Workforce demographics are shifting, forcing recruitment teams to re-examine their strategies to focus on strategies that attract the dominant segment of today’s workforce – the Millennials. By 2025, the generation is expected to represent 75% of the global workforce, making the generation aged between 25 and 40 years the largest working generation.
With the rise of the Millennials, which have been widely recognized as the social generation, comes the departure from traditional recruitment methods. To remain competitive, organizations must redefine their recruitment strategies and place emphasis on connecting to talent through channels where the emerging workforce spends most of its time – online and on social networks.
What is social recruiting?
Social recruiting uses social media platforms for advertising jobs, connecting with potential employees, and vet candidates. Using social media for recruitment helps companies reach passive job seekers, hire high-quality candidates, and reduce hiring time and cost. Beyond recruitment, companies can use social media for employer branding. Organizations can spread brand awareness and share their employee’s value proposition through social media.
Fundamentals of effective social recruiting
Each organization can tailor their social recruitment strategy depending on its employment needs and company culture. However, there are basics to effective and successful social recruitment, such as:
Choosing the right channels
Each social media platform has a primary audience. For example, Instagram is best known for being a channel for people in creative fields. Therefore, Instagram would be an ideal platform to reach people to fill marketing, advertising, design, and art jobs. However, when it comes to sharing job openings, Facebook still represents one of the biggest audiences because of its monthly active users. As of April 2022, Facebook had 2.9 billion monthly active users – and that number continues to grow. Facebook is also one of the best channels to reach passive job seekers.
LinkedIn is currently the most popular social network for recruitment because it is oriented toward connecting professionals and recruiters. Recruitment teams have also used Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and even TikTok to identify and engage with talent.
Empower staff participation
Almost everyone has at least one social media account in this digital age. Empower employees, especially those outside the recruitment team, to become employer brand ambassadors. Communicate that their efforts can attract better-quality candidates who could be their potential co-workers. Make sharing job ads easy for them by providing shareable content that is detailed and clear about the job requirements, making it attractive to those who are qualified with the right skills and experience.
Gamify and reward ambassadorship
Employees will be more motivated to participate in social recruiting campaigns when their efforts are rewarded. Cash rewards, exclusive experiences, products, store credit, discounts, and bonuses are ways you can encourage employees to participate in social recruiting. Gamify the recruitment process with a point system, where points can be assigned based on qualified referrals, application submissions, and successful hires. Some companies even continue to reward employees behind successful referrals and hires when the new employee has reached a milestone, such as training completion.
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