Social Recruiting is a term used for the recruitment of new employees via the use of digital methods, using social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, even Glassdoor.

It is clear that social media is a phenomenon. Its growth best explained by human kind’s inexhaustible desire to be a social being. After the expansion of home computers in the late 1980s, social media was becoming more sophisticated; Internet Relay Chats were first used in 1988. Just nine years later the first recognisable social media site, Six Degrees, was created.

By 1997, just 13 years later there were close to a billion Social Media users, this is expected to have tripled by 2019!

A quick look at any smartphone today shows that the average user has access to at least four social media channels anywhere they are!

Social Recruiting is intrinsically the attraction and communication with candidates (potential or otherwise), but it should be so much more than this.

To us, Social Recruiting is so much more than output. While output can achieve the goal of Social Recruitment, consider these sites a platform in which to increase brand awareness and to engage with your target audience; both of which are much more important.

However, a social media account on constant transmit is useless. To us, social recruiting is engaging with the audience socially; this means receiving as well as transmitting, creating an open dialogue with candidates and using social media channels to facilitate this.

Social Recruiting has its uses, indeed reaching an audience of nearly 3 billion in a few clicks, is for marketers, highly attractive. However, it has to be backed up.

 Too many employers get it wrong. When using social recruiting, it is vital that when engaging with a potential new employee that you give them something back when they choose to engage.

A candidate who is attracted to your business via Social Recruiting methods needs something when they land on your company’s homepage.

If you don’t have a ‘Work For Us’ page, with information about who you are, what benefits you offer, and what your staff are saying; then what does the person you hooked see? If you do have one, and hide it as tab 8 of 9, or worse still, only available via the site-map this is just as bad.

Be proud, Be obvious, Be Open.