This is a guest post by Dipti Khandekar. She is a blogger and loves to write about Career and Job search topics. She helps people search the right job and develop a bright career. Know more about CareerFolio at @CareerFolio
For a successful organization, its employees are the most important asset. Hiring the right people for the right job is a crucial task for every hiring manager. The exponential growth of social media provides access to information about education, experience and skill sets of a large number of users. Reach and impact of social media are helpful for recruitment.
Here are the top seven tips to make your hiring efforts more productive.
1. Get to know the candidates
The very first step in order to use social media for hiring is the knowledge about candidates. Today, Facebook and LinkedIn are the most popular networking sites. Yet, there are a few sites that are less popular, but have a more focused audience.
One such case is Pinterest, where the majority of users pin about various recipes and articles of clothing. For companies in the clothing, food, travel, and fashion, it can be the best platform to engage people. Find the social media platforms that best suit your business and create an account at each.
2. Your Status says IT!
Posting job openings as a status is communicated to all the people who are connected to the company and enable them to share it with their connections in the same field. This is a simple cost-effective way to communicate the openings in the organization.
Engage the connections by posting useful information, videos, and innovations related to the industry. It helps in establishing two-way communication with potential hires.
For instance, a company in the field of graphics and photography can post award-winning photographs.
3. Keep Tracking
With various data analysis tools, social media platforms make it easy to understand the performance of each post. It is easy to check the number of likes, followers, engagement of users. It also enables you to check number of users from a particular geographical area. It has statistical tools for the same. Hence, one can get to know which type of posts attracts the most users and keeps them engaged. It’s helpful in tailoring the social recruitment strategy.
4. Expand the reach
For reaching more people, your updates must be liked and shared by many people. Participating in groups on LinkedIn is highly recommended as one can ask questions, answer queries of group members and initiate discussions on industry related topics. It also increases your connections within industry.
Ask your employees to share the updates on their personal Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to multiply the reach of the audience.
5. Review regularly
Social media alone cannot replace the traditional hiring processes, but can complement it. Check the effectiveness of hiring using social media with respect to time, i.e. whether you get candidates with relevant skill sets within a stipulated time. There is a good chance that lots of talented candidates do not have a social profile at a given time or do not access social media on a daily basis. You might miss these people when focused only on social media for hiring.
6. Use Hashtags on Twitter
Hash tags are used on Twitter for keeping track of multiple conversations about certain subjects. Talk about company culture and let the world know how great a place the company is to work. Make sure your existing employees are talking positively about the company and using hastags for the same, as they can be your best advertising.
Making an announcement about a company on Twitter serves no purpose without the applicable hashtags. Additionally, don’t neglect to search Twitter for relevant hashtags. Sometimes the right candidate is out there using hashtags to search for a great company to work for.
7. Launch a Contest
A contest is always a win-win situation as it is useful for both hiring and branding. Not only participant but also their friends and connections get to know about your organization. Creative positions can lend themselves well to these types of methods. Depending on the position you want to hire for, you can launch a contest on a social media platform and ask your employees to spread the word from their personal accounts. For instance, for the position of a graphic designer, you may ask candidates to submit their designs on a given topic.
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