Social media and recruiting may seem like two different worlds. Social media is often viewed as something meant for fun and entertainment, not professional connection — unless we are talking about LinkedIn. But social media can be a valuable tool in recruitment and companies across the globe are using it for these purposes.
Facebook is one of the social media networks where you can find the perfect professionals for your company. You can build a big audience of candidates and people who would advocate your recruiting. You just have to find the right strategy that will appeal to the right audience and win you many great insights and value. You have to provide your candidates with equal parts of entertainment, usefulness and recruitment messages.
But if you are unsure on how to use Facebook for recruiting candidates, here are some tips that can help you:
1. Using Facebook to Find Active and Passive Candidates
Both active and passive audiences can be of great value to you as a recruiter. The most successful recruiters on social media know that in order to capture the right kind of attention, they need to represent themselves and their company’s page as one of the top pages in the niche. Doing this will attract people to your social media page and establish a great presence for you. The same principles can work across the social media platforms and Facebook too. The potential reach here can even be better than on LinkedIn.
This happens because Facebook users enter the website daily, not just once or twice a moth as an average LinkedIn user usually would. The user base is also a lot bigger. This makes it clear why the Facebook audience can be a lot better for your recruitment needs.
However, Facebook has somewhat turned into a payment is a must model. They have changed the algorithm that determines what is shown to the user and this has reduced the chances of any updates you post — or any other company, for that matter — ever appearing on the user’s homepage. If you haven’t paid to boost your posts, your users will likely not see it.
This means that you must have a budget in place for your Facebook efforts. There is no point in going through the trouble of creating a Facebook page, creating nice posts and so on if no one is going to see it. This is why payment is necessary for your strategies to have some effect.
Depending on your fan base, you will only have to boost your posts a bit with small spending needs. The budget doesn’t have to be huge but it needs to exist. Facebook will also let you pay if you want to be seen outside your audience, which is great for your recruitment. People can see you in a significant way and it can increase your reach on social media. It’s also less expensive than advertising on LinkedIn.
2. Use Facebook to Retarget Prospects
This is a proven tactic to improve your results. This is when a candidate enters your page and then your advertisements and posts appear in their news feeds, social media pages, websites and so on. This is retargeting — reminding your prospects that you are still there and available. This is a simple thing — only a small number of people take action the first time they interact with your brand or any brand. When you appear in front of them again and again, integrating with elements they are familiar with and trust, you are significantly enticing them to act. They end up doing what you wanted them to do in the first place.
For instance, a candidate may be entering your page from their mobile device while on a bathroom break or during commuting. But the time for browsing and searching is limited so they leave your page. Ultimately, most of them will forget due to other things in their lives. This is where retargeting steps in to remind them what they should do.
This is precisely why Facebook is a powerful tool — advertising campaigns can help you be seen by people who have already visited your pages but need an additional push in the right direction. It’s also very cheap and convenient.
3. Facebook for Targeted Advertising
Only a small number of recruiters have the knowledge that you can pay for advertising campaigns on Facebook, that are targeted to the people they would like to reach. No one knows why, because this is a super effective way of building an audience. If you don’t have a Facebook advertising account, make it as soon as possible. Set up an ad that will work perfectly for you. Then you can choose from one of many targeting options that are available in the Power Editor. You can reach people in specific geographic areas, people of certain age, certain interests or in certain groups. It’s basically a space to get you creative and think outside of the box as to who could want your specific job ad.
You can run ads with different goals in mind. You can inspire people to download an app, visit your job pages or even just watch a video. You should also have some sort of conversion tracking so that you know how much money you are paying for each person and does it make sense based on your end goal.
The keys to having a successful ad are:
- Targeting the right audience based on demographics, interests and so on. These are the people who will see your ad so it’s very important to get it right.
- Using great images or videos in your advertisement. You can hire a professional team for this but in case you are looking for a more budget-friendly option, Facebook offers a library of great images that you can select for your advertisement.
- Creating the perfect copy that will excite your audience and make them want to click on your ad. Make it compelling, honest and state the benefits of this job.
- Run several ads and versions of ads at the same time and have different visuals for each of those ads. Facebook will then run whichever ad gets the best results — this is a great and useful feature.
- Track your results through the analytics and refine your strategies accordingly.
4. Use Facebook for Sourcing
LinkedIn may be the default place to look for candidates, but many recruiters have realized that you can find many more candidates on Facebook.
User base is more active and more engaged as well. People’s profiles are not as complete as the ones on LinkedIn are but they still list the job title and the current employer. If you combine this with the power of location targeting and other demographics, you can find your ideal candidate in no time. There are several tools and plugins that you can utilize for these purposes.
The nature of the business will make you see just how relevant social media be to the recruiters. Devoting some time and budget to this area is a useful thing as you can get many more candidates and advocated than on other platforms.
