According to a study, the statistics shows that there have been a 49% improvement in the talent quality after using Social media for recruitment.
It is long ago that Social Media was considered as just a tool to be connected with friends and family. Today Social Media has spreaded it’s boundaries in all aspects including networking, business development, shopping, selling and many more things.
Since social media is all about people getting connected and linking with each-others, Recruitment through these platforms became an obvious and easier way for the recruiters to find talents on Facebook, LinkedIn and on Tweeter.
It was a while ago when the recruiter used to also visit the Facebook/ twitter profiles of the candidates to know more about him/her. Today keeping behind the traditional methods of looking for talent on portals, employers can directly look for people on social media platforms.
On a portal the job-seeker creates profile / uploads the resume to seek a new opportunity; but he is not open beyond a certain level where the recruiter gets to know about him. Whereas creating a profile on a social media, he/she is in a complete open/ transparent atmosphere that lets him get connected with his coworkers, his alumnus, friends also with professionals of his own domain. He can link with them and get insights of the industry trends which can help him to uplift and upgrade his own career pave. For an employer while looking for an candidates, he shall get a clear picture about his professional background/ his strengths. It also allows the employer to view at his activities/ see portfolios/ past achievements etc. which plays a vital role in building up an image of the candidate. A recruiter then is free to directly connect with the candidate carrying his own social credibility and identity which reduces the efforts of cold calling & briefing.
Another very important aspect of considering social media for recruitment is shifting our focus and comfort zones from the traditional ways of hiring, the time shifted the recruitment process from Candidates visiting Employment Exchange offices to the portals and now it is again changing from the portals to the open and free platforms of social media.
Cost of job portals now a days have reached to the sky just because of the database availability, but on the other hands social media offers a vast database with a added attributes of networking and connecting. Nevertheless sometimes we do not require to spend our database credits for few low level positions which can be fulfilled on social media easily.
Resistance to Change: The argument between portals and social media hiring generally roams around the filters and user friendliness of the various search engines but we need to understand these are actually tiny excuses made in accordance with the resistance to change from the comfort zone.
One added attribute of social media recruitment is; it lightens your work pressure. The content on social media breaks the monotony and hence it proves to be like work and play.
There are few chunks of the recruiters who have already started the practice. Yet there is a lot of scope for many of them to explore more and find new creative ways to make their work more effective and focused.
So I sincerely recommend to start exploring Social Media Pages to find your next Talent!
Here are quick points that you must consider:
- Keep the Company pages updated with relevant content.
- Keep your own profiles updated with all relevant information.
- Your job post on Social media needs to be really effective and specific with all the details required yet crisp to attract the talent.
- Use simple language and creative content on social media to attract masses.
- Use hashtags with every content to reach to a targeted group.
- Update the jobs on regular basis, this shows your page active and increase the reach of your posts.
- Last but not the least close the jobs timely.