How to Use Social Media for Recruitment | Top 5 Tips

Recruiting is a crucial part of building a strong team. It’s the process by which new employees are identified, interviewed, and hired. It’s also a difficult process, which is why it’s important to leverage social media to find and recruit the best candidates. This article will provide you with tips and tricks to help you leverage social media for recruitment.

While there is no magic formula to hiring via social media, following these 5 tips to using social media to hire and recruit employees can help you implement a strategy that significantly improves your efforts. To attract potential employees, you need to approach your recruitment through social media strategically. This social recruitment strategy is a good way to make sure that you are getting the best candidates, at the right time.

All these channels give you a chance to engage with your target candidates personas, and build connections using social recruitment tactics. As more and more people are joining social networks and using them to find jobs, social recruitment is an absolute necessity for companies.

With LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter boasting more than 3.5 billion combined users today, recruiters are wise to use social media to reach out to prospective candidates. With 94% of recruiters using social media to find employees, according to The Muse, it is equally important to understand that job seekers are leaning on social media for their next professional gig.

Carefully Approach Passive Candidates

When using social media to recruit, especially LinkedIn, there is a good chance that you will run into some passive candidates, or people who are not actively looking for work. In a hiring context, finding groups of candidates who are actively looking for work makes the most sense. You can find the right candidates by engaging them via shared passions, ideals, or networks–something you cannot do through the other recruitment methods.

Choose the Right Platforms

Figure out where your employees and perfect candidates are spending their time online, and then pick the best platform to recruit on social media. You should share content on those platforms that shows that your company is a great place to work, so that you can organically attract candidates. Experiment with different platforms until you find the one that works for your company.

Use Appropriate Hashtags

Using hashtags the right way is crucial for people to be able to find your job listings. Anyone who searches those hashtags on social media will be able to see your posts. By researching and using the right hashtags, you can ensure that your posts are viewed by the right audience. For example, if your company is looking to fill content marketing positions, you can use hashtags like #marketingjobs, #contentmarketingjobs, or #contentmarketer.

Come Up With a Stellar Content Strategy

Whether your company is primarily on LinkedIn or Facebook, if you only post job openings, it will be difficult to maintain a following. Mix up the content with funny posts, helpful tips, or even inspirational posts. This shows personality and creates curiosity in potential candidates. Work with content and social media marketers to make your business page attractive to job seekers.

Focus on Niche Networks

LinkedIn might be the largest social network for recruiting, but it’s also the one with the most competition. Because of this, some recruiters have turned to niche social networks like GitHub, Overflow, Stack, or even Meetup. Smaller networks allow you to target certain groups of people in your industry. If you’re not getting the results you want from the larger networks, try out some smaller niche sites.

Find the Best Candidates

Recruiting with social media is an effective way for businesses to reach potential candidates and build relationships. Instead of relying on traditional marketing tactics, such as cold calling and emailing, recruiters can use social media to connect with candidates and build human connections. By using social media as a recruiting platform, businesses can increase the number of candidates they are able to attract and build a brand that is authentic and relatable to their target demographic. This not only increases the number of candidates who become hired, but also increases the number of qualified candidates who are ready to jump on the job opportunity when it is presented to them, thus increasing the business’ hiring yield.

What are Career Certification Programs?

Certificate programs are short-term educational programs, which typically take less time to finish than degrees. Community college students are finding certificate programs take far less time to complete, while still providing the same job benefits that are available with a full-time degree program.

Why Get a Career Certification?

Certificate programs can help you build skills and experience needed for a specific job. Even if you have a career already, you can still benefit from taking a certificate program to sharpen specific skills. While certificate programs are an excellent choice for recent high school graduates looking to invest in their professional future, they can be helpful to individuals who are already established in their careers.

Certificates vs. University and Grad School

If you have been ruling out grad school due to the time or expense, or if you cannot find a program that meets your needs, consider a certificate program. If you are looking to invest in your professional life down the road, but need to be working soon and making some money, a three-month certificate program may be just what you are looking for.

Sometimes, you may want to pursue a certificate program that will help you get ready to pursue licensure or certification. You may take the certificate first, then transfer some of the credits into the full-fledged degree if you wish to pursue it. In some cases, you may be able to count the coursework from your certificate towards your future bachelors degree.

It usually takes between two and three years to complete an M.A., though some programs may be shorter. Certificates, of course, require both less time and less money to obtain; certificates generally require one or fewer years in total and are much cheaper than the traditional undergraduate experience, be it a two-year degree or four. You’ll also also spend less money working towards a certificate compared with an M.A., particularly if you have an employer-reimbursed plan.

Where to Get a Career Certification

Plenty of online universities offer certificates for higher education, so doing some research can save you some cash while also moving up the occupational ladder. With the growth of online education, there is no shortage of classes that can give you a certificate for a specific craft, skill, or software program. Some are even free.

The growing popularity of online schools has made it possible to get a certification from almost anywhere. It is easy to enroll online and get your degree through any of a variety of online programs, so you can balance online classes with your job easily, or whatever other curves life might throw at you.

The Benefits of Career Certifications

Getting the right certification could show employers you are genuinely enthusiastic about your field, and you are willing to invest the time, energy, and money in pursuing education just because you want it. For example, if you’ve been a web developer for a few years and have yet to get certified, getting one now will enable you to upgrade your skills.

Certificate programs give you both education and experience. Most programs are designed for professionals of any age, who have completed a degree, and want to gain the practical expertise necessary either to apply for graduate school, or to advance or change careers.