avature ATS has done so along with significant clients, including Cisco and L’Oréal.

In fact, Avature ATS claims it can cut hiring costs by 40% on average, while also lowering the time from application to offer by 80%.

Jeremy Bloom, head of talent acquisition Operations at Cisco claimed that “With our old [hiring] system the answer was always no, we couldn’t do anything beyond what we already had. With Avature, the answer now is yes.”

Equally, software like SmartDreamers allows users to automate processes within an established ATS by using real-time data. The tool not only shows the steps candidates are taking in their application but also allows for tasks to be automated. The software allows for candidate attraction, conversion, and nurturing to be fully automated. Technology like this can reduce the pressure on teams and improve the experience of candidates.

This is the case for Genpact, and EMEA Recruitment Lead for the company, Liviu Anghel claims “What we love most about SmartDreamers is the simplicity to automate recruitment marketing process with just a few clicks.”

For those who are weary of the social component of an online hiring strategy, the likes of Talentify focus on LinkedIn alongside high-profile recruitment sites (such as Indeed and Glassdoor) to push an advert and automate time-consuming elements of the hiring process. The company claims to be able to reduce onboarding costs by up to 43%.

Whatever applicant tracking system and recruitment strategy you use, it is clear that thought leaders see this mode of working and technology as the future of hiring.

Changing how you recruit

Matt Doyle, vice-president of human resources at ResultsCX, noted that “Social media is a necessary component for recruitment today,” and this is increasingly becoming the case for many companies.

Whether it’s simply achieving a social media presence so people can interact or taking proactive approaches to attract and monitor the best talent, it is necessary to be online to get the most out of your onboarding options. This is why digital recruitment is important. Particularly as more business hours are being spent online during the pandemic.