How To Build A Social Recruiting Strategy.

In creating a social recruiting strategy, there are 3 critical considerations every employer or talent organization must address directly and comprehensively. 

The good news is, you already know the answers to these crucial questions, and while unique to every company, recruiter and job opportunity, those answers provide a strategic, measurable framework for social recruiting success.

The Big 3 Questions of Talent Acquisition

Hiring managers, HR business partners, recruiters and executive leadership (not to mention current employees) are all crucial stakeholders in the talent acquisition and retention process.

That’s why it’s important to remember that no matter what your role or the size of your company, recruiting relies on performance based feedback.  Like whether or not top talent accepts your offer.

1. What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to finding and retaining top talent?

   There’s always that one req or passive candidate profile that’s the most pressing, the most critical, and, by general rule, the most difficult for which to source.  The one with an empty pipeline where “just-in-time” was yesterday.  And, of course, market demand’s creating a revolving door for the A players you’ve already managed to bring on board. 

   No matter what the title or department, if it’s the role which is the most imperative to your company’s business objectives, it’s the one you need to concentrate your social recruiting efforts on.  Because it’s likely the one that’s taking up most of your time, anyway.

   Bottom Line: Social Media saves time and should enhance, not replace, your current talent acquisition strategies.

2. What are you doing to overcome this challenge for recruitment and retention?

   To build an effective social recruiting strategy, you have to know your objectives.  And if you’re in the business of people, there’s only one objective: to find the best talent the most efficiently as possible. 

   According to Career XRoads recent Recruiting Budget and Sourcing Investment Report, for all the sourcing and spend dedicated to identifying external talent, the top source of hire (by far), was internal promotions and  transfers.

    

   Internal movement accounted for 50.3% of all hires.  #2 on the list, and the top source for external referrals (27.5%) was internal referrals.  Following closely on both lists?  Job boards, which accounted for 24.9% of all external hires in 2017.

   And that same study showed that 88.9% of blue chip brands and global employers surveyed in the study attributed at least one hire to a paid job board posting.  Just thought that was worth a mention since actionable data is key to strategic recruitment.

   Bottom Line: Engage your employees and hiring managers; they’re your most likely candidates, or the most likely to have that next hire in their network.

   The easiest way to connect the dots?  Social media.  The content engine driving online engagement: job postings.

   To put it in Boolean terms, you can’t operate with OR anymore.  It’s AND.  That’s logic. 

3. Why should top talent want to work for you?

   The war for talent is heating up.  If you find and engage a qualified, interested and available candidate, chances are so has the competition.  That’s why when creating an employment value proposition and communicating it through employer branding, you’ve got to appeal to the head and the heart.

   Bottom Line: Job descriptions, title, compensation and recruitment advertising looks a lot alike, but at the end of the day, top talent makes its decision based on one single competitive differentiation: your company’s culture and the people who create it.

   That’s why the most valuable recruiter you’ve got is your current employees.  Lucky there’s social media to put a face to the name (or Twitter name, or Facebook photo).