Social recruiting is no longer just a trend.

The vast majority of recruiters (about 94 percent) use social media as a part of their recruitment strategy.

Unfortunately, social recruitment myths are going just as strong!

Even the sharpest of HR managers fall victim to many of these myths because of their limited experience with social media.

Social media is a confusing beast even to the experts and at times it can be near impossible to separate the good information from the bad.

Stay Professional At All Times

Social recruiting is all about business, but social networks are about people.

If your content and interactions are devoid of personality you won’t get the engagement that you need to succeed.

Social recruiting is the perfect medium to highlight the people behind your company.

Make the most of the medium sharing staff pics, employee profiles, and even the occasional joke or meme.

 The Only Audience That Matters Are Job Seekers

Reaching qualified candidates is the goal of social recruiting.

Reaching more fans and followers even if they are not candidates is a means to this goal.

With social media, the more followers you get, the more people are likely to find you because it improves your SEO and visibility.

And theses followers are also a great source for referrals!

 Go Big Or Go Home

Many HR managers think that they need to create a perfect strategy, write a month’s worth of content, and join every single social network before they can roll out their social recruiting initiative.

This could not be farther from the truth.

Starting small with social media is smart. It allows you to focus on mastering one or two networks at a time and keeps you from spreading yourself too thin.

Keeping your efforts minimal at first will also give a chance to experiment with the content you choose to share. This will aid you in discovering the most effective types of content for reaching your desired candidates.

Status Updates and Job Posts Are All You Need

If you share a diverse range of content, then your content will attract a broader range of people. So sharing interesting blog posts and links to trending content is a great way to increase your social reach.

Then there’s the not so small matter of visuals:

• Videos are shared 12x more than text and link posts combined (Source: Sprout Social) – Click to Tweet

• According to MavSocial, Tweets that contain images are said to be 150% more likely to be retweeted. MavSocial

• Tweets that contain images are said to be 150% more likely to be retweeted.

• Facebook posts with photos or video content are 180% more likely to engage audiences (Source: MavSocial.)

Sharing visual content is one of the best ways to drive engagement and build your social reach.

Visually engaging content captures candidate’s attention. This makes them more likely to view your job posts and click through to your career site.

Sharing memes and interesting videos are two great ways of boosting engagement with minimal time investment.

I’m also a huge fan of creating posts by layering interesting quotes on top of compelling photographs:

Check out Pablo by Buffer to make a similar image for yourself!

The More Hashtags the Better

Using too many hashtags will annoy your followers and make your posts difficult to read.

1 – 3 hashtags situated at the end of your Tweet or Google+ post is enough!

Hashtags Don’t Matter

Neglecting hashtags all together is even worse than hashtag spamming.

Hashtags make your content searchable. They also tie your posts to other conversations happening online. Both of these factors improve the visibility of your content.

Including a few relevant hashtags with your posts is a must!

 A Social Network is A Social Network is A Social Network

Just because Starbucks uses Instagram to recruit doesn’t mean you should follow suit.

Every social network has its pros and cons.

Find the ones that work for you and leverage them for all they’re worth.

All Social Job Seekers are Millennial’s or Gen Z

I am a millennial; my husband is not.

My husband is on Snapchat; I am not.

Upon first inspection, I thought that the Snapchat icon on his phone was for PacMan.

My husband is a Gen Xer and he has used social media as major part of his job seeking approach for years.

Point made!

If my anecdotes and conjecture are not enough proof, check out these findings from Global Web Index and Penney Fox:

• 70% of Boomers are on Facebook

• 65.5% of Gen Xers have used Facebook in the last month

• 52% of 55-64 year old Internet users have joined a social network

Social media is an excellent tool for reaching older candidates. Don’t neglect Boomers and Gen X when devising your social recruiting strategy.

Hopefully, this blog posts will act as a social recruiting PSA and help keep people from falling for these common myths.

If you have any social recruiting myths that you would like to see put to rest, let us know in the comments!