Have you ever tried choosing a restaurant with a group? How did you do it? You probably looked up the restaurant, checked out photos on Yelp and made sure that they were a legitimate, attractive option before you made your choice.

Think of social media as Yelp for your business. Officially defined as “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking,” social media has evolved into an all-purpose tool in today’s world. Both individuals and businesses use it to communicate, advertise, share and sell and it’s entirely free. We all know someone who uses social media, but what can it do for you? Let’s see how you can use it to recruit talent!

Build Your Employment Brand

Social media is a mechanism for conveying your company culture to potential recruits and attracting new staff. You can brand your social media channels, post photos and host videos. Customers and job seekers should be encouraged to participate in discussions and employees should promptly address questions and comments.

Social media allows job seekers to get a feel for what the company is like before they apply. By encouraging potential recruits to get to know the company culture before accepting a position, you ensure that the candidate is likely the right fit for your company.

No social media site is the same; therefore, you should implement a different approach for each one.

As a first step, decide whom you are trying to attract and tailor your strategy to that audience. You may want to start with one social media site, familiarize yourself with it and gradually grow your presence.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the big five channels:

1. Twitter:

Twitter is like a massive microblogging site with a twist. An imposed character count on all tweets means you must minimize the words you use without detracting from your message. It may not sound like it but selling your corporate brand in 140 characters or less is a lot harder than you think. With your social recruiting tool, you can create ‘Twitter Cards’ to attach rich photos, videos and media to your tweets and pack a bigger punch with a more expressive messaging beyond the limit.

Quick tips and best practices to get you started on Twitter:

• Start by setting up an account with your company name, a photo and a brief bio.
• Begin with a few relevant industry tweets and then start following others.
• Run a quick search on Twitter for anybody discussing a specific keyword and you can find hundreds of contacts. Target people to follow who work in the industry, people who may have the skills you need or their network. Often these people will follow you back and you’ll begin to build your list of followers.
• The easiest way to recruit is to tweet jobs you have available, i.e., “Looking for a marketing coordinator in NYC. Apply at (include a shortened URL using https://bitly.com/).”
• To make your job posting tweets stand out, use hashtags. Hashtags filter and find information on Twitter. Include the hashtag with a keyword in your tweet and it becomes instantly searchable.

Here are a few examples of hashtags you may want to consider using:

• #job
• #hiring
• #career

Similarly, you can search and source directly for job seekers using a keyword search.

Thinking beyond job postings for your Twitter account, consider using it to keep potential candidates interested and engaged. You can market events that you will be attending, and post company updates and relevant industry news. Your tweets say a lot about your company and corporate culture.

2. LinkedIn:

Considered the world’s largest professional network and most frequented social media platform for recruiting, LinkedIn is an important screening tool. With a vast network of valued connections, your company can easily maintain a high-profile relationship with both active and passive candidates. You can even look to employees for a boost via social distribution, which automatically shares job postings on their profiles for greater exposure and promotes internal referral processes.

Quick tips and best practices to get you started on LinkedIn:

• Start by making your company’s profile. Go to www. linkedin.com/companies and click the “add a company” button on the right-hand side.
• Once you create your company profile, make sure you keep it relevant and up to date. Edit regularly with job postings and updates on the company.
• You can actively search for candidates among LinkedIn members by searching keywords for people with the required qualifications listed in their LinkedIn profile.
• You can send an InMail to candidates directly or, if you share a connection, request an introduction.
• Joining groups is another effective way to attract potential candidates.
• Join industry or skill set groups and advertise your roles.
• After you join a group, find ways to start discussions with people in that group. You can contact people individually or they may directly contact you.

Another viable option is advertisements. With LinkedIn Ads, you can target a specific audience by job title and function, industry and company size, seniority and LinkedIn groups.

3. Facebook:

Facebook has transcended how job seekers interact with the brands they find interesting. It spans every age group, gender and ethnicity, so diversifying exposure isn’t an issue.

With such high user retention, Facebook is the perfect place to engage with job seekers, offer industry insights and post all your open positions. Additionally, Facebook offers companies a ‘Job Openings’ tab right from their profile, so candidates can visit one single repository and easily see what’s available.

Quick tips and best practices to get you started on Facebook:

• Start by creating an engaging company page and ensuring that all content is relevant and up to date. Be sure to create a public page where people can “like” your page and then receive notifications of jobs and any other updates you post.
• Encourage your employees to get involved and post comments to your page.
• Make sure you respond to all comments, good or bad.
• Don’t just use your wall for advertising vacancies. Use it to keep people interested, so more people will be active on the page and see the post when a job arises.
• Another option is to post a Facebook ad. Facebook can target ads to the exact audience you are looking to reach.

For example, suppose your company is in New Jersey and you are not including relocation in the budget for this position. In this case, you can target the job posting to only show up for those who live in New Jersey or bordering states. If the position is entry-level, you can target the job posting to a younger demographic.

4. Instagram

Instagram is a highly engaging way to promote your brand using pictures, videos and text captions while appealing to job seekers’ youthful generation.

Use the hashtag strategy we discussed in the Twitter section to increase your reach but be sure to create unique content for this channel that favors more personalized and highly stylized content.

Posting the same content across multiple channels (without tailoring it to the unique angles audiences expect there) will tell users you aren’t interested in providing the customer experience to which they are accustomed.

5. YouTube

With its video-only format distinguishing itself from the other members of this list, YouTube allows you to broadcast your brand.

Did you know that social videos generate more social shares than text and images combined?

YouTube enables your company to showcase the value of producing employee and culture-focused recruiting videos regularly.

In addition to YouTube video content, you can share employee-generated videos, built in-house, to your corporate social networks.

See how Domtar is using social media to attract new talent and a diverse workforce to the paper industry!  Check out our social media approaches social media pages here!

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