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Social Media and Recruiting Talent

Jim Newcomb | Career Tips, Hiring Advice, Leadership, Opinion, Recruiting Career Advice | December 27, 2022

Most companies use their corporate social media presence primarily to build customer relationships and attract new business. This makes sense; that’s where the revenue comes from. Also, marketing professionals are more accustomed to targeting that audience. That’s the purpose of marketing and what they’ve been trained to do.

Have you thought about how your social media presence fits your recruiting strategy and recruiting efforts to attract the right job candidates?

Why use social media to attract employees?

There are many good reasons to incorporate employee-focused content into your social media plan, as both a talent retention and recruiting tool.

First and most pragmatically, the customer base that follows your content on social networks may include prospective employees or people who can refer them. Talent acquisition can improve with referrals of not only active job seekers, but also passive candidates. What better talent pool could you ask for than quality candidates who already know and like your brand? Of course, it can work the other way around; people who initially follow your content on social media sites for employment reasons might just become customers.
There are more reasons to use your social media sites to attract top talent than these ‘transactional’ ones, though. Your current employees are the people who create your customer experience. When you make it clear that you care about recruiting the best potential candidates, you’re also telling customers that you care about the experience they have with your company. Showcasing employees through your social media platforms personalizes and humanizes your company’s brand, gives insights into your company culture, and shows you care about your people.
Social media channels are about the audience. Whether they know it or not, a company’s audience includes customers, prospective customers, employees, and potential employees. All are essential to a company’s success. A social media presence that speaks to all audiences helps to create a more holistic and cohesive brand. In addition, nearly every job candidate I interview wants to represent a quality product. What you communicate to customers is also consumed by high-quality potential employees, reinforcing your employer brand.

How to use social media as part of your recruiting strategy

In most cases, creating a separate social media presence focused on your employee experience is not a good idea. It can cause brand confusion, and in any case, people are less likely to follow an employee-focused profile that’s ‘one-dimensional.’ It’s better to incorporate this kind of content into the existing strategy. Employee content shouldn’t take over your feed – it’s just a matter of dripping into the overall mix. Engage your recruitment team (in-house and even recruitment agencies you partner with, like Goodwin Recruiting) to help develop the social media recruiting strategy and the employee value proposition you’re communicating.

As far as candidate-focused content is concerned, don’t just post job openings on your social networks. Naturally, you can link to your careers page, but the content should focus more broadly on the current employee experience. Here are some ideas about content you might include:

Showcase individual employees and the skills and expertise they bring to your customer experience.
Highlight specific jobs – especially those you frequently recruit – giving more context and background about the work the people in those jobs do.
Share social events and other gatherings that bring your employees together in a context that isn’t strictly work-related. This will personalize your employer brand and show that your employees enjoy their work relationships.
Celebrate employees who deserve celebrating – marking significant work anniversaries, accomplishing notable work, or completing a course or certification.

Finally, authenticity matters

As with any branding exercise, authenticity is critical, including in recruitment marketing. A law firm has a different brand presence than a retail chain. And even within the same industry, one restaurant may have a very different target market and therefore brand image than another. Your employee-related content should consistently reinforce the brand you present to your customers.

Social media can be much more than customer engagement. Incorporating the right messages into your social media recruiting strategy helps potential employees learn more about your business, company culture, and open positions, supporting your work (and your recruiter’s work!) in attracting top talent.