blog
Posted On Thursday, October 7, 2021
Author: Philip Sampson (Account Director)
I think that it goes without saying social media turned up, ramped up and changed the game when it comes to recruiting, not just life in general. Platforms like Facebook and especially LinkedIn have been an absolute game changer when it comes to sourcing and placing candidates. This has given a completely new way for recruiters to find clients and candidates and vice versa.
While this is nothing new in 2021 and I would like to think that nearly every recruitment company out there is utilising these channels to connect companies and candidates, it is a constantly evolving beast and what worked last season may not work this season, so it is important to stay on top of things.
With that in mind, I think it is a good idea to review the platforms available to us and how we can be utilizing them to aid our recruiting efforts.
Arguably the king when it comes to recruiting potential in the world of social media. It may not be as fun as scrolling through a Facebook or Instagram feed but it isn’t meant to be. They were built for people to kill time, LinkedIn was basically built for recruiting.
LinkedIn is an incredibly complex machine, populated with more than 500 million professionals who, simply by being active on the platform, means they take work seriously and as such are awesome candidates for being candidates or clients.
That being said, it is always a good question to ask yourself whether you are using it enough or whether you could be embracing it more. The list of features and tools it provides is too extensive for this article but it is always a good idea to keep upto date on what is capable on LinkedIn and how you can utilize it.
Twitter is a straight to the point platform with it’s imposed character limits meaning you are forced to be concise. And conciseness is vital in this day and age where people are moving their thumbs more than their feet, sprinting through news feeds with digitally shortened attention spans.
It is also an awesome place to spread industry news and as such, works well with content marketing. Building an audience isn’t too hard either if you are genuinely adding value to your industry. Follow backs can bring them in and a consistent posting plan of quality content they want to consume can keep them coming back.
Never forget the power of the hashtag either. Make sure to utilize strong tags including your area to give it localization and this will boost your profile massively.
Arguably, by statistics, the biggest player on the field. Though it can be noisey, the audience potential here is amazing. They are always rolling out new features which can be taken advantage of by a social media savvy recruiter. They even have job board functionality now which your ATS should be able to integrate with.
With everyone and their dog having a Facebook profile and the insane amount of data points they have on each one of them, even running paid advertising on the platform is not a bad idea if done well by someone who knows what they are doing.
Did you know that YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the planet (and quite probably the solar system)?
People are hooked to online video, especially considering recent world happenings. A lot of people go straight to YouTube when they want to learn or brush up on something. If you can answer your potential clients or candidates questions in reasonably lengthed video form then that will do wonders for your branding and bring in interest and business.
Pro tip : Video quality is easy to achieve with todays smartphones and a slight lack will not be the end of the world. Hell, you can even use animations or slides. Audio on the other hand is vital and worth investing in!