Social media hasn’t only provided people with opportunities to stay in touch. It has also provided recruiters with more ways to find job candidates. This isn’t to say you should rely primarily on social media to fill open positions. For instance, if you seek to fill a leadership role, you might also want to coordinate with an executive search firm. They’ll have access to a vast network of potential candidates, as well.

That said, there are instances when it certainly can be valuable to leverage social media during the recruitment process. However, it’s essential to understand that there are some myths about social media recruiting that need to be debunked first if you plan to go this route Such misconceptions include the following:

Candidates will automatically find your account.

This is a big mistake that could result in you and your team wasting time and effort that doesn’t yield results. When planning your social media recruiting strategy, don’t assume that candidates will find your posts simply because you’ve created an account. Any effective social media marketer knows that a page won’t attract followers if no one is regularly updating it and using it to engage with others.

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The same principle applies in this situation. In fact, social media marketing is valuable precisely because it gives you the opportunity to reach out to people and make connections. Keep this in mind when developing your approach.

Social media recruiting is too time-consuming to be worth the effort.

This particular misconception serves as a foundation that prevents many individuals from taking full advantage of the potential of social media. Too many people assume the process of actively managing a social media account for recruitment purposes is too time-consuming. They believe that they’re better off focusing their efforts on other tasks and responsibilities.

On the one hand, it is true that effective social media recruiting requires a time investment. As previously stated, if you simply create an account and don’t actively manage it, then it’s unlikely that you’ll attract many candidates.

However, social media recruiting can be much less tedious than you think. This is another instance where we can learn a lesson from social media marketers, who often maintain efficiency through the use of various tools to organize and design content posting schedules. For example, online platforms such as Hootsuite allow you to access and update all of your social media channels through a single platform and to automate posts via RSS feeds.

That said, you will still need to monitor your accounts regularly for time-sensitive interactions and engagement.

You need to maintain complete professionalism.

An appropriate level of professionalism is important when recruiting in any capacity. You don’t want to give candidates the wrong impression about your expectations. However, you don’t need to be as formal in your language or behavior on social media as you would be when, for instance, drafting a listing for a traditional job search site.

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This highlights another reason why social media recruiting can be a useful tactic: you can use more casual language. This gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your company culture and internal brand, which allows people to obtain a better sense of your workplace environment than they would from a traditional job listing. As a result, you’ll be more likely to attract candidates who are a good fit for your organization.

You need to leverage all social media channels.

This is one myth that causes people to consider social media recruiting to be too time-consuming. Some human resource departments assume that if they embrace this recruitment strategy, they need to maintain an active presence on every major social media channel. Therefore, they feel that managing accounts across all of those platforms would require too much time and effort.

This is an understandable presumption to make. In fact, when you begin experimenting with social media recruiting, you very well might want to have a presence on many channels. However, in the long run, this won’t be necessary. You can monitor your progress to determine which platforms will be most effective in helping you to find candidates and which ones can be ignored. While that means you’ll need to invest the necessary time to manage multiple accounts at first, you’ll eventually be able to focus solely on the channels that yield results.

Social media should be the exclusive focus of your recruiting strategy.

Embracing social media recruiting as a tactic is a smart idea in the social age, However, you should avoid making the mistake of assuming it will solve all of your recruiting challenges. It’s merely one tool among many others. While it can help, it shouldn’t be the only element of your recruiting strategy. By combining social media use, adherence to traditional best practices, and coordination with executive search firms when necessary, you’ll be much more likely to attract the best candidates to fit your needs.