Using Social Media for Effective Recruitment

Using Social Media for Effective Recruitment

Recruiting for those ‘hard to fill’ roles is always a challenge for recruiters. We strive to place the best person into the position, who will bring their talents and experience to their new role. Using social media is a great way to find people who, while not actively looking, may be nevertheless open to new opportunities.

The following article by Helo Tamme, National People Manager NZ, ISS Facilities Services outlines the options available.

‘According to Auckland-based marketing agency Socialites, there are 3.5 million active social media users in New Zealand. The top five media portals are Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

A recent survey by International-TNS found 97 per cent of internet users now research online before making a significant purchase. The same applies to recruitment.

Job seekers frequently search organisations online, as well as their social media sites before they even apply for roles. People trust social media content more than website content or other non-digital content.

Research conducted by Netsafe – a non-profit New Zealand organisation focused on online safety – about how young New Zealanders manage their digital life found teens are highly engaged with a range of platforms, with four in 10 using five or more social media channels. When asked which they use the most, 25 per cent said YouTube, followed by Facebook and Snapchat (23 per cent each).

Today’s hiring employers need to explore different ways to hire, with social media becoming a leading channel for recruitment. Especially considering recruitment in the labour market is becoming increasingly challenging.

Here are three options that can be explored:

Option one: Facebook business page

Before even going to social media you need to identify who is your target group and what kind of social media platforms they are using.

Safe to say, Facebook is one of the most popular social media channels for New Zealanders and therefore it would make sense to invest there. There are several opportunities to post a job on Facebook:

• You can use your company page (which is free) on Facebook and post a job either as a regular post or under Facebook Jobs.

The lifespan of a Facebook post is about three hours. Therefore it is recommended to the information when most of your page fans are active on the page – you can get that information under your Business Page Stats.

But even when you post the job when most of your followers are there you still won’t be able organically to reach all of them. With this in mind, you might want to consider a paid job post to reach as many suitable candidates as possible.

On Facebook, clicks and reactions matter so inform your teams about the posts and invite them to share it with their network to help spread the word further!

Option two: Facebook Group

The second option is to post a job ad as a regular user in a Facebook Group. No matter whether you are a recruiter or business owner, posting your vacancy is a great way to inform your network that you are hiring! There are several options to do that:

• The job post can be shared as a regular post with your current network.
• Post a job in a Facebook group. For that, you firstly need to choose a relevant Facebook Group based on the role and location that you would like to join. Be ready, that in most of the cases you need to write to page admins why do you want to join the group. (In some cases, it might take a few days to get your application to join the group approved. But it is definitely worth waiting as you might reach tens of thousands of different people who are currently looking for a job.)

There are two things that I have experienced myself when posting a job in a group:

• Before posting anything think through are you ready to offer visa sponsorship and add that information into your post.
• Be ready for the excessive amount of personal messages from people around the world who are interested in coming to work with you. It is a huge workload to reply to all of them, however, in case you do not have resources to do that then better don’t post anything.

Option three: Think outside the box

The third option is to think outside the box and do something totally different that helps your job post go viral.

In 2013 Futurestep conducted a global study investigating the impact of innovation on recruitment.

Of the 4030 candidates, 55 per cent of participants said that even if they were happy in their current role they would consider leaving it if they were approached in an innovative way.

Moreover, 51 per cent said they would feel more positively towards the organisation; 49 per cent said they would be much more likely to consider the job advertised; while 33 per cent said that an innovative recruitment method would make them more likely to refer the role onto others.’