Social Media is an integral part of daily life for many, with favourite platforms varying from individual to individual and feelings about social media changing from person to person. What is undeniable is that social media doesn’t seem to be going anywhere!
With that in mind, social media’s daily reach across a combined usership of billions provides employers with an opportunity to leverage these platforms to support their recruitment efforts. Sounds like a great idea, right?
The answer is yes –social media should be a part of any recruitment campaign. However, with more employers using social media to support their recruitment efforts, how do you get your recruitment campaigns to stand out? Read on to find out!
Grab Attention
Social media is not a job board and should not be approached as one – instead, social media provides you with an opportunity to contact a large amount of active and passive candidates who may or may not be interested in your role/s. Factoring this in, you want something attention grabbing such as ‘Recruiting Now’ or ‘We are hiring’ in the title of the campaign, or even as the opening line in any text, so your purpose and intent is immediate and transparent.
You don’t want to put too much information into the text – short and snappy is best for social media! Think about advertising the role title, location, and salary/benefits as well as a little reference to what you are looking for from the right candidate (or a bit about your culture/who you are). The goal with social media campaigns is to get the viewer to click through to your advert to find out more.
Image is key
Social Media is nothing if not led by images and videos (especially as of 2021!) – emerging platforms are focusing more and more on pictorial or video-led content and the more established platforms are following suit. So, what does this mean for your campaign to help you recruit?
You want an image that is going to stand out that is also reflective of your business; firstly, try and avoid stock images where you can because they look just like that – stock images. Try and use pictures of your employees, products or even premises so your adverts reflect your organisation from the outset. If you need to create pictures, it’s worth engaging with your marketing teams or if you don’t have one, obtaining some decent equipment (such as ring lights or good cameras, although a lot of smartphones have excellent cameras these days!). If you can, also try to superimpose your logo somewhere in the image to help with brand recognition for your organisation.
Social Media Comments – To respond or not to respond?
Social Media opens the gateway to comments from users – some platforms allow you to disable comments being left whilst others do not have this functionality. Most platforms will allow users to tag other users which can be great for recruitment as users can be directly alerted to your post. Your employees will also be able to engage with said posts and users in general can share to take your adverts further than you may have first considered.
Comment functionality can also lead to negative or even trolling messages being left on your posts which could hamper your efforts – as we all know, this can be the dark side of social media. So, what to do? Where you are not able to disable comments (although we would never recommend that you do), it is best practice to respond to negative comments in a professional and helpful way. Sometimes though, you may be compelled to delete or hide messages due to profanities or references to current employees,etc. In addition, you can consider creating a library of words in your platforms back office that means a comment would be automatically hidden if a particular word or expression is used within.
