It’s a candidate’s job market and, if businesses hope to compete, it’s imperative that they can attract top talent. A huge portion of the talent pool today is, at most, “passively” looking for new opportunities. This means that you can’t just post your open jobs to a job board and hope that the right candidate applies; you must actively engage even passive candidates if you have any hope of winning the “war on talent.” While most organizations today are aware that social media can be a powerful hiring tool, a surprising number aren’t using it to its fullest, or even at all. Social media can be a brilliant source of recruiting potential if used well. So where to start?

  1.       Be Consistent

Consistency is key to developing a successful social recruiting process. You may not need a dedicated social recruiter posting on your behalf day and night, but the sporadic posting of jobs to LinkedIn, Facebook, and their ilk will not be very impactful. You should be posting content regularly, ideally daily, to attract and grow a potential candidate pool. Your “voice” and “tone” should also be consistent. Figure out how often you want to post and how you want your social messaging to sound, then make sure you consistently strive towards your goals for both.

  1.       Be Engaging

Easier said than done, volumes have been written on the topic of audience engagement. The whole thing is liable to feel overwhelming and overly technical to a social hiring novice. It’s important to remember that there will be some trial and error, but in time you will figure out what works to engage your audience.  Try out different strategies; do you get more reaction when you ask questions? Do people respond well when you share photos? Whatever you do, make sure you tailor your message to your target audience – the people you’d love to have working for you – as much as you can.

  1.       Be Diverse

While you obviously want to use your social hiring efforts to fill your open jobs, if you truly want to get the most from social recruitment, you should try to connect with your audience on many levels. This isn’t just your chance to advertise job openings, it is your opportunity to showcase the great things about working in your organization.  Share useful content, post about your successes, and connect with your future and current candidate pool beyond just the scope of filling a req.

  1.       Be Targeted

There are a mind-bending number of social media platforms in regular use today and attempting to maintain a diverse, engaging, and consistent footprint on all of them would likely require much more effort than it was worth. For that reason alone, it pays to be targeted in your approach. Go to where your audience already is. It may require some research and a bit of trial and error, but determine who you’re looking to attract to your organization, and then find out which platforms they use the most. If you have the biggest need for seasoned executive talent, you’ll probably find them in a different place than you would new grads. Figure out the type of talent you want to attract and then make sure your efforts are targeted to reach them.

While there is certainly plenty more to creating a successful social hiring strategy, these four steps should help you create a great foundation.  By creating a presence that is consistent, engaging, and varied and then targeting your efforts to the places they’ll be the most impactful, you will have a scalable and customizable process that can be used to supercharge your recruitment efforts and meet whatever talent needs you may have.

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