When you first gets started with social recruiting, it can feel like stepping into the Wild Wild West. Status updates are flying around at rapid speed, channels are changing every month, and your Facebook and Twitter inboxes for replies can make your email inbox seem empty. At the same time, there is vast sea of social recruiting tools and software to familiarize yourself with. We at Dice want to make sure your experience in “getting social” with recruiting is smooth and worry-free. So we asked ourselves the question – what are the basic principles and knowledge that should drive social recruiting strategies and engagement? For us, everything comes back to a simple, but carefully worded definition of what the heck social recruiting is. It’s a recruiting strategy that consistently incorporates data from social networking sites to source, evaluate and contact candidates. It needs to be consistent so that you can make apples to apples comparisons and so that your candidates receive a coherent experience with you. It should incorporate all use cases (source, evaluate and contact) to ensure maximum efficiency of your efforts. Now that you have this handy dandy definition, let’s briefly go through the pillars you should have in place to get started in social recruiting. 1. Always go back to your goals Align your efforts with specific recruiting goals. In social media marketing, we don’t just try to build up fans and followers. We align our efforts with goals such as strengthen our brand health or improve conversions. Similarly, your goal might be to reduce time-to-hire by finding unique candidates that competitors aren’t contacting. Or your goal might be to reduce cost-per-hire by showcasing your awesome company culture through social channels. 2. Start small I wanted to boil the ocean with social media when I got started. I wanted my company to be active on every channel and try to improve every business goal through social efforts. Can you guess how successful that was? In our Social Recruiting Starter Kit (below), we outline three steps to ensuring you are not boiling the ocean. We don’t think you need to have to keep up-to-date on the ins and outs of all the social channels that matter in tech. That’s what our Open Web social recruiting platform does for you. However, it is helpful to know how you can use some of the more popular channels to achieve your goals. We recommend at least getting familiar with how tech pros use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and GitHub; all summarized in our Starter Kit. 3. Apply good communication skills to a digital world Would you walk into a party and just start blurting out topics to talk about without listening to the person in front of you? I hope not. As you are thinking through what you are going to say on social channels and how you are going to respond, remember these principles that I’m sure you’ve heard from your parents at some point:
- Listen more than you talk – Remember, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
- Plan ahead – While you can just copy and paste links to open positions into social feeds, you should plan to provide insights into company culture, opportunities to be part of events and tips for like-minded pros.
- Keep it Positive – Or in the digital world, keep it interesting. Photographs, illustrations and videos will be some of your best friends in social recruiting.
