Once upon a time if you wanted to hire someone in Australia, you’d head straight for a job board site like Seek, post a job and wait for the applications to come in.

But with the advent of social media, more companies are turning to the social channels as the only way they recruit, or combining social media recruiting with traditional job boards.

So how do you recruit via social media?

Well, you have quite a few options actually. Potentially you could advertise on LinkedIn (obvious and charged, but there’s a few options you may not have thought of), Facebook (especially their new job board – see below), Twitter, but even Pinterest, Google My Business and Instagram which you may have thought of.

With all these options available, it’s probably best to learn a little more about them including what the costs are to use them, the time input, and what sort of candidates you’re likely to attract, before you devise your social media recruitment strategy. So let’s go through your options:

1/ Recruiting on Facebook

In February 2018 Facebook rolled out its job board allowing businesses to post job openings to a Jobs tab on their Page, Jobs dashboard, Facebook Marketplace, and the News Feed via posts (which they can boost).

Facebook’s job board allows job seekers to more easily discover openings, auto-fill applications with their Facebook profile information, edit and submit their application, and communicate via Messenger to schedule interviews. How cool is that!

Given job posts appear on and link to your Facebook business page, potential employees have the chance to learn more about your business and the job opportunity before applying, so make sure your page is up to date.

Read more about Facebook’s job board or post your first free job here: https://www.facebook.com/business/pages/post-job?ref=ens_rdr

2/ Recruiting on Linkedin

We’ve written loads about Linkedin on our blog over the years including these two posts which are specifically related to recruitment:

Seek or Linkedin – which is best for hiring staff – https://www.thecreativecollective.com.au/blog/seek-or-linkedin-which-is-best-for-hiring-staff/

Why Linkedin is the best source of testimonials available online – https://www.thecreativecollective.com.au/blog/why-linkedin-is-the-best-source-of-testimonials-available-online/

As I mentioned on ‘Seek or Linkedin – which is best for hiring staff’ – back in 2015 when we tested Linkedin versus Seek with a live job ad we had, whilst we had more applicants on Linkedin than Seek, about 75% were overseas applicants. Since then however I think Linkedin has evolved a lot as a viable recruitment tool in Australia.

As of today there are 161,341jobs listed on Linkedin in Australia, compared to 164,088 jobs on Seek. Basically nothing in it. Through our work with various Government departments we’ve discovered that even Government jobs are now often listed on Linkedin as opposed to the Government’s own https://smartjobs.qld.gov.au/.

But surprisingly when we’ve worked with Government departments who were retrenching many staff, many who we trained had never used Linkedin or had any idea of the level of job activity going on there.

Apart from listing a job on Linkedin (for a fee) if you are seeking to recruit someone a few more tips of how you could … use this platform to ‘get it out there’ and thus attract more applications include:

• Doing a post on your company page and linking to the job ad
• Doing a post on your Linkedin Profile and linking to the job ad
• Doing a post in multiple relevant groups on Linkedin and linking to the job ad
• Sending an InMail to some of your valued Linkedin connections and linking to the job ad
• Personally seeking to connect with people who look like they could be suitable for the job and providing the job ad.

On that note, here’s a template I used to effectively head hunt someone now working for us as an account manager via a connection request

“Hi there, We’re looking to hire an Account Manager at our offices on the Sunshine Coast and I wondered if you might know anyone who might be interested? Let’s connect so I can tell you more?”

The amount of people who connect quick smart and say ‘yes me!’ is insane. Simple, but effective.

I then started liaising with them and encouraging them to apply via the job on our website. And got an awesome recruit out of it.… 

 

3/ Recruiting on Google My Business

As I mentioned on a recent blog post ‘SHOULD YOU DO POSTS ON GOOGLE MY BUSINESS AND CAN YOU SCHEDULE THEM?’ each post on Google My Business lasts 7 days, so technically you could post a call out for a job and link it to the position on your website and it would last on your listing on Google for 7 days for no cost at all. If you have a physical presence, just think of all the map searches and contact detail searches for your business that there may be online and how many times this job just may be seen, and all for free.

 

4/ Recruiting on Instagram

Lots of companies, particularly those seeking to recruit younger candidates are taking advantage of instagram as a platform to make prospective candidates aware of their positions, interact with them, and showcase their brand in a visually appealing way.

Businesses of all sizes can do everything from make a post alerting their followers to any open positions, reach out to potentially suitable candidates via personal interactions, demonstrate corporate social responsibility and showcase the perks of working at their workplace.

We woo people with everything from puppies to cupcakes and drinks. Lots of drinks.

5/ Recruiting on Pinterest

As social networks go, Pinterest doesn’t get a lot of attention but we think it should get more considering a lot of clients we deal with get as many monthly users on their Pinterest account as they get on their website! Pinterest also has over 100 million users and drives more referral traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit combined!

Some options to recruit on Pinterest include pinning recruitment videos to your page — Pinterest integrates with both Youtube and Vimeo.

Alternatively, use a pin as a creative job ads to encourage anyone browsing your Pinterest board to visit the page on your website where jobs are listed.

More options including building a Pin Board for Each Job. You could showcase things like ‘you’ll be good at this’ and show a picture of something related to teh job. ‘You’ll have education from a place like this’ and have a fun tertiary institution. You could then say ‘you like these’ and show cupcakes as a display of your company culture.

Just like our examples in Instagram, you could also use Pinterest to promote your company culture and values

Summary of recruiting on social

In all cases for recruiting via social media you will need either a dedicated ‘careers page’ on your website featuring multiple jobs or in the least a single job page for the job you are recruiting for.… You can see our Careers page here.

We wouldn’t advise you to go setting up all of the above social channels just to use them for recruitment. Activate the channels you already have, or consider where your ideal candidates are most likely to hang out.

Looking to attract a younger candidate? Look at Instagram.

Looking to attract a female? Look at Pinterest.

Looking to attract a broad audience? Consider Google or Facebook.

Happy recruiting!