How Startups Can Use Social Media to Recruit Talent

Did you know that job seekers rank social media networks as the most useful resource for jobs when compared to job boards and ads, recruiting agencies, employee referrals, and recruiting events?

This is worth noting because the recruiting process has changed for many companies over the last several years. Like many things, social media has solidified its place as somewhere your business needs to be.

When you use social media to attract candidates, you are easily able to narrow your target market with specific qualifications, message back and forth with potential new hires, and even evaluate them.

With a low unemployment rate, it’s time to fine tune your hiring process. Let’s look at how startups can use social media to recruit talent.

Post a Job

You can certainly use LinkedIn to post your open startup positions, but you can also use Facebook’s Job posting to share jobs as well. You’ll be able to receive resumes and post requirements for each job.

In addition, you can share links to your job postings on your others social media networks.

Social networks are built for sharing content, so by posting and sharing your jobs on social media, you reach more potential candidates.

Use Paid Advertising

If you want to increase the reach of your job postings, consider using paid LinkedIn and Facebook ads.

By boosting your job postings, you get more visibility. You are also better able to target your candidates with demographics, skills, background, and more.

Social media advertising is fairly inexpensive and can be a great way to find more qualified candidates.

Reach People Who Aren’t Looking

You’ll find that many people aren’t actively looking for a job, but they are on social media.

You can reach these people right where they are – on the pages of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other networks.

These people aren’t actively looking at job boards, so social media may be the only way they learn about your open positions. Again, social media helps increase your reach.

In addition, when you share your job postings, your current team can also share your job listing on their own social media pages. This creates a snowball effect, bringing in more potential candidates.

Build Your Brand

Before you start posting and sharing your job listings all over social media, you must first build your brand.

For example, choose your social media platforms and then completely build out your business page. Pay special attention to your about us page, profile and cover photos.

You also want to include photos and videos of your work environment, products, services, and current staff. Help your potential candidates get a feel for your employee culture.

This ultimately helps you find more candidates who really want to work at your startup because they got an inside look.

Next, you can use social media to evaluate your candidates.

Check Their Behavior

Let’s say Joe Smith sends you his resume through Facebook. You now have access to his full name and profile page.

Before inviting Joe in for an interview, wander over to his Facebook page. Check out his personal comments, his post types, and their quality.

You can use their posts to evaluate the candidate. For example, if you are hiring a marketing person, but their posts are boring and filled with typos, this is a pretty good indicator this candidate isn’t right for your job.

Check Candidate Engagement

Another thing you can do when recruiting is check whether or not the candidate has engaged with your business page.

You want to see a potential hire engaging with your company or at least your industry. If they haven’t at least “liked” your page or followed you, they may not be that interested.

Final Thoughts

In our very competitive hiring market, this is the year to create your social media recruiting funnel.

Here are some final tips:

• Show off your startup. Get active on social media and share interesting happenings at your company. Consider having current employees share videos about why they love working at your startup.
• Use hashtags that speak to potential recruits.
• Leverage the right social media outlets for your target audience.
• Encourage current employees to help out by sharing.

Now it’s time to get started. Create your social media recruiting strategy today to find the most qualified candidates for your open positions.

Are you a new startup ready to succeed? Are you looking to get your new business off the ground and watch it rise to success? We are here for you. We can help answer your questions and guide you through the process. Outsource your HR duties, finances, payroll and more to us. Contact Escalon today to get started.