Social Recruiting

It's easy to forget what recruiting is really about. We get caught up in all of the glamorous stuff, like effective strategies, talent pipelines, and outdoing competitors with better branding. Are all of these things important? Heck yes! But they are not THE goal, they are tools towards the goal. The goal is hiring the right candidate. Not a rock star, not top talent, and not superman! The right candidate is the candidate that fits with your team, your company, and the position on offer. This week's links are all about finding those candidates, the ones that actually exist in real life. They may look more like Clark than Superman, but do you really want a candidate who spends an unnerving amount of time hiding in telephone booths and shows up for work with their undies on the outside of their too-tight pants?! We recently celebrated Remembrance Day in Canada, a day that proves all too well that our real heroes often go unnoticed and even ignored. Sadly the skill set vets bring to the table are regularly glossed over by recruiters and employers. In this article Laurie Ruettimann makes a stellar argument for hiring vets as recruiters if you want no BS, results based hiring. Another mistake we often make when imagining our perfect candidate is valuing education over vocational skills. Well, according to this article at HRMagazine, vocational skills are often much more valuable than academic qualifications! Sometimes you find the right candidate, but, on paper, they simply do not possess all of the skills you need them to. If you're hiring a surgeon? Deal breaker! If you're hiring a secretary? It's skill development time!

Development programs can help you bring new hires up to par, and improve upon the fantastic team you already have. Candidates are people too, has been a huge theme of late, not only on our blog, but with recruiters and HR pros all over the internet! Especially over at Blogging4Jobs where they presented an entire week of content focused on candidate experience. Satisfaction with one's job is so important. Satisfied employees are happier, happier candidates are more productive, in better health, and are more likely to stay with your company.

Keep your employees satisfied with this advice from Jessica Miller-Merrell. And no, the occasional pizza is not enough! Oh, and last, but not least, need an example of a job post that will attract candidates, instead of terrifying them? Check out this post by Kris Dunn over at HR Capitalist for a job post that balances telling candidates what is needed of them, with what they can expect in return :D Happy Linking!

It’s popular to be Type-A.

Bragging over how full your schedule is, constantly checking your phone for updates, and running around half-dazed, chugging coffee, means you are you are working hard and getting stuff done.

Even when there just isn’t that much that needs doing, we fill those times to the brim with ‘busy work’, still chugging coffee like there’s no tomorrow, running around frantically like mice in one of those spinny-wheel things that I don’t know the name of.

This type of behavior is actually detrimental to productivity. And yet we demand it of candidates every single day.

In job posts, employers describe their ideal candidate as constantly working, proficient every aspect of their field, and as perfectionists who want to get every detail exactly right. This DO-ALL-THE-THINGS attitude may be in high demand, but it’s not going to benefit your company, or recruiting efforts, or your potential hires.

Take this job description for example:

“We want someone who doesn’t understand the term ‘office hours’. You’re always online!”

We took this example from LinkedIn Jobs, but I will not name the employer, as I am nice. I guess they also want someone who is operating at at a fraction of their potential, and is at risk of stroke, depression, and serious burn out. <sarcasm> Sounds like a great retention strategy to me! <sarcasm>

It’s like there are two planets: the reality of actual humans, and the irreality of job descriptions. When you ask for a candidate to have all of the skills of Superman, for a job Clark Kent that could do, the only applicants you’re going to attract are the ones with superhero complexes. And more often than not, these candidates will not deliver on what they promise!

I know it’s tempting, when writing up a job post, to envision a perfect employee, who turns everything they touch to gold. An employee who just intuitively knows how to fulfill every task required of them (and how many sugars you like in your coffee), but that candidate does not exist. And if they did, they would probably be off fighting crime somewhere, not checking their Facebook feed for potential job openings!

If that is the employee that your job posts demand, then those job posts are going to intimidate, and even alienate, lots of great candidates. Writing a job description is not just about projecting your expectations and desires, it is also about appealing to potential hires in order to get applications. You’ll get a lot more quality applications by appealing to the Clark Kent side of a candidate in your job posts, then allowing your new employee to reveal their Superman side as they grow into their position.

When you use social recruiting, every job you post builds your employer brand, and projects your corporate culture to the whole world. Those posts can help you craft an identity that makes candidates excited at the prospect of working for you, encourages them to engage, builds strong talent pipelines, and fosters positivity, trust, and growth. Make your job posts a symbol of hope amongst a sea of unrealistic expectations, and you’ll draw candidates in like never before. I mean really. We all know that the S on Superman’s chest stands for the Kryptonian word for hope, and not for our simple earthling ideas about the importance of being “Super”.

Next week, we’ll explore exactly how you can write job posts that will land you a Clark Kent employee!

What every job applicant wants to hear:

“You, my friend, are a mutant — and I have a need of mutants — desperate need!”

– Dr. Xavier

Our feature article last week explored the benefits and pitfalls of social media when it comes to inclusivity and diversity in the workplace.

So, now you know that using social media for recruiting, especially when you are targeting specific demographics, is a game of balance. While social media, and most notably Facebook Ads, offer a way to direct job postings at very specific groups of people, inclusivity requires that, during the hiring process, no one is discriminated against based on gender, race, religion, or superpower preference.

You may be targeting the 22 year-old tech-savvy millennial with your job post, but if you get an application from a 42 year-old ex-librarian who is perfect for the job, hire her. (They’re probably both wearing the same glasses anyway!)

Diversity isn’t just about gender, race, and religion. If you have a racially diverse team, but everyone on that team has the same life experience, values, interests, and opinions, then your team is not diverse. Varying outlooks, life experiences, and learning styles are equally important, and make a company flexible and strong.

That being said, let’s move on to some practical tips for using social media to banish exclusivity, embrace diversity, and create a winning team.

Make Your Content Reflect Diversity

This one’s a pretty obvious one. It’s also pretty easy to accomplish, since most stock photographers are now hyper-aware of their potential clients diversity requirements. Thus all of the racially-diverse images of happy men and women in business suits floating around the internet.

I do have a little tip for any of you looking to appeal to millennials but want to stay inclusive; old-timey images! Millennial hipsters are really into black and white photos of dudes in dapper suits, with old-fashioned hairstyles and mustaches.

Enlist Your Team

Hopefully your team of employees is pretty diverse already. If so, you have a great resource in them. Get your team on-board with your social recruiting; have them share posts, comment, and give input on the content of your Facebook Ads, Tweets, and job posts. If your content comes from diversity, then, chances are, it too will be diverse!

I’ll use an example from our own team, which is pretty darn diverse itself. Our blog is one of the main vehicles for us to share content with our clients, peers, and even candidates. Therefore, coming up with ideas for blog posts that reflect the message Jobcast wants to put out is no easy task.

Luckily, we have a team of employees who all have pretty great ideas for topics. Johnny is full of amazing suggestions about technical tasks that need covering, Ryan is always in the know about what our clients want to read, and I bring the girl power (ladies of HR unite!) as well as the ability to distill technical jargon down to regular words.

Target Diversity

This is probably the best way social media can help you bring diversity into the workplace, but it is also the most difficult to navigate.

Legality Alert! You must understand how your province, state, country, or home planet regulates recruiting practices. It’s going to vary from place to place, so I can’t really help you with this one. Sorry.

Social media, especially Facebook, allows you to target candidates really really specifically. If you need to meet diversity requirements, you can use Facebook Ads to target the demographic of candidates you need to attract.

It’s pretty straight-forward — here’s a tutorial on targeting candidates with Facebook Ads. There is some murkiness surrounding the legality and ethics of targeting candidates based on something like age or gender.

We’ve already given a legality disclaimer, so how do you avoid ethical problems with targeted recruiting campaigns? Easy. Understand that targeting diversity is different than being exclusionary.

Yes, you are primarily attempting to reach a specific demographic with your job posts, but if those posts are seen by a candidate who falls outside of that demographic, they can still apply for the position, and you, being the very ethical employer that you are, would not exclude them based on their age, gender, race, or the skinniness of their jeans.

Look for diversity, but value a culture of inclusion over all.

“You’ve proven you can think and act for yourselves!! Your training period is over!! Congratulations, my -X-Men- employers/recruiters!!”

– Samara Parker in the voice of Doctor Xavier

I think social media is great for recruiting. Duh!

.. and apparently I also think the 90s are back.

I blog for a Facebook recruiting app, so of course I think social media is great for recruiting. I also think that all of you should integrate at least some social networks into your recruiting strategy. Social recruiting is effective, social recruiting is industry standard, and social recruiting is sexy… if you’re into that sort of thing.

What social recruiting is not, is free from all of the strings and regulations of old school hiring methods. You may be able to target candidates based on specific demographics via Facebook Ads, but you also have to be aware of the possible backlash that this kind of targeting may have.

Mishandling your social recruiting policy can lead to a diversity disaster.

Millennial candidates are all the rage. The HR blogosphere would have you believe that all of your social recruiting should be aimed at attracting this generation of candidate. Just see my previous two feature articles for evidence of this, and yet, as much as engaging Gen Y is valuable, it shouldn’t get in the way of fostering inclusivity. Being cautious about diversity in recruiting isn’t just important for legality’s sake *cough, Abercrombie and Fitch, cough!*, it’s also an important part of making your employer brand attractive to potential hires.

To quote another millennial HR blogger:

“Inclusion will always be more attractive than exclusivity”

‘Always’ is a wee bit of an overstatement, of course. Try walking into your favorite local hipster coffee shop wearing sweatpants and carrying UFC 360 magazine; it’s enough to make you run to the nearest American Apparel and buy the skinniest jeans they have on offer. This reaction, caused by an intense atmosphere of exclusivity, is what makes the cafe appealing to many of its customers.

Recruiting, though, is not a hipster cafe.

When posting a job, when interacting with potential candidates, and when promoting your company culture, inclusivity will get you more applications. And it will keep legal issues at bay — what’s not to like?!

Now, that’s not to say that you cannot use targeting to your advantage when recruiting. If you create a Facebook Ad with the intent of it appealing to, or reaching out to, a target demographic, it does not mean that your social recruiting is exclusionary. Similarly, when a company makes a commercial that aims to appeal to youth, it doesn’t mean that they don’t want older people to buy their product. As we all know, most companies just want people buying their product, irrespective of age, gender, or hair color.

Understand What Diversity Really Means

Diversity isn’t just about gender, race, and religion. If it were, then there really wouldn’t be a lot of benefit to cultivating a diverse team of employees, other than meeting industry standards. I know some people think that that is all that diversity is about (again, Abercrombie!), but their opinions are wrong! If you have a racially diverse team, but everyone on that team has the same life experience, values, interests, and opinions, then your team is not diverse.

Differing opinions lead to discussion, which leads to ideas, which leads to innovation, and improvement.

Having an inclusive workplace, made up of employees who are different, but are all working towards the same goal, together, as a team, will benefit your company.

So, how do you use social media to promote inclusivity and help your company meet diversity requirements? That’s a great question!

Now that you have a groundwork for understanding how social media and diversity co-exist, we can move on to practical applications. Next week, we’ll explore exactly how you can put some of these ideas into practice, and use social inclusivity to better your company, your industry, and the world. So basically, we’re going to be using the X-men metaphor that I so dearly love. I’m pretty excited about it!

Until then I will leave you with an inspiring quote from Dr. X himself:

“My name is Charles Xavier. I am a mutant. And once upon a time I had a dream… of a world where all Earth’s children, both mutant and baseline human, might live together in peace. This isn’t it. This is today’s reality”

I ask you to ask yourself, “am I really reaching enough mutants?”

Social media can eat your time. One minute you’re rolling up to your desk, coffee in hand, tummy full of eggy muggin, and the next you’ve got five-o’clock shadow and an angry tummy demanding dinner, or a chocolate bar. Usually a chocolate bar. All because you decided to check the company Instagram.

Instagram led to YouTube, and then you had to tweet all of the hilarious cat company culture videos you found, and post a bunch of the links from your Twitter feed onto your Facebook Page… and then you realized that all of your co-workers had gone home, and the janitor was giving you the evil eye.

Not optimal.

Don’t get me wrong, I spend a lot of time on various social networks for work, but nowhere near as much time as you would think considering my job title. If I spent all day on Facebook and Twitter, I would have no time to write these blog posts, attend meetings, or come up with better social media strategies to keep us evolving.

Spending more time on social media does not necessarily get you better results, and in fact, it can even hinder them. If you’re too busy checking your Instagram feed to go over your Instagram analytics, update your content strategy, or regularly check in with your co-workers and clients, then you need to rethink things.

Here’s how I keep my social media-obsessing in check, prioritize tasks, and keep myself sane, all while staying social.

Assess the Situation

It’s impossible to change your situation unless you know what your situation is.

Maybe you think you’re spending 30 minutes per day posting content to your Facebook Page, but in reality it’s more like two hours when you take into account how long it takes you to search for content, curate it, and add in a bunch of hashtags.

Time-Saving Tips:

• Make a list of the social networks and apps you use.

• Spend one or two days tracking exactly how much time you spend on each network and app.

• Reorder your list to reflect time spent, and clearly note how many hours you devoted to each.

Now you have a solid understanding of how much time you are spending on social media, and exactly how that time is spent.

Prioritize

You only have so much time in your day, so you need to divide that time wisely.

The more effective a social network is for your goals, the more time you should devote to it. Chances are, you’re neglecting some networks that deserve more of your time, and you’re still using some networks that deserve none of it.

Time-Saving Tips:

• Go over your analytics and make a list (if you hadn’t noticed, I’m really into lists!) of the social networks you use, ordering them from most effective to least effective.

• Compare your two lists.

• Be shocked by the results.

Attention! Not to state the obvious, but if you spent two hours / week on Facebook and that resulted in ten applications, and you spent 8 hours / week on Twitter that resulted in fifteen applications, then Facebook is the more effective of the two. Yay math!

Create Guidelines

Now that you have all of this super-useful information at your fingertips, it’s time to make another list! I’m kidding… kind of!

Actually it’s time to lay down some guidelines for how to divvy up your socializing.

Time-Saving Tips:

• Decide how many hours you have to spend on social media. Aim low!

• Budget out that time. Allot more time for the social networks that get you great results, and less for the networks you’ve found to be less effective.

• Consider dropping some social networks altogether. If Vine hasn’t driven a single applicant to your career site, you probably don’t need to make it a part of your social strategy.

Bring in the Big Guns

• A content strategy template will help you manage the content you post. Here’s a basic content strategy setup for Facebook.  You can also check out this blog post if you want specifics on improving your content strategy for recruiting. 

• Social apps can save you tons of time. The Jobcast Facebook Recruitment App‘s Enterprise plan takes care of all of your Facebook Ads, job posts, and content management for you, and it’s also totally mobile-friendly! Hootsuite lets you manage Twitter lists and hashtags, which can save you hours every week.

• Scheduling tools like Buffer App help you line up all of your content at once, instead of having to manually share it throughout the day. Hootsuite, and Jobcast already have scheduling tools built in.

• Content curation platforms, like Alltop, help you stay on top of trending topics in your field, without having to spend a bunch of time surfing the web.

• Pocket is a reading list app that let’s you save blog posts, and sort them with tags, so that you’ll have a steady stream of  content to share.

Give these strategies a try, and hopefully you’ll never end up stuck in a social media vortex again. If you have any great time saving tips, let us know in the comments.

Happy social recruiting!

I always wanted to be part of Gen X. It just sounds super cool, and punk rock, and so much better than my generation: Gen Y.

The term Gen Y makes us all sound like pretentious hipster-philosophy students, who drink $5 made-to-order, single-origin, pour-over coffees. Granted, all of this is bang-on, but it still sounds pretty terrible. The alternative term, “millennials”, doesn’t appeal either, but that has more to do with my inability to spell it correctly (darn you double N!)

Dislike of the terminology aside, I am pretty excited about it being my generation’s time in the (recruiting) sun. Millenials (darn!) are entering the workforce en masse, and employers will have to revamp their recruitment strategies in order to snag these hip, young candidates.

Being a social recruiting blogger, and an uber hipster Gen Yer myself, I feel it is my duty to write about what we want from employers and recruiters, and about how you can recruit us, while busting some of the myths about what kind of workers we actually are.

First things first:

What can you expect from an office full of millennials?

Gen Y is very willing to compromise. In fact 72% of millennials surveyed were willing to make major sacrifices when it came to location, benefits, and salary, in order to enter into their desired field.

We do not want to jump ship every 18 months. That is a huge myth about Gen Yers, and it must end now!

Yes, on average millennials change employers every 1.5 years. But, 21% say that they desire to stay with their first employer for at least 5 years, and 22% optimistically prophesize a 10 year commitment. The fact that we tend to leave our first job so quickly has more to do with retention issues than the employees themselves.

Millennials love anything that is labelled artisan — especially coffee. We are also obsessed with Portland and Berlin. In fact, the majority of Gen Yers surveyed believe that they need field experience overseas in order to further their careers.

What do millennials want from employers?

Meaning.

I know, I know, it sounds like sarcasm, but I am being completely sincere. Remember how I said that all of us Gen Yers are philosophy-loving hipsters? Well, it’s completely true. Millennials value meaningful work, and they value a balance between work and life over high salaries.

Flexibility.

This may have something to do with the popularity of yoga, and Lululemon stretch pants.

We Gen Yers want to work for companies that provide flexible scheduling, we want the potential to work from home (at least part-time), and the ability to move around within the organization for which we work. Basically, we hate structure, and are horribly afraid of being tied down!

Kidding aside, this can actually be a huge plus for employers, because it means you can give us millennials more responsibility, and instead of grumbling about it, we’ll take it as a challenge and try our best to impress.

Tech.

Millennials want our employers to be reachable via social media, our workplace to be up-to-date with current technologies, and, when applying for a job, we expect to be able to complete the entire application process from the comfort of our smart phone.

We’ve grown up with all the access that the internet allows at our fingertips, cell phones attached to our ears, and our social lives shaped by networks like Facebook and Twitter. Gen Y is reliant upon these technologies, so we expect our workplace to incorporate them, or at least be open to incorporating them in the near future.

Employing more millennials, and tasking them with updating your company’s use of tech, is a great way to make your business more social!

To be Continued…

Stay tuned for next Monday’s article where we break down exactly how you can effectively recruit millennials.

Is your recruiting strategy missing out on one of the most important demographics? Odds are, the answer is yes. Over 60% of job seekers are using mobile devices to look for work. That means that over half of your potential candidates will be trying to apply for your job openings via mobile. But, in our most recent survey, we found that only 1 in 20 career sites were mobile-optimized, even though quite a few of them thought that their employer sites could accommodate mobile applicants. So what's the big deal? Won't these candidates simply apply later from their computers? Well, actually, no they won't! In fact, 40% of your potential hires will abandon the application process entirely if it is not mobile-friendly. And your candidates have very high standards when it comes to mobile experience. Simply put, if your potential hires cannot complete their application immediately, and completely, from their mobile device, they will not complete their application at all. (Caveat: of course this does not apply if you are hiring for president, or CEO, or the next Batman!) Hopefully we all agree that mobile friction is a huge problem, so now we can move on to the easiest possible solution.

The Jobcast Facebook Recruiting App is your mobile solution.

It's easy to use, it's completely free (although I highly recommend upgrading to our Enterprise plan), and with Jobcast, all job applications can be completed immediately from any mobile device. Most other recruiting apps do not allow candidates to submit their resumes from their mobile devices. Since most iPhone or iPad users don't or can't access their file system from their phone, there is no way to upload a resume, or any document, from their mobile device. The Jobcast team has used Cloud Technology to solve this problem. This new Cloud integration makes it possible for your candidates to submit their resumes with Dropbox. Here's how: From your Career Page, the candidate will start the application by clicking 'Apply Now'.

• You'll notice that the applicant has the option to apply by uploading a file or with Dropbox.

• Applicants applying from their desktop computer or with an Android phone or tablet can select a resume from their hard drive by clicking the "My Computer" button.

• The next button is where the magic happens! Your applicant can tap on the Dropbox button to access their Cloud data, from any mobile device, or any computer.

• A pop-up window will appear, and the user will be asked to log in to Dropbox.

• Once they are logged into Dropbox, they will have access to all of the files that they have saved in the Cloud. Your applicant can then select the copy of their resume they wish to attach.

• Through the magic of the internet, lo and behold, their resume will now be attached to their job application. They will then have the option now to 'View' the file that they have attached, or to 'Remove' it and instead select another.

As with all applications, you will be sent a notification, and a copy of the resume via email. Of course, the applications and attached resumes will also be viewable in the "Manage Jobs" section of the Jobcast App. If you like, you can post this tutorial on your Facebook Career Page for applicants to see, but we believe that the design is intuitive enough on its own; they won't even notice a difference between applying from their computer, and applying from their phone. At Jobcast, our main goal is to make your recruiting better. We believe that mobile friction is the biggest hurdle employers currently face. Trends predict that mobile job searches will double over the next year, making a frictionless mobile application process more essential than ever.

Make your recruiting mobile with Jobcast!

Although it’s probably a terrible idea to date our blog content this way, I just can’t help myself…

September is here; it’s time to go back to school. Recruiting School that is! (So cheesy, yet so satisfying.)

This week’s Link Love will get you educated, and you won’t even need to sign up for an online course, or community college, or play beer pong!

From recruiting millennials, to not horribly offending your potential hires, each of these articles is a wealth of information for employers and recruiters alike.

Let the learning begin!

Millennials 101

Millennials are the new black, and not because they are trendy, but because they now make up a large percentage of job seekers. So, it’s important to know exactly how Gen Y feels about social media in the workforce and this article will teach you everything you need to know on the subject.

Millennials 102

Delving further into the topic of Gen Y, Dan Schawbel’s latest article for Harvard Biz is entitled: You’re Probably Wrong About Millennials!

I love, love, love Dan’s advice “to drop generational stereotypes and give Gen Y employees a chance to prove themselves.” And his down-to-earth tips for getting the most out of your millennial employees.

Facebook Edgerank 101

Warning, it is extremely helpful to re-visit Facebook Ads 101 before enrolling in this course!

In this excellent post, Meredith Soleau, breaks down exactly how you can beat Facebook Edgerank to get your job posts seen, liked, and shared. This article is mandatory for any student looking to pursue Facebook recruiting.

Tutorial: Avoiding Interview Disasters

Recruiting doesn’t end at converting candidates into applicants. You also have to interview those applicants and convince them that they want to work for you!

Here’s how to avoid the 7 deadly sins of the interviewing process by Ken Sundheim.

Employee Satisfaction 300 Level

Now that you’ve learned how to reach candidates, convert them into applicants, and interview those applicants like a *baws*, it’s time to talk about retention. Here’s how to reward employees the right way, and to make them feel appreciated while boosting retention.

Stay tuned for next week’s Link Love, where we discuss how to pack healthy lunches for recruiters, and how to keep office bullies at bay!

Unless, of course, I decide to cover a topic that is slightly more pertinent to our readers… Speaking of pertinent, if you have any links that you think we should feature, or ideas for blog topics, let us know in the comments.

Do employers actually reach candidates through Facebook, and, if so, what are the numbers?

I know you’ve all been waiting for the last two weeks, with bated breath, for the answer to this question! Sorry that I made you wait so long, but our interview with Jessica Slusar about Earls’ Facebook recruiting strategy was so awesome, we just couldn’t wait to publish it. I would also like to say, that the stats and advice we shared in that interview do a pretty good job of showing just how effective Facebook recruiting is.

Yes, Employers do actually convert candidates with Facebook recruiting.

Read our interview with Jessica about Earls’ super-successful Facebook recruiting campaign, or head on over to the Leaders West Blog to check out a case-study on Earls’ super-effective employer branding, and you’ll see just how well it does work.

What? You want even more proof?!

Okay, I aim to please:

52% of job seekers used Facebook to look for work in 2012. (Mashable)

So, yes, there are real candidates on the social network who want to apply for your jobs. This is especially true of younger demographics, so if you are looking to hire for customer service and other hourly positions, Facebook is an especially useful tool.

22 million people surveyed used social media to find their last job in 2012. That’s up from 14.4 in 2011. (Jobvite survey)

Okay, so that stat is not specific to Facebook, but it is relevant. It’s pretty safe to assume that quite a few of those 14.4 million were using LinkedIn, but it’s also important to point out that recent grads, those looking for work in trades and construction, and people looking for hourly positions, are not LinkedIn’s traditional user base. So, if you are looking to fill positions within those demographics, Facebook is a far better choice.

84% of job seekers have a Facebook profile. (Time Business)

That’s a huge talent pool to fish from! And please, please excuse the terrible, terrible metaphor. But it is a huge pool — in fact, it’s more than double the number of job seekers with active accounts on Twitter (39%) and LinkedIn (31%), and yet more employers post jobs on those other social networks than they do on Facebook.

Which brings me to our next stat:

Only about 60% of hiring managers are actually using Facebook to recruit. (NAS Recruitment)

This means less competition, which makes Facebook recruiting a huge win for employers looking to hire in competitive markets. We highly suggest you get started with Facebook recruiting immediately, because more and more employers are starting to implement social recruiting strategies. The sooner you build your Facebook Career Page and start recruiting, the more time you’ll have to build your employer brand, establish social proof, thus give you an edge over latecomers.

Now, stats are all well and good, but honestly, I think examples are always better.

Earls Restaurant recently decided to make Facebook the main focus of their social media recruiting strategy with their Earls Wants You Facebook recruiting campaign. They chose Facebook for all of the reasons mentioned above, but also because it allowed them to convey their company culture to potential hires in a way that neither Twitter nor LinkedIn (let alone any job boards) allowed.

Being able to show candidates what an awesome place Earls is to work at, through recruiting videos, and pictures of staff events, gives the restaurant an advantage over other restaurants. This aspect is very important to Earls, because they are doing a significant amount of recruiting in an extremely competitive market (Calgary and British Columbia in particular).

Earls’ decision to focus on Facebook recruiting has really paid off.

In less than one month they increased their Page Likes by 500%, their main Youtube recruiting video (embedded on their Facebook Career Page) got 1,449 plays, and they received over 200 applications from qualified candidates.

Just in case you were wondering, Earls used the Jobcast Facebook Recruiting App Enterprise Plan for this campaign.

So there you have it, Facebook recruiting works; it’s efficient, effective, and takes less time than traditional recruiting methods.

Get started with Facebook recruiting now.

If you have any questions that you’d like us to tackle on the Jobcast blog, let us know in the comments!

I remember going to Earls restaurant when I was a kid — it was awesome. Back then, there were two huge, brightly colored parrots perched astride the entrance, and a train that circled around overhead while you ate your burger.

It’s still an awesome restaurant, but it’s nothing like the one I visited as a kid.

Not only does the award-winning restaurant chain now have 60 plus locations across the US and Canada, but Earls has gone through a major branding pivot that has taken the restaurant from brightly colored parrots to exposed brick gorgeous.

Their re-brand is one of the best I’ve ever seen, and they didn’t just stop at their marketing, menu, and interior design.

Earls has embraced social recruiting wholeheartedly, with a well-designed Facebook Career Page, professional recruiting videos, and an extremely effective Facebook Ads campaign.

This recruiting video by Earls has received over 1,750 unique video plays. It is also an awesome example of effective video recruiting!

We were very lucky to get a chance to chat with Jessica Slusar, Earls’ People Solutions Specialist, about Facebook recruiting, employer branding, and what advice she would give other employers looking to get social.

To preface the interview, we’d like to first share Earls’ employer brand philosophy:

“Great guest experiences begin with great partner experiences … At Earls, our people are our most important resource in delivering irresistible food and engaging experiences that build relationships for life.

By practicing the principles of integrity, authenticity, commitment to a cause greater than oneself, and being cause in the matter, we nurture, challenge and reward talent for the benefit of the individual and Earls, People Grow Here.”

This emphasis on finding amazing employees is made apparent through the attention to detail they’ve paid to their social recruiting strategy.

Jobcast: What spurred Earls to start using social media for recruiting?

Jessica Slusar: We realized that this was, and is, quickly becoming the new reality for recruiting. Traditional job boards and career sites are no longer the most effective avenue for getting your “we are hiring” message out there. We also noticed through our research, that very few restaurant concepts have devoted a full social platform to just recruiting. What we see most is that companies are using their corporate sites and pages to push out job postings, so we felt that if we started up social platforms that were solely devoted to recruiting, that would make us stand out. Everyone is mobile and has a device or tablet that they are attached to, so what better way to get them to hear about us then on social media, because we all know that we are all on it everyday.

Jobcast: Which social recruiting sites does Earls use for recruiting?

Jessica: We use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram currently.

Jobcast: Facebook is obviously a huge focus for Earls’ social recruiting. What makes Facebook recruiting so appealing?

Jessica: Facebook is nice because we have more than just 140 characters to work with. This was a big draw for us, because we have more space to tell stories. Our philosophy of “People Grow Here” (i.e. the development and career trajectory we offer at Earls) is one of many things that make us unique and we like to tell those stories with text, pictures and video.

Also, the fact that we can build photo albums (e.g. our Earls Experience Recognition Gala, US East Coast expansion plans) means we can keep people up to date on what’s going on. We know our people like to be in the loop! And what we have found, is that our fans and followers tend to engage more with visuals and familiar language. They see their friends liking it, they share it, comment etc.

Lastly, when we get into launching targeted campaigns, FB is a great tool to utilize for drilling down and reaching our target audience (who we want to reach) with each of our custom posts.

Jobcast: Have you found Facebook Ads to be an effective way to increase applications?

Jessica: Facebook ads have been an extremely effective way to bring awareness, interaction and engagement to our page. We are unique in how we recruit (for example, we don’t have candidates submit applications via a career website). Instead, we direct them to our Earls Wants You career website so they can download an application and find their nearest Earls location to apply to in person. We want to make a genuine and authentic connection with each of our partners and we feel that by meeting with them face to face we form a unique relationship from the initial interaction.

Jobcast: How has the targeted nature of Facebook Ads affected the quality of the applications you receive?

Jessica: Facebook Ads are fantastic for reaching our key partner demographic, starting from the high school grad getting their first job with no experience, to an experienced hospitality veteran looking for a change. It’s also great in challenging and emerging labor markets like Calgary and the US.

Jobcast: Were there any obstacles or roadblocks you had to overcome when transitioning from typical recruiting methods to Social and Facebook recruiting?

Jessica: What we noticed is that we couldn’t just keep doing what we had done with typical job boards. We needed to find a way to take the traditional job ad and role description and shrink it down to something cool, catchy and relevant. Now, we really think about the content we send out, making sure we add value to our followers feeds while still accomplishing our ultimate goal of getting people in the door to apply. There was a lot of trial and error, test campaigns, and strategy adjustments halfway through. Being flexible and changing it up is how we have started to see some of our successes.

Jobcast: Can you share a few of your Facebook recruiting successes?

Jessica: We found that enlisting our existing partners and leaders in spreading our messages was the first step to success. Word of mouth is a powerful message, so we got our existing partners to start Liking, sharing and talking about Earls Wants You on social, which helped articulate who we are and why we are different.

The second thing we did was research and learn from the success stories out there. We started following and talking with brands that were executing their social recruiting presence well. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Third, successful social platforms take a lot of time, so the huge win for us was partnering with a company that offered a breadth of social expertise (the Jobcast Recruiting App). Our first campaign was just a test run in Calgary and Edmonton (Alberta is a notoriously tough labor market) and we thought that if we could achieve reach, interaction, and engagement from a targeted campaign in challenging locations, then we could see future success in our other regions.

Jobcast: What tips can you offer other companies looking to get started with Facebook recruiting?

Jessica: Initially, do your research and start following, watching, and learning from other successful brands that do it well.

Once you’ve gotten started, establish what your brand is, what your message is, and what makes you unique and engaging to your followers. Recognizing what is valuable information for your followers is critical for brand perception and long-term engagement. You want to offer value to every potential partner.

Jobcast: Earls has an amazing brand on and off-line. How did you manage to transition your brick and mortar branding to Facebook so well?

Jessica: For Earls, we are genuine and authentic in our relationships. How we show up in person is how we should show up online. So we took our Earls Experience, Partner values, mission and vision, how every partner and leader in the entire company functions every day, and brought it online. We wanted to show a glimpse of what they can expect to see when they walk into our restaurant. By telling stories, sharing partner profiles, images, videos and the passion for what we do it adds that level of personal connection for our followers, fans, alumni and potential candidates.

Jobcast: What does Facebook offer your brand that other mediums don’t?

Jessica: The great thing about social media and FB is that we can reach candidates all the time. Unlike traditional job boards that are successful for the active candidate that is pursuing the search, social media helps to reach that passive candidate in a subtle, non-invasive way. By posting great stories, pics, videos and job information, we splash across candidate’s news feeds as many times as they check their phone. It’s proactive vs. reactive.

Jobcast: What advice would you have for other companies looking to improve their Facebook employer branding?

Jessica: Don’t just push out job openings… it’s boring. Engage with your followers and fans, build relationships — that’s what social media is all about. Stay fun, fresh, cool and relevant. Always keep learning and evolving your strategy.

Jobcast: What makes Earls a great place to work? What should potential employees know about the Earls’ company culture?

Jessica:

• People Grow Here, you will see this in a lot of our posts and it’s true. We can take someone with very little, to no experience, and provide them with all the training and tools they need to become successful in whichever role they are in. There are so many great examples across our company of partners who have started as hostesses and dishwashers and are now President and GM and Chef.

• We have Soul — as I have mentioned before, we are all about genuine and authentic connections and building lifelong relationships, with each other, our partners and our guests.

• Your opportunity is limitless — there are so many exciting things happening with Earls right now and the sky is the limit for our people. We are expanding to new markets in the US, so there are so many opportunities for movement and growth and development.

• We have passion for what we do and why we do it — we deliver irresistible food and drink, and engaging experiences, and have a whole lot of fun while we do it.

Jobcast: Company culture is a huge part of the Earls brand. Could you share some tips for other employers looking to show off their company culture on Facebook?

Jessica: Be real, be authentic and engaging. Don’t try to be something that you aren’t.

We couldn’t sum up the essence of Earls’ employer brand any better ourselves… that’s why Jessica is the specialist! We want to thank Jessica Slusar and Earls for answering all of our questions and being such a great company to work with.

For some incredible Facebook recruiting inspiration, check out the Earls Wants You Facebook Career Page — it’s truly fantastic. And don’t forget to check out how the Jobcast Enterprise plan can take your Facebook recruiting to the next level.