With the growth of platforms such as TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, social media has continued to transform the way organizations attract and engage job candidates. In addition to informing candidates about open positions, social media helps organizations promote their brand, build awareness, and uncover new sources of prospective applicants. With an effective strategy and proven recruitment marketing tactics, organizations can realize the full power of social media in their talent acquisition efforts.
Just about everyone uses social media, with 72.5% of Americans using at least one social media platform. The percentage is even higher among Gen Z and Millennials, who comprise a sizable portion of the workforce. CivicScience research found that 88% of Millennials and 90% of Gen Zers use social media. This reality makes it critical for organizations to leverage social media as a powerful tool for recruitment, not just for job postings, but for employer branding and overall candidate awareness efforts.
When used as part of a multi-channel recruitment marketing strategy, social media offers organizations the following benefits:
The key to attracting quality talent is an employer brand that resonates with prospective candidates, and social media is an excellent vehicle for accomplishing this goal. By showcasing their company values, people, and culture on relevant social media platforms, organizations can highlight the employee value proposition (EVP) and attract the attention of target candidates. Likes, shares, and comments further amplify brand messaging and help spread it across many social media networks.
Tip: A well-articulated EVP detailing what candidates can expect as employees of the company is at the heart of every successful employer brand. Recruitics helps organizations develop and execute an EVP and branding strategy that builds interest among prospective applicants.
With as many as 79% of job seekers using social media to find a job, it’s not difficult to see how social media can help organizations reach more of these individuals. However, social media offers much more than an opportunity to highlight job opportunities. Targeted social advertising allows recruitment marketing teams to reach candidates according to geography, location, and a range of other demographics. These ads can also help to increase brand awareness among passive candidates, as recruitment teams can place relevant social ads in individuals’ feeds, gaining their attention as they scroll.
Social media is a highly interactive recruitment channel that can make any employer brand more accessible to potential applicants. Just as follows, likes, and shares boost candidate engagement and spread recruitment marketing content, active employer profiles on sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor provide opportunities to respond to candidate comments and speak with candidates more directly.
Tip: Candidate engagement is critical through every stage of the candidate journey. Therefore, it’s critical to ensure career sites, landing pages, and ads are positioned to captivate candidates’ attention from awareness to hire.
Every effective social media recruitment strategy must be backed by proven best practices and tactics. By taking a systematic approach to social media branding and advertising, talent acquisition teams can utilize recruitment marketing dollars more efficiently and ensure the organization reaches target candidates on their favorite social media platforms.
The following steps will help organizations leverage social media more effectively:
Before developing and posting social media content, it’s essential to identify the intended audience and how the recruitment messaging should vary by audience segment. Creating candidate personas is an excellent way to define and fully understand each of these segments. Personas are representations of the ideal candidate for a specific position or job category, and they can help define characteristics such as a candidate’s education level, work experience, and social media preferences.
Social media preferences and behaviors will likely vary from persona to persona. For example, one persona may be more likely to join specific LinkedIn groups, while another may be more active on Facebook. With a more granular understanding of these behaviors, recruitment marketing teams can tailor job ads and branding content accordingly.
Creating dedicated channels for career content, rather than integrating it into main consumer channels, offers several advantages. By segregating careers/recruitment marketing content, companies can better delineate and engage with their intended audience. This approach also prevents the dissemination of career content to followers on consumer pages who lack relevance or interest in such material. While it's crucial not to saturate consumer pages solely with careers content, occasional collaborative posts can help promote dedicated careers pages.
Tip: Companies should have a separate careers page for sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. – companies don’t need a separate careers page on LinkedIn as it is already a professional platform, and career content is its main focus.
While social media allows organizations to reach a larger pool of target candidates, success depends on which platforms an organization uses and when. For example, research has found that younger generations use Instagram and TikTok significantly more than older generations. Therefore, organizations seeking to fill entry-level positions would do better to feature recruitment content on Instagram rather than Facebook, which is more popular among older generations less likely to seek entry-level roles.
Each social media platform offers a unique opportunity for engaging candidates. For example, LinkedIn allows employers to join professional groups, and X (formerly Twitter) is a great platform for following trending topics and hashtags. Other platforms offering candidate engagement opportunities include Snapchat, Threads, and YouTube. Additionally, talent acquisition teams should keep their employer profiles up-to-date on each platform. Monitoring comments and reviews (and responding when necessary) shows prospective candidates that the brand cares for its community and genuinely wants to engage back with them.
Also, companies don’t need to be present on every single platform. Focus on the platforms on which the company’s target audience is most active and works best. It’s better to master a few critical platforms than to spread efforts too thin trying to be present on all of them.
Tip: To cast a wider net and reach more candidates, organizations can also explore niche social media platforms, such as Pinterest and Reddit, as part of a broader programmatic job advertising strategy.
Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Trends Report says, "56% of consumers think that brands should be more relatable on social media.” Companies should remember that it is essential to promote jobs, but it’s even more important to connect with the audience in a relatable and authentic way. Audiences don’t like it when organizations are too focused on self-promotion. The purpose of a careers page is to create more of an intimate community relationship with the audience than on the brand’s consumer page. It’s essential to connect with them and talk to them rather than at them.
Hiring professionals can be relatable and authentic by posting things like AMA videos with recruiters offering resume tips, answering questions about the hiring process, office tours, tiny mics, “Advice to my Younger Self” videos, carousel posts with images from holiday celebrations or employee community involvement events, etc. Entertaining vertical-video style content generally performs very well as the videos are relatable, show behind-the-scenes of the culture, and provide more authenticity and transparency – allowing candidates to connect with the brand more deeply.
No matter the content type, the use of visual elements is critical. Visual content is engaging and memorable, and it’s also more shareable than other types of content, an undeniable bonus for social recruitment efforts.
Tip: Recruitment videos can reach an even wider audience through social media sharing. Discover how Jamyr by Recruitics makes it easy for recruitment professionals and employees to create and post videos to any social media platform.
In addition to refraining from exclusively promoting job opportunities, it's imperative to recognize the significance of engaging with a company’s existing workforce on social media platforms. Given that a substantial portion of a company’s followers comprises current employees, directing content toward them is paramount. Highlighting employee achievements through spotlights, showcasing company culture, glimpses into their lives beyond work, and commemorating internal advancements or tenure milestones are effective strategies. This demonstrates a genuine investment in current employees' wellbeing and fosters meaningful engagement with them.
Since candidate preferences and social media behaviors change over time, recruitment marketers should adopt an advertising strategy that enables them to start, stop, and enhance social media ad campaigns based on performance. Best practices such as A/B testing and advertising automation allow marketers to improve ad efficiency and identify which social channels are most effective in reaching the target candidate audience.
Other strategies that support ad optimization include:
To keep the momentum going, recruitment marketing teams should maintain consistent engagement with target candidates via actions such as:
When posting new content on social media, it’s best to add a healthy dose of native content rather than linking to third-party content. For example, Q&As, videos, and polls are sure to promote brand authenticity and gain the attention of social media audiences.
The best way to determine the true impact of these candidate engagement efforts is to monitor key performance indicators and make improvements where needed, one platform at a time. By testing each recruitment tactic and making adjustments based on performance, hiring professionals can develop an effective strategy for each social media platform.
The following metrics will provide valuable insights about which tactics are more effective:
Tip: Real-time recruitment analytics reveal which ad campaigns and social media strategies are more effective. They provide real-time insights that recruitment teams can use to optimize ad campaigns and refresh employer brand messaging.
Given the popularity of social media among passive and active job seekers, every successful recruitment strategy should include social media messaging and advertising. Using a combination of visual storytelling and branding content, organizations can build awareness and attract quality candidates on the social platforms they visit most.
For help getting started, the team at Recruitics is here to help! Recruitics’ recruitment marketing and analytics solutions help organizations develop a winning social media recruitment strategy that converts candidates into applicants.
