Josh TolanOne of the best talent acquisition strategies continues to go underutilized — social recruiting.
The candidate experience is one of the most important parts of talent acquisition. You want candidates to feel wanted and for them to understand how they fit into the prospective role as well as your culture.
Social media is perfect for expanding your employer branding and connecting with candidates on a more human level. It’s a great channel to get to know who the best talent is before you even start asking interview questions. Building this authentic relationship helps you find and hire talent who are committed to long-term growth with you.
We spoke to Brad Owens to learn how social recruiting can help you find the right talent in a fast, effective manner.
As the hiring and retention expert at hrcoaching.com, a resource for culture building at small businesses, Owens shows how the world of social recruiting is changing for the better.
“The most important and underrated aspect of social recruiting right now is truly making a connection with one person,” he says. Instead of trying to reach every candidate, find the people who are perfect for your company and reach out directly.
Check out the full transcript of Owen’s insights on how to create a more effective social recruiting process:
All right, hey there this is Brad Owens. I am culture coach at hrcoaching.com. I’m also the host of a small business hiring podcast.
Make sharable content focused on your culture
So, I think recruiters can do a lot to make their YouTube videos a bit more engaging and interactive for, you know, their talents.
Quite honestly, I think that if you make a YouTube video that people want to share, that’s going to be more interactive and engaging, right? So what would you want to make shareable about your video?
You want it to show your corporate culture. You want them to say “oh my gosh this is a cool place to work. Let me share this and show other people that they should be doing this,” or “let me share this with my boss.” “Hey Todd, we should be doing this, too.” Right?
So if you make this cool company culture kind of video — here’s what we do for fun, here’s what our people are all about, we really care about our employees. People want to share that around, and it will show your corporate culture and attract the type of people that you want to attract.
So make a video that is more engaging about your culture, about your people, not about the specific job, not about the sales, not about any of the types of things that people typically use in one of these recruitment videos. You want to show your company. You want to show, “here’s the type of people we are,” so you attract those same people. That’s the best thing you can do to make an engaging interactive.
Don’t forget about your employees’ networks
Companies can ensure that their content is being viewed by the right type of candidates if they are asking their employees to share it out to their friends, family, people they think might be interested in working there. So, I would use this as a part of your recruitment process, as a part of your referral process.
You know if you are trying to find the best employees for your business, time and time again, that comes from referrals. Many, many tests have proven this, many, many studies have shown that the best employees you can have for your business are referrals. Why is that?
People who are giving you referrals typically know about you, what works for you, what people would work well with you, what your business is like, what kind of personalities fit well with your organization. So referrals are the authors of the best candidates for your business.
If you are using the recruitment video, or whatever you’re making as part of your referral process, you’re having your people send out something like “hey, check out what it’s like to work here.” And then they’re sending it to people who might get excited about working there by seeing the video of your corporate culture, the things you’re doing. Right?
Make this video a part of your corporate culture, of “here’s what it’s like to work here. Here is the kind of people we have here.” And then send that out to your team and say, “hey, find us good people to work here that fit in with this. And use this video to show what we’re all about.”
That’s how you get in front of the right people to make sure that those employees know the type of people that work well in your organization. They will share it with those other people that will also work well in your organization. So, use your referral network. That’s how you’re going to get the best people in.
Aim to connect with just one person
I think the most important and underrated aspect of social recruiting right now is truly making a connection with one person. I think so much of what’s going wrong in social media right now is trying to stand in the middle of a crowd, shout out whatever you have to say, and hope someone hears it and responds. That’s like sitting in the middle of a crowd when someone’s hurt yelling, “someone call 911.” No one’s going to call. If you point to that person and say you call 911, they’ll call. Right?
So let’s use that in our social recruiting as well. Go out and find the people who were talking about the topics that are relevant to your business and send them direct messages, send them @ messages send them whatever you can to get on their radar.
Don’t just post these relevant articles to your industry on your company Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is, call out specific people. Go out and engage — truly engage.
Do things that don’t scale. Everyone’s hoping that social recruiting will be this, “Oh, I’m going to attract hundreds of candidates.” But in reality you’re just using that to get your company message out. If you truly want to attract candidates, go and find them.
Have someone on your team who goes out and uses these channels to find people who are, you know, fitting in with your corporate culture — who will be good fits for you for the long term, and engage them in conversation, engage one-on-one. That’s what’s missing from social recruiting, this one-on-one engagement.
Everyone is trying to use these tools to get in front of the most people — to quit as quickly as possible. That’s not going to work. People are getting worn out with that. Make sure that you target that one specific person who you know is going to be a fit for your organization, and put all your power behind getting that person on board. So, that’s what I think people are missing today with social recruiting.
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