As millennials move into leadership roles and Gen Z takes up more of the workforce, social media has become an increasingly valuable tool for recruiters. Incorporating social media into portfolio company recruitment strategies can lead to the right candidate in less time and for less money.
According to a 2021 study by CareerArc, 92% of employers said they use social networks to find talent.
Social media allows portfolio companies to reach a wider audience and provides a platform to engage directly with the 96% of job seekers who use it. It’s also a good way to catch the attention of passive candidates who may otherwise not see your job postings. Bottom line, if your target candidates are using social media, your portcos should be too.
Here are a few ways your portfolio companies can leverage the platforms to strengthen talent acquisition:
1. Set Social Media Goals
First, to maximize recruitment efforts through social media, it’s important to determine company goals. Is the primary goal to increase brand awareness? Drive candidates to a careers page? Target a certain audience?
Once a social media goal is established, your portcos can decide which KPIs will be the most valuable to track progress. Some useful KPIs include:
- Traffic – Find out how many people are going to your application page and from which social channels.
- Engagement – Learn which posts are getting the most likes and comments.
- Conversion Rates – How many applications were filled out and submitted from social referrals? This number will allow you to calculate the ROI from your social recruiting efforts.
Once these goals are set, businesses can measure and track their progress every month to determine what strategy is working and what needs improvement.
2. Focus on Relevant Channels
Using every social platform may not be the most efficient way to recruit. The first step is to define your target audience or the type of job seeker your portco wants to attract.
Finally, developing a candidate persona document is huge for digital recruitment. It presents an understanding of a target candidate’s typical behaviors and goals. It will also help determine which social media channels to leverage.
A good candidate experience includes how easy your social media channels can be found. To optimize a profile for search, companies should avoid altering their company name on their channel as much as possible. Include keywords such as location, industry, and tagline.
3. Build an Employer Brand
Regardless of which channels your portco decides to leverage, branding and voice should remain consistent across all platforms. HR leaders must consider the traits needed to best present the brand on social media and develop guidelines and strategies to align the look and feel across all channels.
4. A Feel for the Culture
A major perk of leveraging social media as part of your recruitment strategy is showing off your portco’s company culture. Organizations should take advantage of posting photos and videos of daily company life to show people how great it is to work for their company.
Giving applicants insight into the experiences they can expect working at a company can be beneficial in beating the competition to the best candidates. Conversely, if your portco’s social media profile is stale and unengaging, a candidate is not likely to take the time to apply.
Job seekers should easily be able to identify WHY they should want to work at an organization, otherwise known as the Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Promoting company values is key to attracting the right candidates.
5. Employee Advocacy
Employees who truly enjoy working for an organization will naturally become employee advocates – a powerful resource to leverage on social media. Employee advocates are more likely to repost content on a company’s behalf, boosting reach to more candidates and building talent pipelines.
Portcos can also leverage employee advocates by sharing content they’ve created. Social posts from employees at their organization are genuine testaments to their experience, and job seekers can trust them.
6. Engage with Social Communities
It’s easy to lose sight of the original purpose of social media – to be social. Leaders should have a two-way dialogue between their brand and their audience to boost engagement and humanize accounts. Plus, communicating with their audience is another opportunity to share their company’s tone and voice and tie it back to the employer brand.
Another great way to engage with a target audience is to join relevant groups or communities. Participating in groups on Facebook or LinkedIn can help spread the word about a company’s job opportunities to a larger group of people that may otherwise have been missed. Portcos should maintain a healthy balance between job posts and providing valuable resources to avoid negative attention. Plus, becoming established as an added value in a community will help others be more receptive to company posts.
7. Don’t Limit Content
If job openings are only posted on social media, it’s unlikely companies will grow a large, engaged audience. Make sure to vary the types of content shared to keep audiences interested. Whether it be entertaining content or a resource they might find helpful, it’s important to develop engaging content that provides value to an audience.
8. Moderate your Channels
While job candidates are navigating through social platforms and websites, they are likely to run into company comments and reviews. It is essential to generate positive buzz around an organization when possible.
68% of job candidates will form an opinion after reading between one and six online reviews.
Inc.com
Although you can’t stop reviews from trickling in, good or bad, companies must stay present on social platforms. Organizations should comment on reviews and stay proactive in ways that can boost Google stars or company ranking to strengthen Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It shows an organization cares about the feedback received.
9. Use and Track Ads
Most social media platforms have an ad or sponsorship program. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok all have their own ad managers. As such, users have the ability to post and track ads and generate leads.
Facebook ads have detailed targeting options such as interests, job titles, education, and location. Ads can be set up as a still image or video with catchy headlines, text and a call-to-action button, which is a great way to grab somebody’s attention and bring them to a job site.
Instagram ads can either be on the main feed or the Instagram Story feature. In the main feed, it will say “Sponsored” in the top left corner of the post and have a link at the bottom. In this context it could say “Apply Now” and send someone over to a mobile-optimized application. Users can also leverage Instagram Reels ads to capture a wider audience in a different format. The ads can be up to 30 seconds, play on a loop, be featured on stories. Your audience can access the application directly by clicking on the ad.
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social media platform. It’s a great place to advertise higher-level positions or positions that require more experience. With LinkedIn ads, users can target their audience based on job title and seniority. It can be sponsored in the news feed or sent to people’s inboxes.
TikTok ads are a great way to target candidates for entry-level positions or to showcase a more humanized look into a portfolio company’s culture. The platform allows users to select the campaign objective they want to achieve. Next, it will optimize the campaign for brand awareness or conversions. One of the unique capabilities is that companies can target viewers based on their recent engagement in specific content categories.
Finally, the greatest benefit of running an ad on any of these platforms is the ability to track ad performance. When running ads to generate candidate leads, tracking is essential to know where they are coming from and how to alter ads to reach the right ones.
We’ve just skimmed the surface of tips to increase social media recruitment strategies for your recruitment strategies. Contact us to learn how we can help you strengthen your portco’s recruitment efforts!