We've all heard how important portraying a professional presence online is, however what you don't hear about is how many jobs are lost solely because of a unprofessional or weak social presence. Without any sense of exaggeration it can be said that social media is a necessity in today's job world. It's important you have profiles built-out to show off who you are, your achievements and job history. Being inactive on social media will, in many cases. jeopardize your chance at getting your dream job. Careerbuilder's great infographic demonstrates just how many employers actively look at their employees or future employees social media accounts. The numbers speak for themselves in this case. When done right, social media platforms can be a major help in getting noticed and eventually soliciting offers. While Facebook and Twitter are popular, it's important your presence doesn't end there. Being well-rounded, and at least having built-out accounts with several other sites is helpful. While there are obvious no-no's on social media, simply taking an hour or two to accurately build-out a profile is easy and beneficial. It's beneficial because it populates Search Engine Results Page's (SERP) when your name is queried, and it's easy because many sites draw off other and therefore don't force you to enter much additional information. To help job seekers better understand the role of social media in their job search, CareerBuilder.com conducted a survey last year that asked 2,303 hiring managers and human resource professionals if, how, and why they incorporate social media into their hiring process. This survey came back with results that showed direct correlation between active social media users and success in job hunts. In some cases it was that the employer got a good feel for the candidate’s personality. Others chose to hire because the profile conveyed a professional image. In some instances it was because background information supported professional qualifications, other people posted great references about the candidate, or because the profile showed that the job seeker is creative, well-rounded, or has great communication skills. A big thing that many employers look for is consistency. Listing your accomplishments and profession on Linkedin isn't good enough because some employers may only look at Facebook. Having a consistent message and imagery across your social media presence will make life easier on your potential suitors, as well as on you as you won't need to reinvent the wheel for each social media profile you build. Overall, social media isn't brain surgery. All it takes is a few focused hours and a goal in-mind. It's best that you simply sit down and map out where you'd like to go with your career and build your profiles with said goal in mind. Also, make sure you maintain a clean profile, instead of just cleaning it up when the time comes you think that they'll be analyzed. In this digital age, you just never know who is looking at your profiles when, so it's best to be safe rather than sorry. Scroll down for Careerbuilder's awesome infographic:

As we all know, social media has a multitude of uses, from helping us stay connected with friends and searching for jobs, to marketing, customer service, sales and recruitment. However, one area that is often overlooked is how businesses can use social networks internally.

Internal social networks, also known as enterprise social networks (ESNs), can help to create a sense of community online and are particularly useful for businesses that are moving to mobile or are spread across multiple offices. If you’ve not considered how ESNs could benefit your business, take a look at some of the advantages below:

1. Improved communication

   In an increasingly mobile workplace, gone are the days of chatting by the water cooler or being able to simply walk to the other side of the office to speak to a colleague. Enterprise social networks can therefore help colleagues come together and easily engage in conversations, regardless of geograhic barriers.

2. Improved collaboration

   It can be difficult working as part of a team when you’re not all in the same room. However, enterprise social networks provide a number of features that make it easier, from being able to effectively manange project progress, share files and much more.

3. Transparency

   A problem many businesses can have is understanding what other teams are working on. If you add a mobile workforce into the equation then this can become even harder. Different teams may each be working on similar projects (doubling up on time and money), or projects where if efforts were combined, could be even better. Enterprise social networks can help reduce these issues, by providing more transparency to the mix. For example, employees can share projects they are working on, along with their progress. Some managers may be concerned by complete transpareny, but it is often possible to keep certain information private where required.

4. Find internal expertise

   Running a project that needs specific expertise? It can be difficult knowing if anyone has the required skills, particularly in a larger business. You may therefore turn to someone who is underskilled, or hire a consultant which can be costly. Enterprise social networks can help you see what talent is already available in-house. Employees can create their own profiles and add their professional experiences and skills. This is then easily searchable, so next time you have a project, you can find the best people for the job.

5. Share ideas

   Two heads are better than one, but if you struggle to get your team together for a brainstorming session, consider getting everyone to contribute via your enterprise social network. You can open this up to your wider business and unlike a brainstorming session where you allocate a time, ideas can be shared online 24/7. This can mean more people and more ideas, which can help your business stay on its toes, be more innovative and keep moving forward

6. Develop relationships

   Enteprise social networks are much more than just a platform to communicate, they can also be used to help colleagues build stronger relationships with their co-workers. This can help employees feel happier in their role and it can make the business run smoother, with fewer conflicts.

7. Increased productivity

   Enterprise social networks can help to create a more open and innovative culture. Employees can also feel more engaged, which can boost productivity and also improve employee rentention.

If you’re interested in enterprise social networks for your company, then there are a number of solutions to consider. Here are 3 suggestions:

1. Yammer

   Founded in 2008, Yammer is a freemium enterprise social network owned by Microsoft. Users can start groups, share ideas, collaborate, upload documents, create public groups and much more.

(Screenshot from Yammer website)

2. Chatter

Created by Salesforce, Chatter can help employees share knowledge, track projects, collaborate and ultimately stay connected whenever and from wherever. Take a look here to find out more.

(Screenshot from Chatter website)

1. Workplace

   The most recent and exciting development in enterprise social networks is Workplace. Created by Facebook, it aims to help you do work, without getting distracted by your friend’s holiday pictures, getting caught up in a chat or coming across adverts. You therefore have a separate log-in to your personal Facebook account. Employees can still enjoy many of the standard Facebook features, such as a newsfeed, groups, messages, events, Facebook Live, reactions and search. However, there are also some other features that have been specifically built for Workplace. These include a dashboard with analytics, shared spaces and much more.

(Screenshot from Workplace by Facebook website)

Author Bio

Elizabeth Harmon is a writer for Open Colleges, one of Australia’s leading online education providers. She is a Freelance Social Media Consultant with a number of years experience in the field. She has worked with a growing list of clients around the world, helping to build successful social media strategies, create effective content and much more. Follow her on Twitter @Liz_Harmon.

Finding the right person to take over a role at your company is challenging. It often costs thousands of dollars just to fill one low- to mid-level position, and even more for management positions. That's why assuring that each hire you make is successful is of utmost importance in today's business world. Studies have found that new hires are one of the biggest factor in creating animosity and discord in the office. On top of that, in a 2014 survey done by BambooHR, it was discovered that one-third of the 1,000 respondents said they had quit a job within the first six months of starting it. Plus, more than 16 percent left between the first week and the third month of their new job. Along with being extremely costly monetary wise, this also creates discontent and confusion among the remaining members of your team. While the majority of businesses find success with new hires, if you're interested in some best practice techniques or are part of that minority that has struggled with onboarding new staff, try these 3 tips below.

1. Smooth Introduction

Making sure that your new hire has a smooth first week or two is excruciatingly important. Nothing is worse for a new hire to experience at your company than an aimless, unproductive and unstructured intro period. If nothing else, assure that they're at least busy with work, don't let them sit and stew about their decision! A good practice is to send out all of intro/contract/HR paperwork prior to the employee arriving on the first day. This simply allows both parties to be completely ready for the other as soon as the first day starts. Having experienced listless companies who ignored any onboarding procedure, there's nothing more frustrating. On top of dealing with paperwork prior to arrival, make sure you get your new hire to send through a quick bio and picture, so that you can familiarize them with your team. This allows both your hire and your team to be included in the process, as well as gives both familiarity right off the bat. Here a few other more obvious, but sometimes forgotten about details that need to be taken care of:

• Setup you new employees workstation before they arrive

• Establish short and long-term goals with the hire

• Make sure they have everything they need to be productive on the first day

• Have a meeting at the end of the first day to clarify any issues or just ask them how their day went

• Send them home with an organization-specific care package

2. Allow for Team Input

Allowing current members of your team into the discussions about the hiring process is a great way to get them involved. While serving many purposes, overall this practice is just to make sure that everyone on your team feels included. Also, you never know when a member of your team might have a connection to someone who may fit perfect with the organization. By including your team in the onboarding process, this gives the relationship with the new hire more potential to be a success. It does this by cutting away any resentment your staff may have about the decision. In theory it should allow your team to get any questions or concerns on the table prior to the new member coming onboard.

3. Setup Check-Up Meetings

Understanding your employees perspective is incredibly important. It's not good enough to simply make decisions for the company on your best judgement without consulting staff. The same concept applies to the onboarding process. Make sure that you're having check-in meetings with your new hire, as well as with your team. Hearing what they have to say will give you the opportunity to adjust on the fly and eliminate festering issues. A more formal way of doing this is through a formal questionnaire at the end of the first week. Include any questions about their thoughts on your orientation process and assimilation with the team and office. Not only will this allow you to identify any pain points that might reduce your new hire’s job satisfaction, but it also helps inform you about onboarding best practices for future hires. A significant amount of job turnover happens in the first couple of months, so assure that you're treating your new hire to a seamless onboarding process. – Don’t drop the ball after you make the hire. The onboarding process is just as critical as the recruitment process when it comes to optimizing hiring results. Smart hiring practices extend into your new hires’ first few months of employment, and recognizing that can save your company a lot of time and money.

So ...

You’ve rolled out your social recruiting strategy and have begun to see results…

You’re sharing job posts, promoting your company employer brand and engaging with candidates.

What now?

It’s time to let everybody else know about all of the great work that you’ve been doing! Creating a social recruiting report is the most effective way to communicate your progress.

Instead of just telling your boss what you’ve been up to why not show them?

With a social recruiting report you can use visuals to communicate ideas more clearly, charts and graphs to show your progress over time, and statistics as concrete proof of the progress that you’ve made.

Here’s how you can make your own social recruiting report.

Decide what to measure:

The data and statistics that you choose to include will fall into two categories: employer branding and recruiting.

For employer branding you’ll want to track:

• Number of Clicks Per Post - This will show how interested your audience is in what you are sharing.

• Shares/Retweets - This data is great for seeing how your content is received and how engaged your followers are. Shares are awesome because they mean that your brand is getting exposure amongst non-followers.

• Likes/Favorites  - Likes and favourites aren’t just about showing how many people enjoy your content, they also act as social proof to your other followers.

• Followers - How many followers you have tells you the number of people who are interested in your company. Increasing your number of followers improves the reach of your content, your social proof, and increases the likelihood of job seekers finding you.

For recruiting, you’ll want to track:

• Job Views by Source - Where people who view your job posts are coming from. This will help you learn where people are finding links to your job posts.

• Applicants by Source - Where applicants are finding your job posts. This will help you learn which social networks are connecting you with potential hires.

• Hires by Source - Where your actual hires are coming from. This will show you where the highest quality of candidates are coming from.

For each of these areas, you’ll want to gather information about where your social recruiting stands currently, how it has progressed over time, and how you think it will progress into the future.

How to Find Your Social Recruiting Stats and Data

For employer branding:

• Facebook - Facebook Insights will give you all of the information that you need about Clicks, Shares, Likes, and Followers for your Company Facebook Page.

• Twitter - Twitter Analytics are excellent for finding out all that you need to know to create your report.

• LinkedIn Analytics for Business - LinkedIn’s analytics tool (located near the “Home” link on your LI business page) is nowhere near as insightful as those you’ll get from Facebook or Twitter, but it’s still the best/only tool out there for LinkedIn.

• Google+ Insights - Google does a lovely job with their analytics tool and provides a simple, easy to read ‘audience overview’.

For recruiting:

This can be a little trickier!

You will either need to use an ATS that provides you with tracking, so that you can see where applicants come from, or use a social recruiting tool that provides you with the data you want to track.

Jobcast is just one of those social recruiting tools. It provides you with reporting that will show where your job views, applications, and hires are coming from. Jobcast’s reporting can also be used to see just how much traffic your social recruitment efforts are driving.

Creating Your Social Recruiting Report

Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ allow you to export all of your data to a CSV file.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google+ requires a bit more than just clicking an export button to download your data.

This article explains how to download data from Google+ Insights.

Unfortunately with LinkedIn, you will have to create a CSV or Excel sheet manually!

For recruiting, getting the data will depend on the ATS or platform that you use for your social recruitment.

Once your data is ready to use, you’ll need to choose a presentation tool.

You can use Google Docs or Excel to build your social recruiting report, but I would recommend taking advantage of some of the amazing visualization tools available to you.

My favourite tool is Piktochart, as it is pretty easy to use and you can import data from Google Spreadsheets. You can even splurge and upgrade to a pro account to gain access to some excellent social media reporting templates.

Here’s an example of what a social recruiting report can look like with Piktochart.

Make sure to write a quick brief that explains the findings in your report. Explain the trends you see and speculate on why you think you’re getting those results.

After this summary is written, it’s time to lay out what your goals are for the future, and what you’ll need going forward to accomplish those goals.

Use the numbers presented in your report to develop actionable paths to these goals and to prove the ROI on what you’ve done so far.

What tools do you use to make reports? Let us know in the comments!

69% of job seekers would not take a job at a company with a poor employer brand. (Source)

Millennials value a workplace culture-fit more than any generation before them.

And, every year, more candidates turn to social media to assess potential employers and to look for work.

Companies cannot reach today’s candidates without creating a strong, visible employer brand, engaging job seekers on social media, and selling the heck out of their culture.

In short, companies need to start marketing themselves to potential hires if they want to win the war for talent.

The key to marketing is connecting with your audience. To do this with job seekers, you will need to engage them on a personal level, at the right time, and with the right message.

In this article you’ll learn how to create a social recruiting marketing plan that will help you achieve that goal.

Step 1: Create a candidate persona

Before you can even begin to connect with your audience, you need to know who they are.

Do not confuse this step with knowing what you want in an employee!

Understanding your audience is not the same as knowing what qualifications or skills they should have on their resume.

In marketing, this is called creating a customer persona. For recruiting, we’ll just replace the word ‘customer’ with ‘candidate’.

Good marketers study their audience to learn their behaviors and understand their attitudes. They use this information to build comprehensive profiles that detail their customer’s wants, their everyday problems, and their needs.

To create a candidate persona ask yourself:

• What is your candidate's goal?

• What perks matter most to them?

• What motivates them?

• What social networks do they use?

Personally, I like to use a tool called personapp for this, but a pen and paper will work too!

Once you create your candidate persona for your ideal candidate, you can use it to target them with (recruitment) content marketing and your employer branding.

Which brings us to step 2…

Step 2: Perfect your employer brand

Your employer brand is vital for reaching candidates.

Investing in employer brand is shown to cut back employee turnover by a third. A robust employer brand can reduce cost per hire by 50%, and poor employer branding will cut your application volume in half.

In marketing, branding defines the company and how others feel about the company.

In recruiting, employer branding defines your company culture and how job seekers will feel about you as a potential employer.

To create a strong employer brand you must share your company’s story in an authentic way. Your values and culture must shine through in every aspect of your branding.

Your branding should be consistent no matter the medium. From job post to Facebook Page, your message must be clear and cohesive.

Job seekers should feel as though they are getting an inside look at what it’s like to work at your company. Your brand should inspire confidence and trust in them, so that they feel confident that your company is a good place to be.

And remember to always keep your candidate persona in mind when coming up with employer branding ideas.

Step 3: Content Marketing

Content is the core of marketing.

Building your employer brand depends on the content you create, not just on how you promote it.

Content marketing is key to getting job seekers’ attention and building a strong audience. Content is what drives traffic to your career site, gives candidate a positive impression of your company culture, and converts job seekers into applicants.

Remember to use the candidate persona you created when coming up with content ideas.

Think hard about the kind of information that would appeal to your candidate persona and use that to help shape your content.

Share job search tips from a hiring manager’s perspective, career advice, industry news and other articles that will appeal to your audience. Asking current employees about what they would want to see is a great way to get ideas about what to post.

Here are 11 content ideas for social recruiting

Step 4: Get Your Message Out There

This is where social media really comes in handy!

Use social to reach job seekers with your employer brand and new content.

Your customer persona will help you decide which networks to use, and what hashtags will get your posts the most engagement.

Set up a social media schedule and start sharing your jobs, blog posts, videos, and all your other content.

Don’t forget to also share content from other sources, and to engage with your community regularly to keep your social media presence social and not spammy!

Another great way to get your content out there is to contact popular bloggers that your desired candidate is likely to read, and then see if they will publish some of your best content.

Make sure to leverage your team’s social media presence by asking them to share, like, and comment on your posts.

To free up more time, so can better engage with your audience, consider using a social recruiting automation tool like Jobcast.

Step 5: Measure Results

Marketers know that they have to be constantly improving if they want to succeed. They also know that the best way to improve is to know exactly where they’re going wrong and what they’re doing right.

The same is true for social recruiting.

Track engagement and application volume for each campaign that you run. Use the information that you gather to determine what’s working for you and what isn’t. Then make decisions moving forward based on that knowledge.

Well, that’s five concrete, actionable steps that will help you move forward with your social recruiting efforts. We wish you the best of luck, and encourage you to get in touch to let us know what has worked for you.

Happy planning!

Brands have been using user generated content in their marketing campaigns for a long time. By getting users and customers involved in campaigns and the content that is being shared, brands are able to get their customers more engaged with their brands, establishing a stronger connection with these customers. Companies can also apply this to their workforce and employees. By sharing content that employees make themselves, companies can actively encourage workers to share their own experiences. By doing this, employees can contribute to recruiting efforts and help grow a bigger and better team of employees while making their voices heard. So, what kinds of content can you get your employees to post?

Employer Hashtags

By encouraging employees to use an employer hashtag, you can easily track and view what your team is sharing on social media. You can simply click on the hashtag on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook or track it using a social media dashboard, and this will populate any posts using it. Using an employer hashtag can also be low risk - there is no need to hand over credentials for any of your company’s social media accounts. Instead, you are able to choose which posts you would like the re-post or share on your own profiles. This can also be a great way to track how your employees are feeling about work. If they are sharing fun content and positive experiences, you can be sure that they are enjoying working with you. If, on the other hand, they’re sharing negative experiences, you can catch issues as they happen and resolve them.

Instagram Takeovers

With over 500 million monthly active users, this is a great platform to reach out to tons of potential new employees! Using Instagram, you can showcase what life is like at your company. Instagram has introduced more ways to share content, including a 60 second video limit and a new feature called Stories, which lets you upload content for 24 hours. With a 60 second video, you can share things like employee profiles or quick clips of quirky office traditions. The new Stories features gives you the freedom to upload more casual content, because after 24 hours, this disappears! When you create Stories on Instagram, you can also create quick doodles on images and videos that you share. This means that you can include more fun and casual clips without having to stress too much about whether they fit into.

Employee Blog Posts

While social media posts are quick, fun, and easy to consume, blog posts can be a great way to get a deeper look into the days of your employees. By asking your team to write about their own experiences, you can let them feel like they are making a big contribution. By reading through different perspectives, prospective applicants can get a better sense of the work environment as a whole. Blog posts can also be used to help walk job seekers through what your recruitment process looks like. When these job seekers have this knowledge and have a better idea of what they can expect when applying for a position at your company, this can encourage them to apply! Using employee-generated content saves you time creating content yourself, engages your employees, and helps to reassure potential applicants that what they’re seeing and hearing is genuine. With social media becoming a bigger and bigger part of our world, incorporating marketing practices into your social recruiting can help you connect with potential new employees.

Be sure to add regularity to your strategy to reel in the recruits.

For today’s job recruiters, social media is an indispensable resource. Platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook allow you to source top talent, which contributes to the success of your company in a big way. But when it comes to social media recruiting, simply showing up is not enough. Above all else, your recruiting strategy on any web platform needs to be consistent. Specifically, you need consistency in the aesthetic, narrative, schedule, and engagement of your posts. Otherwise, you risk damaging your recruiting outcomes in a few ways:

It deters prospective applicants

One of the first things that your recruits will do before submitting their applications is evaluate your web presence. This means that blogs, social media, and websites will be scrutinized. However, social media can influence an applicant more than other channels. It does this by demonstrating your general likability, engagement in the relevant discourse, and can demonstrate a high-functioning internal structure through marketing efforts. The latter is where consistency plays an especially major role. If your company appears to lack support in the marketing and branding areas, an applicant may abandon any thought of applying to work with you because of the perceived hardship—unless, of course, they would be hired to foster these missing elements.

It fails to attract highly talented applicants

Failure to incorporate consistency in your social media platforms, particularly LinkedIn, may translate into failure to get your vacancies noticed by desirable applicants. One such area of consistency is in profile completeness (for your recruiter and company profiles alike). It’s essential to thoroughly complete each social media profile you make. On LinkedIn, this includes things like peppering your page with relevant and concise keywording, which can then be used to promote certain jobs to certain demographics. For more tips on how to make your profile more complete, check out these recommendations from LinkedIn.

It discourages relationship building

While brand and aesthetics might be the more obvious facets of consistency, communication is also a big one. Consistent communication is the primary way in which you will build relationships with prospective applicants. Left unchecked, your connections will write you off or may even become suspicious of rare and impersonal messages sent their way. Before that happens, make a concerted effort to cultivate relationships on social media through direct messaging, interacting with posts, and sharing insights and information. Just be sure not to overdo it! Not sure what to say? Monster has some insights that can help you break the ice.

It confuses your audience

Across all marketing channels, your ‘look and feel’ needs to be consistent with your logo displayed in an obvious place. Forgoing this basic marketing tactic can lead to utter confusion among prospective applicants as well as the general public. They aren’t likely to spend much time at any given page in general, but if you make them spend that time trying to discern whether they’re at the right page or not, you’ll likely forgo repeat visits or application follow-through.

If you do find yourself with an inconsistent presence across social media, don’t get too discouraged. It can be fixed! However, it’s important to address this issue before you put much of your resources into recruiting. And by that, we don’t mean limiting yourself to one channel (“Consistency is guaranteed if there’s only one, right?” Wrong!). While you may have little control over these marketing adjustments yourself, you can bring the issue to the table and work with your social media and marketing team to design an enticing web presence to attract new talent. 

James Pointon is a content marketing specialist with a passion for social media. Currently, James is supporting OpenAgent, where he uses his knowledge for online promotion. You can connect with James on LinkedIn.

Live streaming is becoming a normal part of social media, and it’s now one of the most useful tools in the marketing arsenal. For recruitment, it can be an invaluable tool, something you wish you had started using years ago. With solutions like Periscope now making it easier than ever to get started, here’s all you need to know about live streaming recruitment.

Getting Started

Let’s begin with a look at how to set up your Periscope account. You will need to download the app and then connect it to a Twitter profile to have everything set up in a matter of seconds. Make sure that you use the right account: a corporate profile can work very well as you will have instant access to those that you already follow on Twitter. You only get a 24 hour window to share broadcasts, so if you want to save them for later, turn on the auto-save function in your settings.

Quick Tips

Now you are all set up, what do you need to think about before you broadcast? Make sure that your broadcasts are open to the public for all sessions, so that you can reach as many people as possible. Then use the ‘share to Twitter’ function so that your Twitter followers will all know that you are live. This is a good way to get as many viewers as possible.

Localization is key for recruitment, so use the location-tagging feature to highlight where you are broadcasting from. This will let candidates know that they are looking in the right area. You may lose a few viewers who aren’t anywhere near your location, but that doesn’t matter – you only want those who would be interested in working with you.

Also make sure to respond to comments as they come in. The communication in live broadcasting should be a two-way street. Don’t just ignore those who make the effort to reach out to you.

Information Sessions

Candidates will love to be able to see the person they may end up interviewing with, and they may have questions that they want to get out of the way before they apply or come for interview. That’s why you should have information session for your open positions. Internal recruiters can take charge of these, setting a time and date for the session – this can even be included in job ads to give candidates a heads up. This highlights the positions for your followers and allows them to know more. Make sure your recruiters know what they can and can’t discuss from a legal standpoint before they begin.

General Promotion

So how can you use Periscope for promotion outside of these sessions? People love to watch “day in the life” sessions, where you showcase how someone in your organisation spends their day. You can also live stream events that your company may hold. The only limit is your imagination, and it seems so far as though people are willing to watch just about anything!

Alternatives

A quick word on alternatives: you can also use Facebook Live, although this is perhaps seen as a little informal and less professionally-aimed. Snapchat is another option, but you will need to build up a big following before you use it as outside cannot get access to broadcasts.

Live streaming is becoming much more prominent in the world of recruitment, and now is a great time to get involved. Don’t be the last company to get on board with this new way of doing things. Try Periscope as soon as possible and you’ll be an expert in no time.

Joan Herbert is an Assistant Manager at Bank-Opening-Times.co.uk, a curious individual, avid reader and a passionate creative writer.

Today, it’s mobile devices (not laptops or desktop computers) that make up the most internet usage. With the number of social networks (like Facebook or Twitter), messaging platforms (like Whatsapp), and mobile apps (services like Netflix or games like Pokemon Go) at our fingertips, this should come as no surprise.

Think about how much time you spend looking at your phone, checking your email or snapping a photo of your lunch. For many people in today’s world, their smartphones are practically an extension of their hands.

There are currently 2.6 billion (with a B!) smartphone users across the globe. If you’re not optimizing for mobile, then you’re leaving behind a lot of users, and most of these users are very engaged – 70% of mobile searches lead to online action within an hour.

You need to take advantage of the sheer number of users, being mindful of how you design your website and making it easy for visitors to take action right away. Users who click on your job posting, careers site, or any other link that you share won’t stick around for long if they have a hard time viewing the content on their phones or tablets. 

With such powerful small devices in our hands, people are becoming more and more accustomed to using their mobile phones. This is made clear by the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, where you can only publish or post content using a mobile device. Mobile usage isn’t just limited to social media – there’s an app for everything from fitness to banking to hailing a ride (hello, Uber!).

With all of these options, why shouldn’t people be able to find and apply for a job on mobile devices too? Mobile has become a big part of our lives, so you can’t ignore it now.

Did you know?

Jobcast already optimizes for mobile. While Facebook doesn’t support installed apps on your Page, Jobcast links will still work. Whenever a potential candidate clicks on a Jobcast posting from a mobile device, they’ll be redirected to the applyto.co Careers Page that Jobcast hosts for you or straight to your own website. You can also collect applications straight from a user’s smartphone! 

Reel in the job applicants with a few simple tweaks to your recruiting strategy.

Not only are job seekers competing with one another these days, but so too are job recruiters when it comes to attracting prospective employees. With recruiters saturating the social media sphere, it can be hard to stand out. But with a little pizazz and strategic planning, it can be done.

Stay current on trends within each platform

Coming up with different variations of just one item of content can be a lot of work, but it’s important to take this route over the easy way (using the same post, as is, across social media networks). For example, if you intend to recruit on Instagram, your best bet it to use a GIF without audio, whereas on Facebook you will have a longer timeframe and opportunity to use audio and subtitles.

Know what goes where

Determining what kinds of marketing to filter through which channels depends on the primary reasons an audience is on a network in the first place. Users flock to Facebook for social and news updates, Instagram users are keen on bite-sized visually oriented posts, and LinkedIn users want to know about news pertaining to their careers. Of course, you can overlap some content, but keep in mind that many of your connections are following you on multiple platforms and may not want to see the same thing repeated at every corner of social media.

Integrate entertainment value

Create content that not only delivers your message, but also has the added layer of entertainment value (bonus points if it’s humorous!). While not within the realm of social recruiting exclusively, you can learn a lot from JCPenney’s content strategy. Their example here has a lot going for it—humor, personality, hashtags, and glimpse into company values. Aside from everything (both obvious and implied) that you can incorporate into posts like this, you will also likely see an uptick in reach that the post has. Connections will be more inclined to share it with their networks, which can take it further than even paid advertising could. And who knows, it might go viral!

Use content types that attract readers

These days, plain text doesn’t cut it. Social media users want to see visuals, infographics, and short videos than the relatively boring text-only posts. What’s more is that multimedia posts are more likely to show up in newsfeeds anyway, so try to use plain text sparingly—and when you do, keep it short and sweet or make it more interactive by positing a question and creating a dialog around it.

Anticipate what job seekers are looking for

Appealing to job seekers by posting content that emphasizes what they value in an employer can help you gain applicants that may not have applied for the job title alone. Nowadays, job seekers want to know about what it’s like to work somewhere. They want to know what the workplace culture encompasses, benefits like parental leave and vacation, and company values. Consider posting interviews with company employees that explain why they enjoy working there or emphasize each way the company gives back to the community.

As you go about your social recruiting, it’s important to pay attention. Use likes, shares, and other metrics to determine what your audience is most responsive too. Then shape your recruiting campaign accordingly, always listening to your followers and numbers to ensure that you maximize your time and effectiveness.

Elizabeth Lee is a passionate blogger and content specialist involved with PACK & SEND. When she is not preoccupied with work, Elizabeth follows her second passion – traveling.