Attracting The Best Candidates Through Social Platforms

From the Desktop of Deirdre Mammano

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Deirdre Mammano, Vice President, Digital Strategy

3/18/2011

Faced with this huge task of finding the best candidates for your positions, how do you become proactive? You’ve heard a lot about social media but social metrics are constantly changing. Facebook users now reach over 500 million. Twitter has over 175 million registered users. LinkedIn boasts over 90 million user profiles. That’s great, but what does that mean to recruitment? This article will give you a beginner’s guide to recruiting, finding and attracting the best possible candidates through popular social platforms recruiters and companies may already use. If you or your company doesn’t use these outlets, it's time to start. My goal is to at least spark one idea from the suggestions below that you can immediately implement.

Building your Personal Social Brand.

The first and most important piece of the social puzzle is your social currency. Now that social media has grown exponentially in popularity over the past six years, part of the focus has turned toward creating your personal brand as an accessible person who serves as the gateway for the right candidate to find the right job. If you’re a seasoned social media user with a growing number of connections, you're in a good spot to begin leveraging your social prowess, but what if you’ve just started?

First and foremost, make connections. In order to have social currency -- you need to build it. To do that, make connections with internal brand ambassadors with high social currency. Find out who has the most friends and followers. These people can be your co-workers, industry leaders, bloggers, tweeters and overall social influencers who have a prominent voice in the market where you are looking to recruit. Once you've begun to hone your social clout, the next step is to choose relevant and engaging content.

When posting content, think infotainment! Content is king, regardless of how many times you’ve heard this, it’s still true. In order to create a relevant following for your personal social brand, it’s important to post informative, engaging and educational content that will grasp the interest of the reader and make them want to share it with their followers. These key elements create the perfect recipe for content that your followers will want to share. In turn, the goal is for their followers to read -- and hopefully share the content you originally posted, leading back to your post and strengthening your social currency as well as your credibility.

Recognition and Response.

Responding to those who recognize and give you feedback to your content is key and proper social media etiquette. Remember, social media is all about the conversation. Recognition and response in social media creates a personalized element behind your social brand. It shows your audiences that not only are you engaged and have quality content to share; you also care about your presence, industry and candidates. It is a good rule of thumb to respond to those who have shared and commented on your content within 24-48 hours. This is a key factor keeping the flow of conversation going and acknowledging the engagement.

Leverage your Social Tools.

Great, so now you understand how and why it's important to create your social brand, respond, engage and how to be dynamic but what can you do RIGHT NOW, TODAY, to begin to find those perfect candidates and track engagement. Here, we'll touch on how to use core social media platforms to: a) get the message out about the positions you’re hiring for and b) speak to and attract qualified job seekers to your opportunities.

Let's begin with the most famous social network, Facebook. The Facebook Marketplace is much like the classified section in the newspapers. Like the Craigslist of Facebook, it allows you to post anything from apartments to job opportunities; all of which are searchable by the Facebook community. The great news is-- it’s free! The steps to posting a job opportunity through Facebook Marketplace are noted below.

To access the Facebook Marketplace, select “Marketplace” from your Facebook homepage. If you do not see Marketplace in your homepage, type “Marketplace” into the search bar. Choose the application and add it to your Facebook profile.

Deirdre Mammano’s Facebook Page.

When you click Marketplace it will take you to the main Marketplace page. To post a job, click “Post” located in the upper right of the page.

Marketplace

Once you click “Post” a dropdown box will appear. Select Jobs and select “Fill a Position”. Click Continue.

Select Fill Position

A box will pop up with a form to fill out with details of the job. Fill out the job title, categories and location. Be sure the “To Everyone” option is selected. Click post. Your job listing will be posted.

Click Post

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is the professional networking community that focuses on having users exhibit their work talents. This is a great place to attract candidates because not only does LinkedIn showcase companies and user profiles, they also have groups. LinkedIn groups are focused on being a place where people with a common interest can congregate and discuss content surrounding this topic. An added benefit to these groups is the ability to post job opportunities for free to groups if the group settings allow. Keep in mind before posting a job it is best practice to form a relationship first with the group by participating in answering and asking group questions, then begin to post relevant job openings.

How to post a job to a Career Discussion

  • To post a job to a group, click the jobs tab within the group.
  • Then click “post a career discussion”

Then click post a career discussion

  • Enter the title of your job in the box that reads “Start a career discussion or share something with the group”.
  • Then click “attach a link”.

Then click attach a link.

  • Copy and paste the long URL from your job req and paste it into the “Attach a Link” box.
  • Click attach
  • Then click Share

Then click Share

  • Your job posting will be shared within the career discussion section of the LinkedIn Group.

Promote through your Signature File:

Your e-mail signature is an extremely powerful tool. Think of the hundreds of e-mails you send, possibly on a daily basis and who they reach. Just like social media, where word of mouth is king, advertising your social footprint within your signatures will lead those who receive your emails to your social profiles --helping to create buzz around you, your work, your social presence and postings. See the example below:

Social Media Links

Track through Bit.ly

Last, but certainly not least is bit.ly. Posting links is great but how can you gauge beyond gaining a few followers and a few engagements that anyone is actually reading your content. Bit.ly is a URL shortener that takes long URL’s and shortens them into post friendly short links with the added benefit of metrics tracking. As a result, you can see the engagement, both passive and active, with your content. This is important in order to strategically target your content choices in order to get the best return on engagement and attract the best qualified candidates for your jobs.

Bit.ly links

It’s important to use a Bit.ly link versus a long link because:

  • Bit.ly’s are trackable. By using a bit.ly link, you’re able to track how many clicks your link gets and when the link is clicked.
  • It’s cleaner and allows for more space to type content.

How to Create a Bit.ly link.

  • Type bit.ly into your browser
  • Enter the long URL into the box that says “Shorten Links Here”
  • Click the “Shorten” button.
  • Copy and paste your Bit.ly link into your post.

Now that you’re prepared to begin conquering the social space, keep in mind that as rapidly as social metrics change, so do the platforms themselves. Just remember, no matter what the change -- the same basic social media etiquette principles apply. Follow social influencers in your industry. Strengthen your personal social brand through informative and engaging content. Recognize and respond to those who comment on or share your content and lastly, constantly continue to create relationships within the social space.

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