The Advantages of Social Media Recruiting for Employers

Why Use Social Media for Recruiting?

Listing job openings online is an easy way to let potential employees know about positions. But these ads can generate a flood of responses from unqualified or barely interested job candidates. Most employees today are therefore opting for digital recruiting that allows more precise targeting of their messages and deeper insight into the qualifications and interest of potential candidates.  That often means using social media.  According to research by the Society of Human Resources Management, two-thirds of employers hired candidates they found via social media.  Even more (84 percent) use social media as a recruiting method.  

       The social media site most often used for recruiting is Linkedln. On this career-related networking site, employers can run searches to identify individuals whose profiles mention particular skills, interests, or areas of experience.  They also can advertise openings in special-interest groups (taking care to follow each group’s rules for this type of posting). Employers also can benefit form participating on social media sites that serve groups for professions or trades.

     To use social media effectively, HR departments need a two-pronged approach.  The first prong is to develop a favourable online “brand” as an employer.  This requires not only regularly posting helpful, informative messages from the company, but also monitoring conversations in order to identify concerns and problems – and address them with solutions.  When an employer’s brand is favourable, workers who admire a company on Facebook might apply for a job or share a story about job openings, even if they didn’t go on Facebook to look for work.  Some companies view their campaigns to attract candidates as important as their advertising to customers.  For example, Heineken has developed unconventional videos that focus on its employment brand and employee experience.

      The second prong is to gather and analyze useful data about talented people who are or might become job candidates.  Social media data can tell employers where people are talking about the brand, the company, or the industry.  Searches can point recruiters to discussions on particular topics, where they can see who is making a valuable contribution. Dell’s Global Talent Brand and Tools team launched a social network campaign sharing their experiences working at Dell. The videos were posted to the company’s career website, its YouTube channel, and other candidate – and employee-targeted sites such as Glassdoor in concert with launching an optimized job search site.  The most sophisticated users of social media use analytic tools to help them find desirable candidates for key positions, so they can reach out with an offer to talk.

Questions

1. Based on this description, what are some advantages of finding a candidate via social media compared with traditional job posting on the company’s website?

2. Do you think it’s important to have a Linkedln profile? Why or Why not?