Every business needs a great team. And sometimes the difference between a business that succeeds and one that fails comes down to the kind of people they hire.
And if you're a small business, you definitely don't have a large budget to throw around on expensive employer branding or outsourcing your recruitment to a staffing agency - especially if it costs an average of $4,000 to hire one employee.
So you need to find an inexpensive and organic way to hire the best people into your company.
Enter Pinterest.
Pinterest is a virtual image-centric (read: multimedia) board or catalog for ideas. Say you find a recipe, a dress or some idea you'd like to save or share, Pinterest enables you to save, organize and arrange them the way you want. It's a great source of ideas for anything of interest - including recruitment.
Why using Pinterest for recruitment makes sense
For a platform that works more like a bookmarking site than a social network, Pinterest has seen some amazing numbers to pique any recruiter's interest. Pinterest, currently, has over 150 million registered users:
- 85% female
- 42% of U.S. online adult women
- 13% of U.S. online adult men
- 30% of all U.S. social media users
- 67% are millennials
Unlike Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Pinterest is still green as only a few recruiters and companies currently use it as part of their recruitment strategy. So getting in on it now makes you one of the few businesses leveraging the platform to attract and hire quality talent.
It presents a great opportunity to connect with hard-to-find talent you might not easily reach through other traditional channels.
The kind of candidates you will find on Pinterest
You can pretty much find all kinds of professionals on Pinterest. However, with 85% of Pinterest's user-base being women, it is arguably most suited for hiring female candidates.
You'll also find a large swath of top creatives and freelancers who regularly use Pinterest to share creative ideas in fashion, photography, recipes, web design, architecture and more.
Can you find accountants, lawyers and engineers on Pinterest? Yes. See what I found when I searched for accountants:
How to attract top talent on Pinterest
Attract the perfect candidate using pin boards.
Pin boards are like a clean whiteboard where you can save, organize and share your Pins. To hire the specific candidates you're looking for, you'll need to create as many boards as possible to effectively communicate to the candidates you're seeking to hire. Let's get to it, shall we?
Start with an About Us board. Use this board to tell prospective candidates about your company - from your mission and vision statements to who makes up the management team, and what exactly it is you do. Give as much information as any candidate would need to make an informed decision about your company. So try to paint a good picture.
Next, you create a board to showcase your company culture and people. Use this board to tell potential employees what work feels and looks like in your company. Add plenty pictures of your staff at work, at lunch, retreat, vacation, etc. Show the cool side of your company. This board is important to ensure a cultural fit between you and the candidate. Make culture and values very evident. Borrow some inspiration from Taco Bell.
Also create one job board for every job opening. If you have tens or hundreds of positions to fill, then create a board for different job categories. You can create one for Marketing jobs, another for IT jobs etc.
As a rule of thumb for every board, always include a web link to the specific job page on your website - not your homepage or another unrelated page - so candidates can find more information about the job and decide whether to apply or not.
A few other tips to help you find top talent on Pinterest
Optimize job posts on your website. Ensure the job page on your website is optimized for Pinterest. Include quality images and a "Pin it" button on every job post so it can be easily shared. The more website visitors who share the job postings, the greater the chance of your choice candidates finding it.
Attracting top talent requires building real relationships with candidates. Resist the temptation of treating candidates as mere numbers or commodities. Don't just dump them into the ATS after they have applied. Continue to engage with them on Pinterest. Respond to inquiries, provide feedback, etc.
Use Pinterest's advanced search system. Pinterest allows you to search for pins, boards and people who interest you. You can find top pinners who may just be the right fit for the role. When I searched for web designers, this was what I found. You can click on each profile to see their portfolio.
Use Promoted Pins to gain more visibility for your company boards. With Promoted you can pay to show certain Pins at the top of search results and category feeds. Promoted Pins offer advertisers a wider reach for their content. You can promote your job boards, team workouts, retreats, etc.
Onboarding new hires. Go beyond using your Pinterest account to attract talent. You can also leverage it to welcome and onboard your new hires. You can create onboarding boards like Career advice, Life at [your company name], interview advice and more.
So there you have it: a beginners guide to using Pinterest to find, attract and hire top talents. What other ways do you think brands can use Pinterest to find their ideal candidates? Let's hear it below.
