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How to Use Twitter to Recruit Top Talent

Twitter, staffing, recruiting,

280 characters may not seem like a great deal to get your message across, but if you play it right, Twitter can be an excellent way to find and recruit the top talent in your field.

A staggering 61 percent of job seekers use Twitter as part of their job search, and according to statistics, there are more active candidates using Twitter than there are LinkedIn whose whole purpose is to network and find work! What’s more, using Twitter to fill your positions is totally free!

So how exactly do you use Twitter to find and recruit top talent?

Use the Advanced Search Feature

A lot of companies struggle to find top talent with Twitter because they simply rely on using hashtags to find and attract candidates. This can throw up some good options, but you’ll likely be bombarded with unsuitable candidates too, and not only that but it simply isn’t the most efficient way to find the top talent.

What you should really be doing is using the advanced search interface to help with your staffing issues. This allows you to leverage hashtags, geocoding, and RSS feeds on Twitter so that you can really narrow down the field and find the best candidates. This will allow you to filter out candidates by location and specific skill sets far more easily than searching hashtags alone. 

To use the advanced search, follow these four steps:

  1. Enter your search into the search bar on twitter.com.
  2. Click Advanced search, located underneath Search filters on the upper right of your results page, or click More options and then click Advanced search.
  3. Fill in the appropriate fields to refine your search results (see below for some helpful tips).
  4. Click Search to see your results.

Follow Candidates

Following candidates is a great way to see if they’ll fit in with your company culture, and to find out a bit more about them. Retweeting them will also give them a bit of an ego boost, and as you undoubtedly know, flattery can get you everywhere in the world of work!

Send Personalized Tweets

When you’ve identified a potential candidate on Twitter, you should get in touch with them as soon as possible. However, what you should not do is simply spam them with a job advert or lots of heavy information. You’re far more likely to get a response if you send a personalized Tweet. You can do this by looking at the candidate’s Twitter profile for any info, and of course, by looking at their Tweets to see what they’re like/ what skills they have/ etc..

Use Referral Bonuses

Candidates like to know about the culture of a company before they agree to be interviewed by them. That means taking a more personal approach on Twitter is a good idea. You can do this by having your employees Tweet about positions for a less corporate feel. You can incentivize them to do this by offering them a bonus for every candidate they convince to apply via their Twitter feed, which they should use to show what working for the company is like in as positive a way as they possibly can. Just give them a unique link so they can claim their reward.

Build Your Brand

Arguably, the best way to recruit top talent on Twitter is to build your own brand’s presence. Tweet often, tweet about the most important subjects in your niche regularly, show off your company culture a lot and interact with others in your industry daily.

It may also be a good idea to set up a separate account just for recruiting, so you can more easily stream out candidates from general followers.

Twitter can be a powerful recruitment tool if you use it well!

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