How to transform your recruitment – via social media

Social media has revolutionised so many aspects of business, and the recruitment function is no exception. Just ask the Australian Defence Force, which has the world’s most popular YouTube recruitment channel, with over 5 million hits!(*) Or consider the fact that 70% of people look on social media when looking for employment (**).

But what is “Social recruitment”, affectionately referred to as “Socruitment” by those in the know, and how can you make it work it for you?

Social recruitment is best thought of in terms of a story. The main characters are your organisation’s brand, your Employer Value Proposition (EVP), your values, ethics, mission statement and, ultimately, you and your colleagues. We start the story, as most do, by introducing these main characters via a carefully crafted content strategy, which may include:

written copy
testimonials
infographics
Top 10 lists and, most powerfully,
video.

Your content should follow some simple rules:

be relevant – so make sure you know your audience. Facebook and Linkedin are quite different media and may require different content for different audiences.
provide value – in order for users to want to engage with your content, it has to offer some value, whether that’s in the form of education, entertainment or productivity.
turn up your Emotional Intelligence and be sensitive to the issues in people’s broader lives (it’s not all about you); expand your conversation on social media to the bigger world we exist in.
look beyond Facebook and LinkedIn (which have a mere 1.1 billion and 200 million users respectively!) Pinterest, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube, Glassdoor, Vimeo are all great platforms to be embraced.

Finally, and most importantly, be authentic. Make sure that your reality matches your rhetoric; be honest, be human, and don’t mislead people because trust is like virginity – you can lose it only once.

Where to allocate the budget?

A short YouTube or Vimeo clip is arguably the most effective and engaging way of communicating your story’s main characters. Both Linkedin and Facebook accept and in fact promote video as part of your personal page or company page. They are easily uploaded and readily shared. Videos can entice viewers to follow links back to your website, where your Corporate Careers page reaffirms the “main characters.”

Why have we been telling this story? The aim all along is for individuals to engage with your brand, to have an affiliation with your EVP, and either now or in the future to become part of your talent community. This is the holy grail of Social Recruitment. Followers on Linkedin and Instagram, likes on Facebook and subscribers on You Tube are the lifeblood of any socruitment strategy. You may even have the ability to gather email addresses and engage via a newsletter.

When you garner significant support, across a variety of networks and geographies, you can then convert that to new hires via direct applicants or referrals. Instead of struggling with ads on Seek, you can advertise (or post or private message) directly to your talent community to ask people who are engaged already with your brand to apply for the role, or recommend someone who will be suitable.

And in addition to this all, your story is building your brand, taking your personal message to your prospective clients – furthering your chances of success.