#145 From recruiting on social media to social recruiting

Social recruiting is the new kid on the employee advocacy, corporate employer brand influencer and talent ambassador block.

All of these pursue better employer brand awareness and help to hiring.

Nearly 5 billion people use social media today. I’m pretty sure a fair amount of this lot has been using social media to hire and find their next job.

We all know LinkedIn may be the key social media for hiring and job searching, but what about other social media?

And what about leveraging social media more widely than just recruiters posting jobs and employees resharing job post links that never reach nor convert anyone?

It’s time to go from simply recruiting on social media to social recruiting.

Episode #145 From recruiting on social media to social recruiting

In today’s Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast episodewe will discuss why it’s time to move from recruiting on social media to social recruiting.

My name is Susanna Rantanen, and I coach and consult branding, marketing and communications for HR folks such as recruiters, talent acquisition and employer branding professionals.

Let’s get started with today’s episode!

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Social recruiting and recruiting on social media – What’s the difference?

Recruiting on social media is:

  • Posting, sharing and advertising your vacancies on social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
  • Running organic and paid recruitment campaigns on social media to build awareness for the role and recruitment process.
  • Resharing job posts for employees’ networks and contacts.
  • Talking about a vacancy on your profile when you hire for it.

Social recruiting is more strategic with the intent to:

  • Build and connect with relevant talent networks.
  • Bring awareness to the fact that your company, in general, is growing and hiring.
  • Support all hiring to your business or to those teams and divisions your hiring managers represent.
  • Pursue inbound recruitment leads.
  • Build a talent pool, but as social media connections instead of a CV bank.

Building the modern employer brand and social recruiting

While social recruiting isn’t “traditional” employer branding, it ties nicely with my method for building the modern employer brand. 

The differences between these two methods are:

  • The Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️ is a system designed to be used by the HR/Talent marketing & communication or the employer branding team from the company’s official (employer brand) accounts.
  • Social recruiting is done by hiring managers, recruiters and team members on their personal social media profiles.
  • Building the modern employer brand is not focused on hiring, while social recruiting specifically focuses on hiring.
CTA image to Instant Employer Brand Accelerator™️ 12 week coaching program with Susanna Rantanen

Social recruiting also ties nicely with the Instant Employer Brand Accelerator™️ Method for talent acquisition, for which we have a coaching program here at Employer Branding Agency Emine.

The difference here is that this method is built for in-house recruiters who don’t have the support or the resources for company-wide employer branding and need to take matters in their own hands.

Social recruiting and corporate employer brand influencers

Social recruiting is also close to what I spoke about last week: using corporate employer brand influencers to spread the word.

The difference here is that social recruiting is talent acquisition intensive when a corporate employer brand influencer program focuses on building thought leadership and influence by socially active and connected employees.

Let me wrap up the commonalities of these methods I have discussed in connection with social recruiting. Just to clarify it for you. 

  • Both corporate employer brand influencer program and social recruiting rely a lot on a diverse group of active employees speaking for their own and the company’s behalf.
  • Modern employer branding and social recruiting focus on generating inbound leads to the recruitment funnel and building relationships with relevant talent audiences.
  • The Instant Employer Brand Accelerator program and social recruiting both leverage social media and content to convert relevant job seekers into candidates and new employees.

Growing your talent networks and connections is the key

Social recruiting is just not about posting content and commenting sporadically on other people’s posts.

When a recruitment campaign on social media leans a lot on one-way communication and promotion of the job opportunity, social recruiting is much more than that.

It aims to get more out of the time HR, recruiters, and other employees and managers spend on social media. 

An essential part of this new practice is growing your networks and connections online with relevant target audience members and stakeholders.

When employees, including managers and HR, grow their personal connections and networks, some followers will likely follow the company too. And it should be proposed and encouraged as well.

The most effective content combines career growth posts, and other thought leadership posts.

Your people participating in these programs from their own profiles will attract and grow their personal networks. And it’s important to allow it. As long as those people work for your business, your company benefits from it.

Some facts on the power of various types of employee advocacy programs

According to an IBM study, referred to by my fellow content writer Neal Schaffer in his blog post, leads developed through employee advocacy convert 7 times more frequently than other leads.

Furthermore, a Social Toaster blog post has more data to share with us:

  • 54% pf people trust a regular employee over a CEO. 
  • 68% trust a company technical expert more than the CEO.
  • 86% of employees involved in various employee advocacy programs say it has had a positive impact on their career.
  • Your brand’s message goes 561% further when shared by your employees compared to when shared via your official channels.

Who should you connect with?

Let’s say, you are hiring software engineers and digital marketers.

In addition to connecting with these profiles directly, you also want to connect with:

  • Inhouse recruiters and recruitment consultancies who hire for these roles.
  • Companies of all sizes, also hiring for these roles and similar roles.
  • Industry thought leaders, who regularly talk about topics of relevancy and interest to people in these roles.
  • Students and young professionals whom you could hire for these roles one day.
  • Over-experienced people for your roles if they have lots of relevant contacts.
  • People in the same role as you in companies who also hire software engineers and digital marketers

Because not only can you learn a lot from a more diverse network of people, who still link with the people you need to attract, when you engage with their posts, your target audience may eventually see your posts too.

That’s how the algorithm works.

From posting job ads on social media to generating recruitment leads and building the employer brand on social media

Let’s summarise this episode.

Social recruiting is the process of leveraging social media platforms to increase successful hires with candidates and generate recruitment leads. 

Social recruiters can be anyone from your organisation.

Furthermore, I encourage your “lot” to be a diverse group of employees from different backgrounds, roles, and levels of responsibility.

#1 Start with actively hiring managers and leaders

At the basic level, you want your actively hiring managers, division leads, and recruiters to contribute engaging and connecting with relevant talents online.

#2 Recruit employees too

Employees who are active on social media can also be invited to use their networks on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to connect with potential job seekers.

They can provide value and establish trust by actively listening and engaging in conversations with prospects and leading them towards your active recruitment processes.

The key to the successful use of social media in talent acquisition

The key to successful social recruiting is creating meaningful connections that add value for potential candidates and the company. 

Encourage your social recruiters to use insights from their platforms to help you together to understand their audience’s needs and interests better.

This will enable them to create tailored content to help nurture those online relationships.

Social recruiting can help gain new customers too

In addition to building strong talent connections and relationships, managers who contribute as social recruiters can leverage their networks to gain new customers and expand their reach. 

By networking on social media, social recruiters can create more leads that can eventually be converted into candidates and even sales. 

What are your thoughts about all these various ways to apply social media for employer branding and talent acquisition?

Are you getting confused between:

  • corporate employer brand influencers
  • employee advocates
  • social recruiters?

What are your thoughts about social recruiting?

Could a more strategic way to get various employees on board to help generate recruitment leads for your company help your business?

Or do you prefer to recruit like you have done and focus on employer branding as an additional strategy?

These are all alternatives to each other, supporting companies in different stages, with different budgets, rules, practices and habits.

I guess my key message here is that the modern approach to talent marketing: be it employer branding, recruitment marketing, employee advocacy, or even collaborating with external employer brand influencers are only the beginning to how we can leverage branding, marketing and communication in HR – internally and externally.

And I want to be your coach and partner in doing so.

Ok, that’s all for this week, my friends! 

Connect with me on socials, and do not hesitate to DM me if you are looking for a coach or an employer branding agency partner. 

Important announcement!

At the time of publishing this episode, we are one day short of June 2023. I’m going to put this podcast (publishing new episodes) on a hiatus between June and about mid-August, 2023.

During this time, I try to get back to writing my book and enjoying an extended summer vacation.

Back again with fresh content about mid-August, 2023!

Thanks for listening. Until next time!

Susanna

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