Contrary to common practice, talent acquisition and recruitment are not interchangeable. See, recruitment is essentially the process of filling in vacant positions. On the other hand, talent acquisition goes beyond that.
Talent acquisition is a streamlined process and a well-thought-out strategy. It is the process of looking for and bringing in specialists, executives, and other specialized and highly-skilled positions into the company.
Seeing as the pool of employees for these positions are highly competitive, companies must stand out with their talent acquisition practices to bring in the best people. One of the cost-efficient methods is by using social media for talent acquisition.
Here’s how your organization can get the best candidates for the position.
Focus Sourcing on Fewer Platforms
As you aim to fill in specialist and executive roles, you can’t just post your job posts on any social media platform. Doing this will just fill your inbox with hopefuls who aren’t exactly qualified for the job. Receiving a lot of responses may seem a delight, but filtering them to actual leads takes more time and effort than necessary. It only made the entire process counterproductive.
What you can do better is to nitpick platforms. LinkedIn, for one, is the top choice for talent acquisition professionals to get leads and recommendations for possible joiners. On top of that, LinkedIn is already established as the go-to social media for professionals. It’s also an excellent platform for building a wider professional network.
In these select few sourcing platforms, you can directly connect it with your talent acquisition platform. As an automated platform for talent acquisition management, it will be responsible for further filtering the sent applications. Using it ensures that you will only be proceeding with the best candidates, the closest ones to the ideal candidate.
On top of that, using an automated talent acquisition platform also eliminates sourcing discrimination. It’s an ideal tool if you want to further diversify your organization.
Amplify the Search on Wider-Reach Platforms
This next method is meant to complement the previous position. With the wide popularity and regular use of social media, it can already be likened to the modern-day word of mouth. People still do talk, but it’s no longer rare for them to reference social media posts and events as the main topic of face-to-face conversation.
Use this fact to your advantage. Publish and boost posts for your job posting to gain more traction. Even if a capable candidate does not see your post, someone who knows them might. A family member, a close friend, or a former colleague might forward the posting to them.
An ideal flow of posting is to start on LinkedIn, where most members of your professional circle are. They can help boost the post by sharing, commenting, and recommending it to seekers who fit the job. Next is to go for the platform where you have the most traffic, especially interactions. It does not need to be the one with the most followers.
Doing so ensures that more people will engage with your job post in real-time. It may not reach qualified applicants right away, but this strategy will get the word out.
Grow Your Social Media Pages
An employee’s first instinct now includes searching for the company they are interested in applying for. And they will look up, not only the company website but also the organization’s socials. The transparent and genuine interactions between employees and clients are all visible there.
A blank and outdated Facebook or Instagram page will do you no good. The perfect rating on a bland company Facebook page won’t be as appealing compared to a nearly-perfect rating on a consistently present page.
If you are yet to start your social media engagement, you may start small but be consistent. The consistent posting will build your organization’s image. It provides a better, more holistic image beyond your company profile and mission-vision statement on your website. Make sure to post images of current company events and celebrations as well.
Grow your brand as inviting as possible. To do this better, you might want to follow this hack: duplicate your apps on different devices, which you can easily do by using an app duplicator. Since you’ll be duplicating an app, all the credentials and recent activity are duplicated as well. You’re making a clone of what you already have.
Further on, here’s how duplicating your social media apps can help grow your online brand and engagement:
- Multiple social media managers can work together on the same platform without being tagged as questionable or “spammy” activity.
- Several handlers can also respond to incidents and reports from clients in shorter periods.
- Multiple social media handlers can manage different platforms interchangeably with less hassle.
Keep Engagement With Passive Candidates
It’s not at all times that your plan and the prospect’s decision work out. Reaching out and keeping engagement with passive candidates is an especially smart move for talent acquisition. Even if these past and passive candidates are no longer available for employment, they sure have someone in their network that they can recommend.
They are excellent points of referral as they already know what you are looking for and they know these referrals personally. The disparity that is often present in traditional recruitment is often eliminated through this type of referral.
Build and Showcase Personal Relations
People used to view company names as mere brands and nothing more. The prevalence of social media changed as it connected applicants, clients, and everyday users to the company brand.
Bridging this relationship is no less than an excellent method of recruiting high-caliber people. Employees today have their “dream” companies. The organizations they wish to work for because of their services and culture. Showcasing your culture through seemingly unfiltered interactions through different social media platforms is like showing the outsiders what it’s like to work for the organization.
This isn’t a new hack, but most companies haven’t perfected this method yet. Those who have been in the industry for years can still see through these practices. Always remember that you’re looking for talents for highly-competitive positions. They have the upper hand. You may offer the highest bid, but if your company culture is questionable, at best, then you will still have trouble filling in that position.
You can carry out this method effectively by posting real-time Instagram Stories to show how you carry out daily operations. Highlight genuine relationships inside the organization, including both formal and casual get-togethers. This will pique the people’s interest in what is the experience of working with you.
Showcase Benefits
Applicants want to know what they can get in return for all the expertise and services required from them on the get-go. As such, make sure to emphasize the benefits of working with you across all your social media platforms.
In your job postings on LinkedIn, be transparent with the starting salary and all the benefits for new employees. Make things interesting by also indicating the perks of staying long-term. For most applicants, these pieces of information make or break their decision to finally send in that application form.
Outside of LinkedIn, curate and highlight the benefits of working for your company that aren’t monetary. Post celebrations on your Facebook page. Don’t forget to post about company programs for continued development as well. You can also have explainer posts to thoroughly discuss your organization’s benefits package.
Lastly, we can’t stress this enough, capture real-time interactions within the workplace. Capture moments that embody your company’s values, and market them as a benefit. This type of advertising can be as potent as one can be because it is a sneak peek of what one might expect upon joining.
Take Advantage of Current Social Media Trends
This tip may seem unconventional when it comes to talent acquisition because of the type of roles that you need to fill in. However, getting in on current social media trends will direct traffic to your brand.
For example, Instagram is used by organizations as another readily-available sourcing tool. Instagram Stories, in particular, lets the user add a short description and go-follow link to each story. If a follower finds it interesting, they can just swipe up and be redirected to your sourcing page.
The emergence and popularity of short-form videos, such as in Instagram Reels and Tiktok, are creating new waves of attracting a following. These short-form videos gain traction easily as they are shareable on different platforms.
Designate a Role for Each Social Media Platform
As mentioned above, focus your recruitment process on LinkedIn. Position this social media site as your go-to recruitment platform. This will serve as an initial filter for the applicants. To filter the serious participants from those who applied just for the sake of it.
Relying on that process on LinkedIn isn’t the end. You may use your Facebook page and the organization’s business website to spread the word about the available position. Using Facebook is an ideal position because of the platform’s density of users. Anyone can share your post and it will reach an exponentially larger network than what you currently have.
Don’t forget about your Instagram and Twitter profiles as well.
Set Instagram as the main platform for real-time visual interactions. It is a great platform to establish your brand. Curate your profile in a way that you want to be perceived by possible applicants. Always keep in mind that applicants today do their research before sitting down for an interview. Use your Instagram page to post images, stories, and reels to build the ideal image for them.
Lastly, Twitter is another social media platform that you need to invest time on. It is the ideal platform to disseminate real-time updates. As already known, Twitter is the go-to platform if people want to know the play-by-play of any event or hot topic. For an organization, having an active Twitter profile is an advantage because you can connect with your followers in real-time as well.
If someone has an inquiry about available job positions, they can easily reach you through your Twitter profile. On top of that, it’s also easy to share said information as anyone can retweet or re-share your post so long as your profile remains public.
Using all these platforms at the same time requires more manpower, but it makes the entire acquisition process easier.
Benefit From Strategic Paid Ads
Social media paid ads technically mean targeted ads. This is an excellent method to make your search for talents more efficient. Facebook, in particular, has more or less 2.9 million monthly users. With that many users, the platform has a behemoth of data that improves the precision of ad targeting.
In the simplest sense, your ads will be directed to people who might be the most interested ones. Relying on your ads’ organic growth and engagement might still yield the same result, but it will take a longer period. If you want to test both methods out, you can start your job post as an organic post before making it a paid post.
Moreover, don’t limit the use of paid ads for boosting your recruitment efforts. Don’t forget to boost posts that will help increase and cement your brand recognition.
Final Thoughts: Social Media For Talent Acquisition
Talent acquisition management is a level up from traditional recruitment. It’s a more competitive league as a handful of organizations vye for a smaller, more concentrated pool of candidates. Social media can be an excellent tool to stand out from others, but you need to be smart with how to go about it.
From choosing the ideal platforms to engaging in unfiltered online conversations, talent acquisition management is all about strategic decisions to bring in the best people. And not just that, be wise with the tools you use. Talent acquisition software platforms will ease the burden of this highly competitive process.
External software will indeed ease the burden of the process, but don’t forget to use all your readily-available resources wisely as well. Maximize the free use of different social media platforms. Designate roles for each one whenever possible. And above anything else, your social media efforts for talent acquisition will only be as effective as how you utilize your tools.