Job seekers spend most of their time on social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Recruiters are already using social media platforms to achieve their recruitment goals. From posting workplace updates to creating appealing job vacancies to sending invitations, recruiters use social recruiting tactics to attract qualified candidates.
However, most recruiters make mistakes that negatively impact their social media recruiting strategies. We have identified 5 of the biggest mistakes recruiters make using social media.
1. Lack of clarity on target candidates for social media hiring
Recruiters must take different approaches depending on the candidate’s persona. Those who use the same tactics for every role fail miserably with social media hiring.
For each vacancy, define your target candidates, their qualities, strength, skills and everything else that matters for the role. It will help you define your target candidates, determine the best social platform and write the best outreach message.
2. Poor employer branding
Repetitively posting job vacancies and inviting people to like and follow will not give desired results.
Candidates will engage with your company on social media if you have a strong presence and share valuable content. Start with LinkedIn. Plan LinkedIn recruiting strategies. Develop content that helps candidates learn about you as an employer. Share information that contributes to employer branding and grabs the attention of target candidates. Collaborate with your marketing team to create interesting content that appeals to candidates, and they follow you.
3. Posting the same content on all social media platforms
Using a common approach on all social media platforms is another social recruiting mistake recruiters make. One type of content fits only one platform. For example, recruiters use Instagram differently to appeal to candidates in creative fields than on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Improvise your strategy as you move from one social platform to another. Rephrasing a few sentences and adding and subtracting a few vocabulary words could work well. Or you may have to rethink the entire piece of content to see what works for you on different social media platforms.
4. Using social posts far from compelling
Usually, recruiters who don’t spend enough time planning social posts struggle in their social recruiting effort. Using repetitive posts and not putting enough time and effort, recruiters post jobs far from making target candidates feel excited.
Before planning social media posts and engagement, collaborate with the marketing team and hiring manager to design posts and engagement messages. A well-thought and the curated post will appeal to your target candidates and prompt floods of shares.
5. Using a generic outreach template
Recruiters make mistakes by sending a generic outreach message. Most of the time, generic outreach messages get ignored. Instead of persuading the candidates to take action and apply, it frustrates them.
An impersonal outreach message will hardly convince potentially qualified candidates to apply to your jobs.
6. Not tracking performance
Developing ideas to optimise and improve social recruiting is difficult unless you measure its success or failure. Define metrics to measure social media recruiting success based on your recruitment objectives. Set quantifiable goals and track performance for your social media strategy.
Track metrics and analytics reports on job posts and the performance of your outreach messages. Use talent solutions and an applicant tracking system to see reports, talent pipeline and performance of sourcing channels. Using a recruitment tool like the PyjamaHR, you can publish jobs on LinkedIn, share them on other social media sites and view reports on sourcing channels effectiveness.
Successful recruiters leverage the presence of millions of job seekers on social networking sites. On social media, people tend to leave a page or scroll down quickly if you fail to engage them. Hence, you must do things right with social media recruiting. Use personalised messages to trigger interest of candidates. Adopt streamlined tools, network and engage to attract candidates better and speed up the hiring process.
