Recruitment Via Social Media: 4 Ways to Make It Work [INFOGRAPHIC]

If you’re limiting your social media usage to personal status updates, retweets and instant photos, you’re doing it all wrong. Social media isn’t just for our personal lives anymore; it’s for the professional side of us too.

Today, the biggest and best companies are leveraging social media as a recruiting tool, and small businesses should be doing the same. With social media recruiting, you’ll be connecting to job seekers and candidates that want to actively engage in dialogue, network and become the next big thing at your small business. By taking your recruiting efforts online, you’ll embark on the new age of recruitment and find that behind the virtual walls, profiles and updates, there are real people who are ready to make a big impact.

According to an infographic by Staff.com (see below), 92% of companies today use social media as a means for recruiting. Of those companies, 73% claim they’ve hired via social media, 42% say that their job candidate pool has improved and 20% have proof that it takes less time to hire thanks to social media recruiting. With all of this success though, 36% of firms are not utilizing social media for recruiting purposes.

If you’re one of the 36%, how do you begin to use social media to attract and hire the best and brightest?

1. Establish a social media presence. First, you need to either create social media accounts on different platforms or brush the dust off of those profiles that you may have made years ago and neglected. Expand your presence to sites like Spark Hire too. Essentially, putting your company out there will help to attract active job seekers.
2. Use it to build your brand. With your social media accounts, you can begin to build your brand. Showcase your employees and company culture, ask followers for feedback on your products and include fun posts that have nothing to do with your industry. Doing this will build a following of loyal clients and potential employees who want to engage with you as a company and not just your product.
3. 3.  Post open job opportunities. Use these outlets to post job opportunities too. What better pool to recruit from than your loyal followers? Plus, if you’re using social media correctly, you’ll have job candidates following your social media presence just so they know when you’re hiring.
4. Dialogue with professionals in your industry. This isn’t a one-way street. You have to follow professionals and companies in your industry too. In doing so, you’ll find those professionals who are not only engaged in the services and products but passionate about them as well. And those make the best employees.

Don’t be afraid of social media recruiting; embrace it. You may have no idea what you’re doing initially, but with practice, you’ll know the ropes in no time.

Do you believe that social media should be used in recruiting prospective job candidates? Why or why not? Share now in our comments!