Talent Connection Blog

In order to grow your company, you need the right people. The right people come to you through recruiting. There are several ways to keep your company on a top candidate’s list. Here are the best ones, both on and off the web.

Let’s start with the old-school reliable methods that don’t require a social media presence.

1. Treat a great applicant like you would treat a great customer. You wouldn’t wait 3 days to call back a good lead, so why wait 3 days to call back a good candidate?
2. Be positive about the type of worker you need—full-time, part-time, or freelancer? Don’t waste HR’s time or the candidate’s time by screening a candidate that doesn’t match the hour and work load requirements you have for the open position.
3. Implement a coaching culture to include millennials. It’s no secret that millennials are attracted to opportunities of learning and growth; give them what they’re looking for and they can be the type of employee you need.
4. Timing is key. Hiring too slow leaves an important position empty for too long; hiring too quickly leads to missing the best people. The average time to hire is 27 days. Your organization may fall above or below that, but try to keep it reasonably in that range.
5. Be open to the idea of incorporating video in your hiring process. Company culture and remote hiring can both benefit from using videos.
6. Be mobile friendly. At least 45 percent of candidates are job searching on their mobile devices. If they can’t reach you through that method, not only are you jeopardizing a communication line with a potential candidate, you are also appearing out-of-date and therefore less attractive, especially to younger candidates. Google provides a free mobile-friendly test to evaluate your company website.
7. Use your top performers as a template for the kind of employee you want to hire. If a candidate mimics a top performer’s attitude, skills, and work ethic, there’s a good chance he or she may join your top performers list.

Now let’s look at how to apply recruitment strategies in social media.

1. How to leverage Twitter
   1. Have your contacts spread the word
   2. Embrace hashtags
   3. Use the common lingo
   4. Showcase your personality
2. How to leverage Facebook
   1. Try out Facebook ads
   2. Create a ‘jobs’ tab
   3. Create a job-specific page
   4. Use Facebook live
3. How to leverage LinkedIn
   1. Test LinkedIn Recruiter
   2. Target candidates with ads
   3. Take advantage of groups
   4. Don’t forget about InMail

Jobvite, LinkedIn, and Altimeter Group all found that 44 percent of recruiters say that social recruiting has increased both quantity and quality of candidates. And, socially engaged companies are 58 percent more likely to attract top talent. Jobvite also found that social media has been used by 73 percent of recruiters to hire candidates. In this case, it’s only beneficial to jump on the bandwagon.

Quality candidates are out there. They just might be having just as hard of a time finding you as you are having trying to find them. Implementing proper recruiting strategies means anyone that still isn’t coming your way is most likely not a proper fit. This way you can focus your time, energy, and money only on the ones that really matter.