Looking for a new person to add to your growing team? Social media can help you find the employee you’re exactly looking for.

As businesses change and fully embrace the digital age, the recruitment industry has also seen a steady shift in using new tools and methods to hire candidates – social media being the #1 tool on top of them. According to Jobvite, 94% of recruiters now use social media for recruiting while employers who used social media to hire found a 49% improvement in candidate quality compared to candidates hired through traditional recruiting channels. Additionally, 59% of recruiters dubbed candidates hired from social media as “highest quality”.

Social media as a recruiting tool

Social media does more to your company aside from being a fast and simple tool to contact potential candidates.

With the use of social media, you can easily promote brand engagement and build relationships with potential candidates. Community pages on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn lend themselves well to speaking about your company, providing all the basic information that a potential candidate would need to know. The best part about it is you can track who views and likes your pages too – thanks to the connection and analytics features that these social networks have – so you can easily determine who your audience is, or in this case, your potential employee. And as Burns & McDonnel have put it, you know you’ve done your job well if a candidate leaves your page wanting to experience more of your organization.

With these in mind, here are the top social media platforms that can aid you with your candidate search along with how to use them to your advantage:

LinkedIn

Currently holding the title of the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn boasts of a total of 347+ million members, with 44,000 mobile job applications posted on a daily basis. According to Herd Wisdom, 89% of recruiters have hired someone through LinkedIn while 10,200,000 applicants reported of finding their job through the professional network.

With its roster of helpful features, it’s not hard to understand why LinkedIn dominates social media recruiting and sourcing. LinkedIn profiles include the top skills of its users making it easy for you to filter your search if you’re looking for a particular skill set. The endorsements and recommendations of a user’s connections also say a lot about him, too. But beyond the search and profile features of the network, here are some of its (underutilized) features that you need to know:

Introductions – This feature allows you to contact 2nd-degree connections through contacts you already have in common. It’s a great way to source a lead from a referral and vice-versa.

Who’s Viewed Your Profile – This feature allows you to see where your viewers work (company and location) and the job that they do (including job title and industry).

Updates notification – LinkedIn gives you the freedom on whether you’d like to notify your network or not of your profile updates. Not only do you get updated with your connections’ profile changes, this also allows you to see who’s actively looking for a job or who are currently open for job offers.

Content Marketing – Whether you do it through status updates, long-form publishing, or discussion in groups, LinkedIn is also a great platform to better engage your target audience. Better engagement attracts more connections, and similarly, more connections allows you to have more leads for your recruitment and sourcing.

Facebook

Facebook remains the largest social media network in the world with over 1.4 billion users. With an average of 890 million daily active users per day, it’s not surprising that employers also turn to the said network for recruitment and sourcing. According to Herd Wisdom, 26% of recruiters have hired someone through Facebook while 18,400,000 applicants reported having found their job through the network.

Facebook may not allow you to have advanced keyword search like LinkedIn does, but it allows you to build the trusted relationship that you need to engage potential candidates. Here are some of Facebook’s features that you can cultivate to aid you in your talent search:

Fan pages – Use your company Facebook page to promote brand engagement. Converse with your followers, fans, and potential candidates on a regular basis to build a relationship.

Facebook ads – Through Facebook ads, you can also filter your audience based on demographics, behavior, location, and interests, thus narrowing your search for the candidate you’re specifically looking for.

Groups – Create or join a community that is interest or industry-based. This way, you’re also allowing yourself to communicate with a group of talents that could come in handy when you need to fill a number of empty positions in your team.

Facebook referrals – The share option is your #1 friend when it comes to referrals. You can post a job opening on your account and your friends have the option to share it instantly in their own timeline, a friend’s, a group, a page they manage, or in a private message.

Twitter

Twitter is used for relevant but timely interactions with your followers. Coming close after Facebook, it currently has 1 billion users with 271 million active users. Fifteen percent of recruiters have hired someone through Twitter while 8,000,000 applicants reported having found their job through the network.

Like Facebook, you can have a better access to candidate leads by engaging your audience and building your following. You may choose to use your company’s own Twitter account or have your recruiting or HR manager use their own account to do the work. Whichever you prefer, the key is to post concise but relevant messages that would directly reflect the personality of your brand.

Here are other Twitter features that may aid you in your talent search:

Advanced search – Search engine optimization (SEO) is your friend, use it to your advantage. In the same manner that you would use certain keywords to drive traffic to your website, use relevant keywords in your tweets for better results. Use hashtags for the job opening such as #jobhunt. Hashtags are a great way to narrow down a target audience as users can still see your tweets with the hashtag without even following your account. Similarly, you can find potential candidates through this process. Twitter’s advanced search also allows you to specify certain words, exact phrases, and hashtags along with dates and location data to filter your search.

Twitter’s real-time culture – In the same way that your real-time updates could expose your company culture and pique the interest of potential candidates, connecting or simply viewing a candidate’s Twitter profile can provide you a glimpse of their personality and interests.

Google+

Google+ is the fastest growing social media network, now having 25 million users. It’s relatively new compared to its peers like Facebook and Twitter, but this doesn’t mean its own potential should be undermined. It’s the social media network owned by the most powerful search engine tool in the world, after all, and that already gives you leverage to its SEO benefits. Its user base may still be small, but it’s a great social media platform to directly reach out to industry influencers and professionals.

Here are Google+ features you can cultivate to your advantage:

Host a Google+ Hangout – A free video chatting service from Google, Google+ Hangout allows you to have one-on-one chats or group chats. You can also exchange photos, documents, and links while having a video conversation, making it an effective tool for video interviews with potential candidates or simply engaging your followers.

Engage your audience through the +1 – One way to actively interact with your network and gain followers in Google+ is through the “+1” feature. It works in the same manner that the Facebook like button does, and everything that you’ve +1-ed appears on own company profile.

Google+ Circles – Google+ Circles allows you to separate your followers into groups or “circles”. You can categorize your followers based on specific relationships and similarly, send tailored content to each circle.

Communities and Collections – Google+’s two new features allows you to follow to reach out to specific industries, allowing you to source leads for more niche positions. Communities allow you to create discussions and news and updates, giving way to more interaction between you and your followers. Collections, on the other hand, are content produced by influencers which you may also follow. This could give you an insight into the latest trends and events in your industry and allow you to reach easily out to influencers, too.

At the end of the day, remember that recruitment and hiring is a two-way process, and you’d want to approach it first by building a good relationship with potential candidates. The social media recruitment landscape is only continuing to evolve but with a social media recruitment strategy executed well; you’re bound to find the perfect match for your company in time.

In Manila Recruitment, talent is guaranteed. From executives to seniors to experts to specialists, Manila Recruitment can find the perfect candidate for your company.

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