WHAT IS SOCIAL RECRUITING? A Starter Guide Powered by

WHAT IS SOCIAL RECRUITING? A Starter Guide Powered by

What is Social Recruiting? The term "social recruiting" can simply be defined as the process of attracting, finding, and hiring talent through the use of social networks. The concept makes sense: at it's core, recruiting is all about who you know and social networks are (not surprisingly) all about networking. Because recruitment is an inherently social function, it s no wonder that you ll likely find your next great hire through social media. By adding social recruiting to your existing talent acquisition strategy, you unlock the potential to reach quality candidates faster and easier than ever on the networks where they spend the most time.

The Multi-Platform Dilemma In the past, we ve put our personal and professional networks into separate boxes, assuming that one could not intersect with another. We believed that social platforms were an either/or proposition. The use of social platforms today is evolving, bringing the personal together with the professional, whether you are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+. While you don't need to "be everywhere" to have an effective social recruiting strategy, this guide will help determine which social networks are most relevant for your recruiting needs. Let's get started!

What is Social Recruiting? 3 LinkedIn Think of LinkedIn like a business networking event, where you go to exchange business cards with people with whom a connection might be beneficial to your career. This platform has recently added more "social" engagement features with the inclusion of status updates, influencers, likes, and comments. Many recruiters already rely on LinkedIn for it's candidate database and sourcing tools, but keep in mind: 1. A LinkedIn user's network is mostly made up of professionals they've met through a job which makes it a great place to find people with a specific professional background or profile. However, it is not all encompassing-- it may be difficult to find entry-level talent and hourly workers who make up the majority of the workforce. 2. With 94% of recruiters using LinkedIn, there is a lot of competition for in-demand talent. Certain profiles like Software Engineers for example, are overwhelmed with job opportunities, making it harder for companies to stand out. Tips for Social Recruiting with LinkedIn: Spread Your Employer Brand Make sure your company LinkedIn page features a consistent employer brand that matches your career site and other social networks. Share news, jobs, blog posts and videos. Increase Referrals Automate job sharing to your employees' and recruiters' connections. Proactively leverage 2nd and 3rd degree relationships. Stay Engaged Join LinkedIn Groups or (better yet) create one related to your industry. Be a resource for members by sharing good content, answering questions, and facilitating discussion. Be Different Stand out from your competitors by crafting unique and personalized messages to each prospective candidate. Introduce yourself, but make it all about them. Share This Guide

What is Social Recruiting? 4 Facebook Facebook is no longer just a social network for connecting with friends. It's the world's largest social network with a user base of 1.23 billion; it gives companies the opportunity to combine networking, conversation, branding, and application, all in one place. Facebook is part career site, part advertising platform, part sourcing system, part employee referral generator, part branding tool. Facebook represents 83% of all time spent on social networks and it's on this platform where you'll find many of the users who are not other professional networking sites. It is a goldmine for finding both passive and active jobseekers; it's here where you'll find nurses and sales professionals sharing their latest achievements at work and where graphic designers, customer service reps, copywriters and lawyers update their profiles with places they've studied or the skills and interests that make them unique. But it's not enough to set up a page and hope the right people will come, you must be strategic and proactive to get results. Tips for Social Recruiting with Facebook: Fill Your Talent Pipeline Your fans are your candidates. Build a talent community around your product, services, brand, and/ or careers with a Facebook Page. Spread Your Recruiting Message Create, spread, and share your employer brand in a dynamic, engaging way with shareable, like-able and searchable content. Let your employer brand go viral. Connect on the Go Facebook is the #1 most used mobile app. Showcase your jobs here and reach talent on any device, anywhere. Target Passive Talent Find and attract the right passive talent through sophisticated, narrow ad targeting. Find the Right People Source talent with keywords using Facebook's natural language search engine, Graph Search. Share Your Jobs Organically spread your message by posting jobs for your employees and fans to share with their Facebook networks. Share This Guide

What is Social Recruiting? 5 Twitter Twitter is an open information social network that has gained a reputation for quick and readily available messages called Tweets. With a 140 charater limit and a lot of activity, Twitter is about real-time 1:1 engagement on a see-it-andreply basis. Twitter users are tweeting 500 million times per day. With so much activity and so many unfiltered tweets, your talent has to be online (or on mobile) at the right time to see and engage with your message. However, the platform can be a very successful medium for attracting and finding talent. Because much of the user base is there to share knowledge and information about a topic that interests them, their tweets are often times geared towards like-minded individuals and are related to their profession. The takeaway? Leverage Twitter to find people from a certain industry or area of interest. Tips for Social Recruiting with Twitter: Automate Job Distribution Create a dedicated channel on Twitter for your jobs or use your existing corporate account and automate job sharing to your employees' and recruiters' connections. Strengthen Your Employer Brand Visual tweets are 4x more likely to get retweeted. Supplement career-related tweets with images for better engagement. Find the Right People Tweeting is a new form of "cold call" sourcing. Use hashtags to search and connect with specifc audiences. Engage Your Community Host Twitter chats to answer candidate questions and discuss your careers in real time. Share This Guide

What is Social Recruiting? 6 Google+ Google+ has still not been widely adopted as a social network, although it is now necessary to log into Google+ to use platforms like Gmail and YouTube. As a social network, Google+ is a platform for reaching the tech-savvy early adopter. You should keep that in mind as you decide whether or not to invest resources making this platform part of your social recruiting strategy. Don t know much about Google+? Don t worry: its number one value right now is its integration into the Google ecosystem, which makes it great for SEO. Search engine optimization certainly helps your website show up higher on Google searches; the more content you post, the more presence you'll have and the easier it'll be for jobseekers to find you. Tips for Social Recruiting with Google+: Generate SEO Use Google+ to post blogs from your career site and cross-post status updates from other social networks with links, keywords, and hashtags. Stay Engaged Join Google+ Groups related to your industry and be a resource for members by sharing good content, answering questions, and facilitating discussion. Share This Guide

How Can I Take Social Recruiting to the Next Level? Actively using social networks to share your recruiting message and jobs puts you ahead of the curve. Take that advantage to the next level by implementing a social recruiting solution that gives you extended capabilities for branding, recruiting and sourcing across multiple social channels. Read on to see how you can leverage the power of social networks for recruiting with Work4.

What is Social Recruiting? 8 Work4 s Social Recruiting Solution Allows You to: Be Everywhere Build an all-in-one, mobile-enabled multi-network social recruiting strategy that turns Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn users into your candidate pool. Streamline the Candidate Experience Reduce the length of the apply process and increase conversion rates by auto-populating candidate information from their social profiles to their job application. Strengthen Your Brand Through Social Referrals Drive referrals by auto-sharing jobs to your corporate, employee and recruiter networks and easily spread your brand message. Search and Source Proactively Automatically generate Graph Searches based on your existing job descriptions, connect with candidates and track the results of your outreach. Target Efficiently Optimize your advertising campaigns with our team of ads experts to maximize recruiting spend while finding more of the right people. Reach Mobile Candidates Keep the application frictionless with a mobile-optimized jobs list and apply process that allows talent to submit applications on the go. Share This Guide

So, what are you waiting for? Now that you know about social recruiting, it s time to take it to the next level. Head to www.work4labs.com to check out our other social recruiting resources or contact us today to learn how you can improve your social recruiting strategy. Sources: pewinternet.org/2013/12/30/social-media-update-2013/ forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/02/06/4-ways-to-use-facebook-to-find-a-job press.linkedin.com/about blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how work4labs.com 2014 Work4Labs, Inc. All rights reserved. contact@work4labs.com +1 (877) 509-0403 facebook.com/work4labs company/work4-labs @work4labs