Social Recruiting

Hello, my name is Samara Parker, and I am a millennial.

My generation is entering the workforce en masse; we are basically taking over your office, your break room, and your life. For this, I am sorry. I am sorry for all the #selfies we post, our love of skinny jeans, and our obsession with Portland, Oregon. 

But I am not sorry for how my generation is pushing recruiting into the 21st century. It's about time! Gen Y is forcing recruiting to adopt social media strategies, optimize for mobile, and focus on employer branding. We're like that cute girl you want to date who motivates you to go to the gym, buy new shoes, and brush your teeth after eating garlicky food. What makes us so hot? Well...

Millennials are motivated by challenging work "Unlike other generations – who were simply happy with getting the job done, the younger generation need to feel like they are making a difference and that their contribution in the workplace is meaningful." - Amanda Rose

This means you can hand us all those complicated, frustrating projects you don't have time to delve into. Millennials are up for the challenge! But do make sure to provide a lot of real time positive feedback and explain how these projects benefit the company. Gen Yers respond extremely well to this kind of motivation. Social media is confusing, we can help

We've grown up with Apple products, cell phones, and big data. We understand how Facebook works, and know what Instagram filters are the coolest. And most importantly... We do what we're told!

"41% of millennials do what their managers tell them to do, which is much greater than older generations." - Dan Schawbel All we ask in return is that you use social media to recruit us. Don't make us buy a newspaper. Don't make us look on ugly old job boards! Let us apply for work from the comfort of our favorite social platform; Facebook! 

83% of millennials reported using Facebook to look for work in 2013 (Jobvite). Make sure we can find you; it's surprisingly easy to set up a career section on your company Facebook Page, especially if you use a really awesome recruiting app like Jobcast.

Oh, and not to be demanding or anything, but we'd also really like it if you would make your recruiting as mobile as possible. Millennials generally prefer to look for work on our smart phones, in between exciting games of Flappy Bird. Almost 80% of us used mobile as a major part of our job search in 2013. Well... okay, maybe we are a bit demanding... 40% of us will abandon the application process if it isn't mobile-friendly #sorrynotsorry Lastly, it would be awesome if you started using more emojis in your job descriptions. Many of us have trouble understanding sentences that are not accompanied by fitting emojis. For my generation these simple graphics are what clarify the emotions behind the words. How are we supposed to know if you are being sarcastic, or if you are joking and we cannot tell because you have not included a

 or a

? It scares us. Happy social recruiting 

Stay informed about all things social recruiting, sign up for our news letter!

You are all super savvy about hiring trends, of course you are… you read this blog! So, you all know that mobile is very important when it comes to social recruiting. What you may not know, is that the importance of having a mobile hiring strategy is even greater when it comes to recruiting passive candidates.

Passive candidates choose mobile over desktop, when looking for work, even more frequently than their active counterparts.

This probably has something to do with the fact that they are currently employed, and can’t exactly spend their days researching job posts on their company computers! In fact, many of the candidates you’re looking for don’t have any access to a computer while at their job. Retail workers, for example, spend their days on the store floor, making sales, dusting display units, and checking their Facebook accounts. They are also checking out potential employers on their smart phones.

In a recent survey by Jobvite, 21% of passive candidates admitted to using their smart phones to look for a new position, when at work. Naughty! Those candidates are also looking for work while they wait for the bus, while they wait for their morning muffin, and even while they use the restroom (at least 7% of them!)

So how do you get your job posts onto their smart phones, their iPads, and into their restrooms?

Tweet your job posts

Twitter doesn’t really work as a primary social platform for recruiting. It does, however, make for a top notch second in command. Twitter is a quick easy, way to let people know you’re hiring.

I like to break down effective strategy for using Twitter to improve mobile recruiting into three steps: build it, tweet it, tag it!

Build up your Twitter employer brand by posting images, sharing quick tips, and interacting with other tweeters in your field.

Tweet your jobs. Every time you post a job, tweet it, and then tweet it again! Twitter feeds fill up quickly, so you should tweet the post at least a couple times a day until the position is filled. Just make sure to intersperse those tweets with other valuable content.

Tag everything you post, everything! Use niche hashtags to make your tweets searchable, this will build your brand and talent pool. Tag your job posts with #hiring. Always, always, always #hiring! Mostly because this is the number one hashtag career advice bloggers tell job seekers to look for.

Here are the top 50 hashtags you should use when recruiting with Twitter.

Make your application process mobile friendly

Most career sites are not mobile; in fact, our own survey found that around 90% of career sites were not mobile friendly. This has got to change! But, until it does, there are some ways around it.

Use social networks to share your jobs. Yet another way Twitter can benefit your passive candidates recruiting! Take advantage of the mobile friendliness of apps like Google+, Instagram, and Facebook to get your job posts seen.

You can also create a Facebook career section for your company Page and post your jobs there. Your career section will be viewable to Facebook users via their  mobile app, so all those passive candidates, who really ought to be working, can be looking at your job posts instead! Win-win!

Here’s how you can make your Facebook recruiting mobile friendly

Focus on Facebook over LinkedIn

Yes I am biased. No this is not the (only) reason I am giving you this advice.

84% of job seekers are active on Facebook. Only 36% of them are active on LinkedIn.

Nuff said.

Oh, except that passive candidates are even less likely to use LinkedIn in their job search, or to have up to date LinkedIn profiles (if they have one at all). LinkedIn is still a useful tool for connecting with other professionals and recruiting them, but for reaching the vast majority of passives candidates, hourly workers, and anyone under 35 Facebook is a better bet.

This article does a great job of explaining the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook for recruiting

Hopefully you’ve found some helpful info to help you recruit some passive talent. If you have any questions, or other topics you’d like us to cover, let us know in the comments.

Happy social recruiting!

Oh, the ever-elusive passive candidate! Part of what makes them so desirable is that elusiveness, the fun of the chase, the challenge... Uhhh wait a minute. Those are actually all of the things that make recruiters prefer to target active job seekers, and ignore the whopping 79% of potential candidates who are not actively engaged the job hunt (Undercover Recruiter). Those candidates may be currently employed, and more difficult to source, but they are still potential hires. Maybe not all 79% of them, I'll admit that's a bit of an overstatement, but not as much as you might think! According to Jobvite at least 61% of those passive candidates are open to, even hopeful for, a change of employer. Considering that statistic, you're still looking at a whopping 50% of working professionals. That's a lot of potential hires to ignore. Ignoring those passive candidates doesn't just diminish your talent pool, it also rules out higher caliber hires. According to research by Linked in, although more difficult to recruit, passive candidates often make for better quality employees. Once hired, they are more driven than active candidates and 17% less likely to need skills development. This ups the ROI on passive candidates substantially. 2014 will see the need to add passive candidate sourcing to your recruiting strategy increase even more because of the current economic upturn. The economic upturn means more jobs, and fewer qualified active candidates in the job market. So, the market for quality talent is about to get a lot more competitive, we've written about it, Inc Magazine has written about it, and Blogging4jobs has written about it a lot! The war for talent is back, and with it comes an increased premium on talent, and the need to get more active with your recruiting. Luckily for employers, sourcing and recruiting passive candidates is a heck of a lot easier than it once was. With today's social technologies, and social graph in particular, sourcing passive candidates is a piece of cake! Alright, so I'm exaggerating again, but with all that big data at your finger tips, passive candidates are more accessible than ever before. With social recruiting, you can search for potential hires based on information they’ve shared about their work history, their interests, their demographics, and even their skill set by using networks like Facebook. The social graph is constantly getting bigger and as it does, using social networks to source passive candidates will get easier. This is great news, because sourcing is hard work! And the benefits of social for accessing passive candidates don’t end there! Social platforms also make it possible to reach out and engage with passive candidates. They may not be visiting your career site, or looking on job boards, or even have a LinkedIn profile, but now a day’s pretty much every single human (in the first world at least) has some form of internet presence. Heck, there were over 35 million #selfies posted on Instagram last year. There are 231.7 million active monthly users on Twitter, Google plus adds 25, 000 new users on the daily, and Facebook accounts for 16% of total internet use. If you can't reach candidates via job boards, you can tweet at them, connect with them on Facebook, add them to your G+ circles, and even heart their excessive Instagram selfies. People love it when you double tap their #selfies! Next Monday on the blog we'll explore how you can use social media to recruit passive candidates, and take over the world! If you want to study up before next week's blog post, download this free white paper and learn how to recruit passive candidates with Facebook. Happy social recruiting!

Social recruiting is still just in its infancy, despite having been around for almost a decade. But this isn't really all that surprising. Human beings have a pretty well understood fear of adopting new technologies. When the printing press was invented, concerned biologists urged monarchs to restrict its use, fearing dangerous, and harmful information overload caused by too much reading! Doctors warned against trains, as they were convinced the break-neck speeds (15 miles per hour) of this new mode of transport would cause asphyxia induced deaths. Heck, I am still afraid Google class will lead to a world full of cyborgs that only interact online and only eat Soylent! And yet, employers are slowly but surely adopting social solutions for their recruiting problems. In fact, as of 2013, 72% of companies reported using social networks to find candidates. Even more promisingly, 2 in 3 companies surveyed said that they planned on increasing their social recruiting efforts (and budgets) in 2014. Why are so many companies adopting social as a part of their recruiting strategy? Honestly, I think it's because they fear being left behind by early adopters. Their fear is completely valid, especially considering the growing concern among employers that 2014 marks a return of the "war for talent". Fear is a great motivator, but it's a terrible reason for adopting new technology. It's also a terrible reason for avoiding them! You should adopt new technologies because they work. Because they are effective for solving the problems you need solved. Does social recruiting do this? Absolutely. Those 2 in 3 companies expanding their social recruiting efforts are doing so because it works. Well executed social recruiting has extremely high ROI,  it's an excellent way to reach mobile candidates (over 70% of jobseekers are using mobile in their search), and sourcing passive candidates with social graph data is becoming more and more effective every day. At Jobcast, we obviously favor Facebook for social recruiting, but Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ are all great tools for attracting qualified candidates. None of those platforms offer the targeting or reach Facebook does... But, using several social networks as a part of your recruiting is smart. For example, you can Tweet the jobs you post on your super awesome, fully branded Facebook Career Site! If you still haven't adopted social recruiting as a part of your hiring strategy, the time is now! It's actually pretty easy to get started, especially as I'm going to provide you with some links to how to guides for all the major social platforms that you can use for recruiting, you are most welcome!

Twitter

Twitter is a great tool for employers to use in conjunction with other social media. When you post a job on your career site, share content on your Company Facebook Page, or publish a blog post, you can increase your reach by sharing it on Twitter. You can also use hashtags to keep up with trends in your industry. Natascha Thompson's article, 5 Tips on How to Use Twitter for Recruiting, contains way more than five tips. It gives you all the info you need to get started with using Twitter to hire. Facebook

Facebook has the largest active user base of any social network, it has become an essential part of employer branding, and it allows for much more targeted recruiting with the use of Facebook Ads, these are just three of the reasons we think Facebook is the most effective network for employers. In our free white paper, we provide you with a simple guide to Facebook for recruiting. Google+

I love Google Plus, the way that it is set up makes it very easy to create talent communities, because you can simply create a "circle" for each community you have, and stream targeted content specifically to each circle. What doesn't work so well is how much less "reach" G+ has than other networks. Sure, a lot of people have accounts, but they just don't spend all that much time actually using the network. Likeable has an awesome Google Plus Cheat sheet that will help you understand how G+ works. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great tool for social recruiting. Personally, I struggle with the fact that it isn't very mobile friendly, but it's a network completely dedicated to recruiting, which makes it pretty darn handy. Susan M. Heathfield's simple guide to using LinkedIn for recruiting is a great read for anyone in HR. Hopefully these guides will help you to get started with social recruiting, or at least give you more information about which networks to focus your hiring efforts on (Facebook, cough, Facebook!) Oh, and just to give you all a little more encouragement... I'll admit that my fear of Google Glass is probably unfounded! But Soylent is completely terrifying and makes me sad about the state of the world.

We recently had a fantastic comment on our post about making Facebook work for small business.

In it, our reader asked just how targeted Facebook really is, whether Facebook recruiting is effective without an existing audience, and, in summary, whether or not Facebook recruiting is any different from placing an ad in a local newspaper. That last question is what really got my attention, and not in the way you might think. Using social media to recruit is different from using non-social media in very obvious ways. But, what I think we do not talk about enough, in the field of social recruiting, are the similarities between using networks like Facebook to promote job openings, and using the career section of your local paper. Facebook Recruiting is NOT magic. It is awesome, it is effective, it has high ROI... Facebook recruiting works, especially if you use a top notch recruiting app, just saying... But, no, sadly Facebook recruiting is not magical. Like placing an ad in your local paper, using a company career site, and recruiting with job boards, Facebook recruiting takes work, time, and a budget (albeit a relatively small one!)

Similarity Number One: Effort.

"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" - Inspirational poster on the internet

I wish that it was possible to simply share a job post and receive a flood of resumes. Actually, I don't because then I would be out of a job... But it would be very nice for all the employers and recruiters out there. Like with any other kind of recruiting campaign, social recruiting takes work. You will need to create content, build up an employer brand, and engage with Facebook users that you would like to see become part of your talent pool. Why Facebook is Better:

Unlike placing ads in the paper, and posting on job boards, when you use Facebook to recruit, all of the content you share, the work you put into your employer brand, and the effort you put into engaging with users, will also build your company brand as a whole. You get to combine recruiting with improving your overall social media presence, which is so important in today's heavily online driven markets. Similarity Number 2: Time.

Writing a quality job post takes time. Researching how you should promote those posts once written takes time. Building a trustworthy, recognizable employer brand takes time. You'll need to build a recruiting strategy, figure out how to write effective job posts, and promote your company culture no matter what medium you choose to employ. Why Facebook is Better:

Social sharing. Unlike print, job boards, or even LinkedIn, Facebook is a medium primarily built around interaction. The structure of the network its self encourages users to share, comment and Like your company's content, which means their connections are more likely to see your job posts. And, Metrics! Facebook Insights makes it pretty darn easy to figure out what works and what doesn't when it comes to your recruiting strategy. Using data to fine tune your recruiting campaigns is one of the best ways to cut down on the amount of time (and work) you have to spend on them in the future. You can also use a Facebook recruiting app like Jobcast to help you measure more recruitment specific data! Similarity Number 3: Budget.

The best things in recruiting are not free. Sure, there are some pretty great free options when it comes to Facebook recruiting, but if you want access to the most effective features the social network has to offer, you're going to have to invest a little capitol. Print ads cost money, quality job boards cost money, and hiring recruiters definitely costs money! Why Facebook Is Better:

It costs less. It's that simple. Ed Social Media explains how they were able to run a successful ad campaign for a mere $20 dollars. Running ads in print news papers often costs upwards of $500 (and that's for a small paper) which is much, much more expensive. Not only do Facebook Ads cost less, but they give you more. Facebook Ads allow you to target users based on their work history, skill set, and interests. Print journals may advertise circulation rates in the tens, even hundreds of thousands, that's a lot of potential viewers, but often those rates are exaggerated, the demographic is completely wrong for your jobs, and no one can tell you how many of those readers even flip to the wanted section of the paper! (Yet another great thing about Facebook Insights!) This incredibly comprehensive article by Jon Loomer will give you a better understanding of what Facebook Ads campaigns should cost. You can also check out our free white paper for a step by step guide to Facebook recruiting.

Retention is one of the biggest buzzwords for 2014. With a forecasted economic upturn comes expectations of job creation, and with expected job creation comes the swooshing sound of disgruntled employees everywhere dusting off their resumes. Hence, a reinvigorated focus on retention by HR pros and employers. Another big buzzword this year is culture. It was also a big buzzword for 2013... And 2012. Let's face it, love it or hate it, corporate culture is an integral part of doing business in this social media-dominant world! Personally, I love that companies are putting culture first and letting the culture they create drive their business. I also love what company culture can do for retention. The culture you promote can mean the difference between retaining your best employees and losing them. In fact, many employees value aspects of company culture as much as they do rate of pay. That's why smart companies (like Sapient, REI, Google, and SAP) act very strategically to cultivate a culture that rewards employees loyalty, and puts a premium on retaining their best people. Follow their lead! Here are great ways you can use company culture for retention: Make your culture flexible

In employee satisfaction surveys, millennials consistently cite flexibility as being more important than rate of pay. Allowing your people to work malleable hours, giving them the option to work from home home on occasion, and creating programs that allow them to work in a different department, or at a branch located in a different part of the country (or different country altogether), are just a few examples of the kind of flexibility they desire. Make your culture something to be proud of

You may not be able to increase pay, or hand out massive bonuses, but you can make employees feel good about working for your company. If your company culture promotes good ethics, through charitable giving, fundraising projects, and community support, your employees have something other than a high salary that they can take pride in. Being proud of the company you work for is a huge motivator, especially amongst younger employees (us Gen Yers still think we can change the world, sssshhhhh, don't burst our bubble!) Having a 'mission' is a great way to make doing good a signature part of your company culture. Whether it's improving your own environmental policy, giving a certain percentage of profits, or products, to charity, or organizing fundraising events with your staff. Check out Tom's for a great example of a highly successful company that has a strong message of giving back, and excellent retention. Create a culture of community

When your employees feel connected to each other and their superiors, they are less likely to jump ship. You can cultivate a culture of community by organizing events that bring your team together. For example, every Friday let your employees stop work an hour early and share some beers, and/or snacks while talking through the week. Not only will this give them a chance to get to know each other better, but it will also give you some insights into how they're doing, and what the general vibe around the office is. Another important way to make sure that your company culture promotes a strong sense of community is to hire for fit. This does not mean hiring employees based on their personal style, or hobbies, as so many recruiters seem to think it does. Hiring for cultural fit simply means hiring candidates that will get along with the team you already have, and enjoy working in the culture that you want to promote. You can also use social media to give employees more encouragement to interact with each other. Try Campfire, Skype, or Slack to promote communication, and community within your company. Create a culture of respect

The saying "Employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers" may be an overstatement, but it is true that poor management has a huge effect on retention. Make sure that you train your managers well, that they interact regularly with staff, and that all employees are made to feel heard and that you take their input seriously. SAP does an especially good job of this. Check out this article for 10 ways that SAP encourages employee engagement, and thus showcase their culture of respect. More than even financial motivations, social and emotional fulfillment can determine whether employees choose to stay and grow with your company, how much they contribute, and how well they perform. That's why, for 2014, a year that marks the return of retention as a major issue for HR, company culture must be seen as a top priority.

This is officially our first blog post of the New Year (Link Loves don't count!). Very exciting. Everyone loves New Years — it's a time of renewal, a chance to wipe the slate clean and start fresh.

It is also, obviously, the time for New Year's resolutions. And I don't know about you, but I shudder at the thought. The gym is totally packed with new people, Starbucks is less packed (as those people resolved to improve their budgeting and are brewing their java at home), and bloggers are vowing to post everyday. There are joggers everywhere!

But only about 10% of us will follow through on our resolutions. My gym will be empty again by March, the siren call of caramel macchiatos will win out, and, hopefully, those bloggers will realize that blogging everyday has poor ROI... There will always be joggers.

So, instead of making a zillion resolutions yet only following through on one (and then feeling sad), this year I'm simply going to keep on keeping on. Try to improve where I can, and follow Rayanne Thorn's lovely advice about seeing New Year's not as a time of change, but as a time of renewal, a time when you evaluate what things add value to your life and what things don't. Renew the things that do, and discard the things that don't.

This practice can easily be applied to your social media practices as well! You have the metrics to show you what works best for you and what doesn't, so this is the perfect time to pull out that data and re-evaluate your social media strategy.

Ask yourself:

What is your candidate asking for?

Do they love your Facebook presence, but wish your career site was more mobile-friendly? Do they want more Twitter interactions, or possibly less? Maybe they wish you would post more details in your online job descriptions...

Watch all of your social networks closely for comments and questions, not only because it is important to respond, but because every comment has information that can help you improve your strategy, reach more candidates, and understand your audience better.

Are you providing the message your candidates want to hear?

The feedback you gather from your talent pool should also inform your overall company brand. Maybe your voice is a little too serious for the potential hires you are looking to attract, and maybe it's not professional enough.

Look back over your posts, but try to do so from the point of view of the candidates you want to engage with. Better yet, ask a current employee who belongs to that demographic for help. Then, keep posting the content that your talent responds to, and scrap the stuff they simply don't want to hear.

Are you using the right platform?

Instagram can be amazing for recruiting.

If you are a fitness-related business that is looking to attract young, sporty candidates; Instagram is perfect. It's visual, has a young user base, and is very popular among the healthy living crowd. But, if you are a bank, looking to hire financial advisers with several years of experience, you're better off using a more professional, business-oriented platform such as LinkedIn.

Take a look at the social networks you are currently using, and reassess what they are doing for you. You will want to maintain a presence on key networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, no matter what your target demographic, but platforms like Vine, Pinterest, and Insta are simply not for everyone.

You may also want to try a few new platforms. If you're not currently using Youtube, I highly recommend you start. Video content always receives the highest rates of engagement, and recruiting videos are one of the best ways to increase application rates. Check out these great new examples of recruiting and employer branding videos from Earls Restaurant for inspiration. Following the example of brands who use social media effectively is always one of the best ways to improve your social strategy.

Here's to keeping your social recruiting strategy effective, and fresh this year! Happy social recruiting.

If you're not changing, then you're probably dead. That’s morbid, yes, true nonetheless!

To keep your recruiting going strong you’ll need to grow and innovate. I'm not saying that you have to make your HR team bigger, add more networks to your social strategy, or overhaul your branding, but you must be consistently growing your reach in order to connect with new candidates.

We all know the perils of trying to get too big too fast, and this is why small innovations are one of the best ways to keep adding to your talent pool.

What follows are 12 days of simple steps that you can implement to keep your social recruiting alive and well.

Day 1

Re-evaluate your job descriptions

Job descriptions are the most important part of your content strategy. When recruiting with social media, you have fewer words at your disposal to hook candidates, so make them count. Go over your job ads, and make sure they are all short, accurate, and that they include a call to action.

(Here are more tips on writing job descriptions for social recruiting)

Day 2

Share a pretty picture

Image-based content receives the most shares, Likes, and overall engagement. This is true for both Facebook and Twitter. Post a great photo of your team, with a fun description, and tag every staff member you can, so that their connections see your post.

Day 3

Leverage your connections

Reach out to your peers and your current team. Explain what you're trying to do with your social recruiting strategy, and ask for their help.

People actually love helping — it makes them feel really great and useful. Just don't send out some generic plea to all of your Facebook connections and Twitter followers. This doesn't make anyone feel good! Ask in person, with individualized emails, or at the end of staff meetings, and try to do so in a way that conveys genuine appreciation, and excitement.

Day 4

Create employee profiles

Employee profiles are great because they are image-based, they introduce potential candidates to your current team, and they act as social proof.

(This tutorial explains how to create employee profiles to boost engagement)

Day 5

Mix it up

Get yourself a content aggregation tool, and use it to find a mix of great content that you can share. This will help you stay connected with potential hires, even when you have no job openings to post, so that you can better reach them when you do. Basically, consistent posting is a huge part of building a social talent pool.

(This article shares some awesome content aggregation tools for employers)

Day 6

Stock up

Now that you have a tool for finding content, you need a way to save and organize the gems you find. You can use Pinterest, or Delicious... My favorite is Pocket App — it's probably my most used app. Tools like this allow you to save, and tag awesome stuff that you find on the internet. That way you’ll always have a nice little stash of shareable content at your fingertips.

Day 7

Say it with video

You don't have to invest in a flashy recruiting video, heck, we made one using Vine, and it got tons of engagement. Much like photos, video is much more likely to be shared than text-based content or links. Also, candidates are almost twice as likely to apply for a job if they've viewed a recruiting video.

(Here's how to use video to recruit, and here's our Vine recruiting video)

Day 8

Re-share it

Employee profiles, staff party photos, recruiting videos, positive reviews of your company, good press, and posts from your company blog are premium content. As such, you’ll want to leverage them as best you can. It is totally acceptable to re-share this content, so long as it is still relevant. On Twitter you can re-share regularly because of the volume of tweets people receive on the daily. On Facebook and LinkedIn, I recommend waiting at least a couple of weeks before re-sharing.

Day 9

Ask questions

Use your social networks to ask potential candidates questions. This is a great way of getting feedback about how your social strategy is perceived by others, and about who is engaging with your talent pool. Use questions that are open ended, but that still give a lot of guidance. For example "What's your favorite recent tech innovation?" (if you are looking to recruit for tech.) Remember to use hashtags!

Day 10

Post a Facebook Ad

Facebook Ads are awesome for recruiting. They can help you grow your employer brand, get your job posts seen, and reach more passive candidates. They also have killer ROI (and by this I mean that they are cheap, and effective!)

(Check out this post for a tutorial on how to use Facebook Ads for recruiting)

Day 11

Schedule your content

Posting to your various networks consistently is so important. It keeps you on your potential hires’ radar, which is a must when you’re trying to foster an active talent community. There are tons and tons of great apps to keep the content flowing on your Facebook Page, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Check these posts for a list of scheduling apps, and how to set up a social media time schedule.

Day 12

Check your metrics

Go over your Facebook Insights, and any other information you have on hand. This will give you a better idea of what’s working for you, and what isn’t. Maybe posting questions is the best way to engage your talent pool, or maybe it’s video. You'll never know unless you check!

Tune in on Wednesday for our brand new white paper, which details how to improve your Facebook recruiting. It’s full of awesome tips to improve your strategy!

Being busy has become a badge of honor. We complain / brag about waking up at 5 A.M. to head into the office, where we will be greeted by stacks on stacks on stacks of work that we have to tackle before the day is through. We buzz around, clutching giant-sized coffees, and constantly checking our smart phones for updates to our already overloaded schedules.

Being busy is a way of life. So much so, that we’re often unsure of how to handle it when life slows down.

Often, we just fill any downtime we may get with busy-work, and continue on our stressed-out way. But what if I told you there was a better, less stressed-out way?!

Well, for those of us whose lives are focused around recruiting, these lull times can be extremely rewarding, without all of the crazy that comes with too much busy-work. When you’re not trying to find the right candidate, or fill diversity requirements, or even fill any particular job post at all, you can focus on improving those aspects of recruiting that are often overlooked when things are busier… And getting more sleep… And reheating that 20 oz. cup of Joe that you’ve been clutching since 6 am.

Here are three helpful recruitment boosters, that employers and recruiters can focus on in the off-season, that will make life less hectic in the on-season.

Get Mobile

1 billion job searches per month are done via mobile. If a job seeker cannot apply for your jobs from their device, then 50% will abandon the application process altogether. Oh, and (well-executed) mobile recruiting has a five to ten times higher conversion rate… just sayin’!

Last time we checked, only 1 in 20 Career Sites were mobile-optimized. So, chances are, your application process isn’t yet fully mobile.

The number one thing you can do to improve your hiring odds is to get mobile with your recruiting. And seeing as you have a little time on your hands… Check out this post about using Facebook to make your application process mobile-friendly 😀

Employer Brand

When you don’t have a million things to do at once, it’s easier to sit back and look at the big picture. Employer branding benefits greatly from this removed vantage point.

Take some time to look back over the last couple months of your social media endeavors. Is your brand message consistent on all of the social networks you employ? Are you responding to your connections in a timely fashion? Does the content you share represent your brand in the way that you want it to?

Answer these questions, then come up with a couple of ways that you can improve your brand. It could be as simple as increasing the frequency of your posts (try using Hootsuite or Buffer to queue content ahead of time), or adding more diverse content. You may need to fix up your logo, ensure that your Facebook Career Page is fully branded, or rethink your overall message.

Stock Content

This one’s super simple. If you have a little extra time to spare, use that downtime to find some relevant images, write some fun, non-time sensitive posts, and put together a few employees profiles that you can trot out later; Perfect for those days when you just don’t have time to create original content. That way, you still have some stuff to share that reads like there’s a person behind the Company Facebook Page and Twitter account, instead of just posting tons and tons of links.

Not that there’s anything wrong with posting links! In fact, I highly suggest that you…

Find, and Set-Up a Content Aggregator  

I use so many; It’s kind of nuts. But content aggregators help you stay on top of relevant topics and trends in your field, as well as providing you with a steady flow of share-able content.

Feedly, Alltop, Reddit, Google Currents, and Prismatic are definitely worth checking out. You can also have a look at this article for some more in-depth tips about finding great social media content.

The downside is it can take a little while to set them up, but once you do, managing your social media content will be so much easier! Another little bonus app you may want to check out is Pocket. Pocket let’s you save, and organize, the content you find from various sites in one place. I use it all the time and highly recommend you give it a try.

All of these strategies take time to implement and are easily overlooked when you have a million positions to fill, and no time to do it in! But the next time you look up and realize that the stack of papers on your desk is unusually low, and that your retention policy has been working like a charm, you’ll know exactly what to do to make life a little easier later. You’ll thank yourself once things have returned to their wonderfully chaotic norm!

You’re savvy. You search the internet for recruiting tips, you read this blog. Let’s face it — when it comes to social recruiting, you’re ahead of most employers already!

But, being as awesome as you are, I’m sure you’re always striving to be just a little bit more awesome with your recruiting. Writing better job posts is a great way to do that.

As with any endeavor, learning by example is one of the best ways to improve your job post writing skills! Researching what fantastic recruiters do, when constructing job posts for their own clients, is an awesome way to pick up some new job post writing hacks.

Check out these links for some great ideas you can use yourself:

“Want to spend three months coding and learning in New York with smart, friendly, and intellectually curious people? Read on...” - The entire Hacker School website is a perfect job post. It’s let’s the candidate know exactly what to expect, what’s expected of them, and delivers both messages in an excited, positive fashion, without ever sounding smarmy or annoying. The force is strong with these guys!

This agency wanted to attract creative people, so instead of just writing a job post, the used a cartoon. The cartoon also acts as a warning to potential candidates about just how motley the crew they are applying to join is; which is a great way to ensure those who do apply are a good cultural fit!

Last year this incredible recruiting campaign threatened imminent brain drain on all European countries! The campaign won several awards and was highly successful. But, it’s Atlassian’s awesome example of a career site I think you should mimic. They've created a slideshow that explains to candidates exactly why they ought to apply in a series of steps.Their descriptions are informative, short and sweet, enticing, funny, and represent the companies values to a tee.

An equally awesome, yet often underutilized technique, is to scour the internet for the WORST job posts ever written. Try to identify anything your own posts may have in common with them, and then expunge those similarities with extreme prejudice (yes, Jerry, I did just quote Apocalypse Now in a blog about recruiting. It isn't called the ‘war for talent’ for nothing!).

Now for some examples of what not to do, EVER. Or I will cry. And give you a look of disappointment that rivals anything your mother has ever thrown your way!

The specific job posting by the Dalkey Archive Press has been removed. This was a very good move on their part considering that the New York Observer called it the “Worst Job Post Ever”. Here’s a little taste:

“The successful applicant will not have any other commitments (personal or professional) that will interfere with their work at the Press (family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, weddings to attend in Rio, etc.)”

How could any candidate possibly resist?!

This next link is to an article by management today that showcases 10 amazing job ads. Some of them are amazingly good, like the one by Poke London, but we are in the negative example section of this blog post, the job post I want you to check out first, is amazingly bad.

The ad is for a personal assistant to a fellow named William. It does not require the candidate to send a resume, only personal photos. The candidate should be single, with no kids, and be willing to travel with William to romantic locations. The ad includes ten photos of William. TEN. This guy exists.

Oh, and last but not least, there’s this: