Social Recruiting

Surefire tips for upgrading your recruitment style.

With social media use in the professional world having become standard, many companies are using it as a valuable recruiting tool. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer employers a pool of prospective employees that they may fail to reach through traditional, often passive, methods.

One survey from 2014 suggests that a whopping 93% of employers are or are planning to recruit employees via social media platforms. What does this figure mean for us? It means that there is a treasure trove of anecdotal data with regard to what social media recruiting strategies work, which brands have enjoyed the most recruiting success, and what methods garner the most user engagement. Following the examples set by major corporations like Home Depot, Nestlé, and Cadbury, here are a few major ways to help your recruiting campaign take off.

1. Promote Sharing

A cornerstone of the social media experience, sharing can help your recruiting efforts travel far and wide. Encourage your followers to retweet your posts or tag friends who they think would be interested. When you get some sharing activity going on, take a page from Nestlé’s book and thank your grassroots marketers!

2. Take the Campaign Cross-Platform

For professional recruiting purposes, LinkedIn tends to be the go-to platform. LinkedIn users are there to network, job seek, showcase their skills, and promote their companies. So it’s an obvious choice. But will it yield the most success? Not necessarily. Stand alone, LinkedIn is more effective for recruiting than Facebook or Twitter, but if you want to maximize your recruiting success, use at least all three platforms. You’ll have a hard time finding a company that only uses one platform these days, and for a good reason.

3.Interact with Followers

Social media pages are a flurry of activity. Posts and comments filter through at all hours of the day. Use this activity as an opportunity to reach out to users directly and publicly. Home Depot sets the stage on this front, with its rapid-fire responses to user comments and questions. Your followers will appreciate you going the extra mile by showing you care.

You can even take it a step further by signing your posts. While many companies’ social media pages aren’t handled by their CEOs, it’s a pleasant surprise to drop in every once in a while. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, while not necessarily used to recruit employees, does a great job of adding her personal touch to platforms no one expects her to engage with directly. A simple “-H” at the end of her posts and tweets makes them stand out from tweeting-as-usual.

Marriott put its own spin on personalized interactions will their “Career Chats.” Career Chats are essentially Q&A forums in which the public can ask questions about Marriott employment, and receive real-time answers from Marriott employees who use their real names.

4.Peacock, Just A Little

Show off your company’s unique attributes through consistent social media posts. Just try not to sound like you’re bragging too much! Share what your company can offer its employees that many others don’t. Do you have extended parental leave? Do you offer student loan repayment? Or perhaps your company offers less tangible benefits, like a comfortable office culture, diverse employee base, or a superior work-life balance. Dell’s social media pages boast the community culture it fosters, highlighting the genuine appreciation the company has for its employees. To further the impact of your posts, add another layer of human element a la fast-food giant Taco Bell. Taco Bell succeeds in highlighting company culture through sharing photos of their employees—at all levels—enjoying themselves at work. Whatever it is that sets you apart, your followers want to hear about it.

5.It Doesn’t Have to Be All Recruiting, All the Time

As you might expect, success in social media recruiting is positively correlated with the size of your audience. And what is one of the best ways to build your audience? Broaden your content. Companies that are in the habit of posting text-only, recruitment-oriented posts are more likely to experience follower attrition. Other companies, like Cadbury, have adopted a more holistic approach to publishing content. For example, Cadbury’s ongoing campaign (#FreeTheJoy) features photos and videos from users sharing their joys. While not strictly chocolate-related, such media is successful in bolstering follower counts. Cadbury melds this hashtag-happy campaign with regular relevant product posts, such as recipes that use Cadbury chocolate. Their multilayer approach has paid off in multiple areas from marketing to community engagement, and as a result, also in recruiting.

Big companies can offer a vast amount of insight into structuring effective social media recruiting campaigns. While you can gain inspiration from them, one of the most important elements to remember is creativity and originality. Those are the aspects that your prospects will remember, and what will help your branding stand out from other campaigns.

David Grover is a Communications Manager at Timeo, a useful tool for businesses in the UK. He’s also a freelance career coach, who’s always eager to share his experience. In his free time he enjoys travelling.

Jobcast finally got a makeover.

It took a lot longer than we would have like, as these things always do, but the end result is a social recruitment platform ready for 2016.

When was the last time your HR department got a makeover?

In the last five years, the labour market has done a 180, going from an employer’s paradise to one that is candidate-driven. Millennials have taken over the workforce and HR Tech is actually user-friendly (well, friendlier at least!)

Candidates are starting their job search on Google, watching YouTube videos as a favorite way to learn about potential employers, then using their smartphones to share and apply for jobs.

Your HR department can’t afford to look like it did 10 years ago!

Here are 5 ways that you can bring your recruiting into the 21st century.

Focus on Social Media Collaboration

Social media collaboration is critical because:

• Social recruiting must involve the company as a whole.

• It helps break down the walls between marketing and HR.

• It keeps your brand message unified and on target.

HR needs to take ownership of social media and employer brand, but to do this they must focus on collaborating with marketing to create a consistent message.

By appointing a social recruiting lead who can bridge the gap between HR and marketing, you’ll facilitate dialogue and progress.

Take Charge of Your Talent Analytics

Everyone is always talking about the power of data, but very few actually mine and use the data available to them.

Big Data is great for determining your target audience, deciding how best to reach them, and running large surveys about employee performance, turnover rates, and skills development.

For this kind of data, which is very valuable, you may want to consider hiring a data analyst.

But don’t forget about the small data!

You can track a smaller group of your best performers using a simple Excel spreadsheet or Google Doc and then use that data to help inform your recruiting.

Try putting together a survey with the goal of learning more about what attracted these employees to your company, what social networks they use, and what makes them ss good at what they do.

Then USE the data!

Let the information that you uncover dictate where you look for new employees, how your job descriptions are written, and which aspects of your company culture you choose to highlight.

Start analyzing the data, act on your findings, and start seeing real results.

Make Your Application Process Mobile

Here’s why:

• 72% of active candidates say they have viewed a company career site on their mobile device.

• 30% of mobile users abandon sites after 6-10 seconds if they are not mobile-friendly.

• For 27% of millennial candidates, a career site is not considered ‘mobile-friendly’ unless they can complete the entire application process on their phone.

Can job seekers apply for your jobs via mobile? Can they easily navigate your career site on their tablet? Can they share your career site with a friend from their phone?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you need to reassess your mobile recruitment strategy.

Make Your Recruiting Pretty

Job seekers are way more likely to engage with and share your job posts with their peers if they include a nice image.

So, please make photos and pictures an integral part of your recruiting.

There are so many tools available to you:

• Pablo by Buffer

  allows you to create a simple shareable image in 30 seconds.

• Canva

  is great for making more detailed images and playing with text designs.

• Job cards by Jobcast automatically attach stunning images to your social media job postings.

Your career site, and the application process in general, should also be visually appealing, as job seekers will judge your company based on its cover!

So pay attention to the look and feel of your website and ensure that design plays a deciding role in which recruitment software you choose to use.

Stop Wasting Your Precious Time

Sharing a job post to multiple social networks manually takes more than just the click of a button.

You have to format the job post for each different network, set up the posts to share on each of these networks, add images to each post, and then share them at different times throughout the day depending on that network’s optimal share-time.

If you want to reach your audience on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, then this process can take up to three hours per job. So, 10 jobs per month could cost you up to 30 man hours.

Automating this process with Jobcast takes no time. Really.

Okay, not really, it does take about 10 minutes to set up.  

But after the initial setup, you’re done.

We’ve brought Jobcast into the 21st century, mostly in response to our fantastic users and their suggestions. I hope that the suggestions in this article will help you do the same.

In today’s world, consumers are bombarded with marketing messages on a daily basis. From old-fashioned print advertising, to television, radio, mobile, and online advertising, the average person has become accustomed to the bite-sized sales pitches companies are putting out there, and most of them have learnt to tune them out. While you still need to market in the traditional ways for those consumers who are actively seeking your product or services, building a brand story and focusing on word-of-mouth advertising will help your business stand out from the pack.

In order to achieve  word-of-mouth advertising, businesses need to earn it by living up to your brand’s promise and always giving your customers excellent service. A happy customer who eagerly tells others about your company and services is known as a brand ambassador. There is another source of possible brand ambassadors that many businesses overlook however – employees.

Happy and engaged employees are an excellent source of brand ambassadors, especially on social media. If you’re ready to realize the potential of your employees as brand ambassadors, you can get started with a few easy tips.

Make it easy

Do you restrict your employees from engaging in social media at work? That’s going to make it hard for them to be brand ambassadors online. Smart phones mean employees have access to their social media accounts whenever they have their phone, so restricting it on company computers isn’t necessarily stopping them from checking in on Facebook. Obviously you need to have some procedures in place so that your star employees aren’t playing games online all day, but consider allowing your employees a little freedom in this area. You might just be surprised at how little it affects productivity (if anything, it might actually improve it!)

If you’re serious about utilizing the power of social media in your marketing, also consider using hashtags to make it easier for employees to endorse your company and culture online.

Choose the right people

Some of your employees are blogging, tweeting, and active on Instagram already. Others might prefer to avoid the social media platforms altogether. If you’re building a team of social media ambassadors, you want those people who are already comfortable in that realm, and already have a network in place.

Talk about your plans at a staff meeting and see who might be interested.

Give them the knowledge (and the power)

Once you’ve chosen your team of ambassadors, invest in training on how to best handle any negative comments that might occur on social media. Have guidelines and procedures in place so everyone is on the same page. Let them conduct their own research on other companies who are succeeding in the social media space. And finally, give them the autonomy they need to be successful.

Your customers are social-media savvy enough to detect canned responses and insincerity, and they won’t respond well to a team of ambassadors who can only work within the confines of your marketing templates. Let your team be authentic. Let their personalities shine. Having a few rules in place is a must, particularly with regards to profanity, political statements, and religion. But beyond those basic guidelines, your ambassadors need the freedom to be themselves in order to be successful.

Notice and reward success

Once your team becomes more active on social media, you need to measure results. If something isn’t working, you need to know about it so your entire team can brainstorm new strategies. And if something is working and working well, you need to highlight it! Sing the praises of that ambassador. Offer some kind of reward system, and duplicate that successful tactic where appropriate.

Zoe Anderson is a writer with an interest in business issues and trends. Zoe is also an employee of StudySelect.

The majority of recruiting needs can easily be met via social media or similar online avenues. As far as recruitment methods go, social media campaigns are indispensable – as long as you’re implementing them correctly. When starting a recruiting campaign, it’s highly beneficial to develop an efficient strategy and keep a close eye on key recruiting metrics. Doing so will allow you to monitor engagement from the get-go. It can be hard to come in late and try to figure out how effective your recruiting methods have been. Understanding beforehand what you need to look for and realising all the adjustments you may need to make along the way will create the perfect recruiting funnel, maximising your potential and delivering you dependable results.

Watch Your Visitor Sources

Ideally, you’ll be using several platforms to draw in recruits. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the easiest choices for recruiters and they also provide you with a decent number of potential recruits. Look at where your visitors are coming from. If, for example, your Facebook page is bringing you the most potential recruits, whereas all the other social media and job boards fail to deliver, strengthen your Facebook strategy. In addition, carefully analyse what you’re doing on Facebook, and apply similar methods to your other networks. If you aren’t seeing success on a particular network, you may want to consider cutting it from your itinerary and focusing on the platforms that are working well for you.

Measure Reach and Engagement

Most social networks will show you how many people have been exposed to your post, and how many of them were actually engaged. Many job boards and social networks like Facebook show you the number of people who have simply seen a post, in addition to how many people reacted to it in the form of clicking and commenting. These statistics and insights allow you to efficiently measure click-through-rate (CTR) of your job postings. If the CTR of your postings is high, it means you have successfully grabbed the attention of job seekers and can expect an influx of recruits. If it is low, your postings have failed to engage the audience and changes are necessary. Try rephrasing your job descriptions, use different calls-to-action, and observe what your competition is doing to create more engaging posts.

Compare Efforts to Acquisition

During an active campaign, how many followers are you drawing in? This not only includes people who actually become valuable recruits, but also people who have voluntarily connected to your profiles. You may be paying for advertisements, promoted posts, or sponsored posts. How many hours of manpower a day go into managing your social media profiles? In order to create an efficient campaign, all these factors have to be taken into consideration.

How Much is it Costing You Per Recruit?

Add up all your recruitment costs, including the marketing of your campaign, the labour costs for having an individual or a team managing your social media profiles, the capital which has come out of your budget for paid exposure, and all the other expenses connected to obtaining new talents for your company. Having done that, divide this amount by the number of recruits you’ve actually acquired to receive cost-per-acquisition (CPA) value – one of the most important metrics you should be concerned with when recruiting. You need to know how much one recruit is costing you in order to create a balanced budget. If the final figure isn’t feasible, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and envision a strategy that’s comfortable and cost-effective.

Set Up a Survey

Once you’ve driven enough people in, direct them to a survey. Offer this survey to all applicants, including applicants you haven’t hired. Ask them how they’ve heard about you, and on what networks they’re connected to you. Invite them to evaluate your campaigns. Always leave room for additional comments. Incentivising the survey will make people feel more inclined to take it, but many people will be glad to do so regardless.

Like with most recruiting campaigns, you may need to tailor your strategy to fit specific stages of the recruitment process. If you find that certain content isn’t working for you, don’t give up. Look at what your competitors are doing and craft a more competitive strategy.

Simone Smith writes for Online Courses Australia, usually sharing her knowledge and stories about business growth and personal improvement. In her free time, she enjoys reading books for entrepreneurs or spending time working out.  

Enter: the perfect job candidate. Responds promptly to your freshly minted job posting. Skills, qualifications and work experience all seem relevant and perfectly tailored to the job description. Personality meshes perfectly with your precise company culture. Presentation is immaculate. Motivated and eager to do whatever is needed of them. Let us give this candidate the benefit of the doubt, and for a moment, imagine that they are actually a real person (haha). Out of the stack of people who applied for your awesome position, only this candidate shone like a priceless gem. This candidate made the conscious effort to seek you out. This candidate, for whatever motivation, wants to work for you. Hiring this candidate, however, disregards the other brilliant candidates who are not looking for you. Does this mean you should ignore them? Does this mean that because another company has already staked a claim to their talent, they are out of the picture forever? Should you really limit your hiring to only those who are currently unemployed and actively job hunting? Are these the best candidates for your job? Is this the best you can do? Undercover Recruiter states that 79% of potential candidates aren’t actually engaged in the job hunt. Usually, this is because they are already working, but may be for personal reasons of their own. The fact that they’re currently employed already speaks volumes about their ability. From that proportion, Jobvite indicates that 61% would be open to a change of employer. Will you be that employer? Our economic upturn has created a talent war, which means it’s time to get competitive with your recruitment. Passive candidates may be difficult to find and even harder to convince, but worth it in the end.

Does it also help that passive candidates that get hired are more driven and 17% less likely to require skills development? LinkedIn certainly thinks so. Thankfully, technologies today are making it easier to target your ideal passive candidates. Tools and networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to research your candidates and reach out to their networks. The internet allows you to be where your candidates are, rather than forcing them to come to you. Recruit passive candidates. Don’t limit yourself to what falls in your lap. Like many other motivational speeches, no matter how low or high you sit in the branding battlefield, you should always actively reach out for the best result. Enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about passive candidate recruitment with Facebook?

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Active listening is a communication technique in which the listener demonstrates to the speaker that they have been heard. Though it is often considered a more traditional concept of business communication, the technique is equally effective when applied to communication on social media channels. Here’s a quick summary of the four key components of ‘traditional’ active listening:

(Source)

1. Acknowledgement: using verbal and nonverbal gestures that demonstrate the listener’s attentiveness. Perception from the customer is heavily influenced by the attentiveness of the listener – make them feel valued!

2. Clarification: summarizing and paraphrasing what the speaker has said. It is important for there to be a correct mutual understanding, particularly when assisting a customer.

3. Self-disclosure: communicating one’s personal thoughts and feelings. Doing so can build and enhance a customer relationship.

4. Congruency: maintaining a consistent message through all channels of communication. An example of this is using acknowledgement without clarification, which negatively impacts the user experience.

Businesses who have implemented this technique into their customer service training have observed three noticeable results (Source). When company representatives listened effectively, customers overall:

• had a higher level of trust

• had a higher level of satisfaction

• perceived a higher quality of service

How can we translate and incorporate this technique of active listening into our social media strategy?

• Always respond to all feedback and mentions on social media, whether it is positive or negative. Providing customers with an immediate offer of service will do wonders for your brand image and customer retention, even if they approached you with a complaint.

• Ensure both you and your customers are on the same wavelength. Particularly when communicating electronically, many things may be lost in translation. Don’t be afraid to paraphrase their question, but in a way that isn’t condescending.

• Get personal! Customers hate receiving canned responses on social media as much as they hate pre-recorded responses when trying to place a phone call. Social media representatives should respond as they naturally would.

• Create and enforce guidelines and standards for your social media team to follow. Customers are especially more attuned to the treatment of other customers on the internet. Ensure every customer query is followed through appropriately.

Incorporate active listening as a part of your social strategy today. It’s worked for traditional business models, particularly in front-end service with Canadian banks. Is active listening more difficult to achieve face to face than it is on social? Tell me your thoughts!

Social recruiting has been with us for almost a decade (that’s right, some recruiters still remember the days of MySpace), but many hiring managers still have absolutely no clue about incorporating social media into their recruiting strategy. If your social recruiting efforts haven’t brought forth any tangible benefits, you might be doing something wrong.

Here are 7 reasons why your social recruiting strategy might not be working for you.

1. You build your strategy on a wrong vision of social recruiting

Social recruiting is simple and inexpensive, right?

Wrong. While social platforms are freely available, social recruiting is hardly free in itself.

Consider the time, people, resources, and their associated costs when developing a formal social recruiting process. Also consider what social recruiting really means. Posting job offers to your Facebook page liked by two dozen people is not social recruiting. In order to start recruiting, you’ll need to engage candidates. Post interesting content, participate in online discussions and share your expertise in the field! These sorts of activities will develop your employer brand, which will inspire and attract high quality candidates to you.

2. You lack sufficient knowledge about different social networks and their audiences

It is true that LinkedIn exists as the largest professional network, but a common mistake is to ignore other channels. Remember that potential candidates use many other tools to connect with each other. Present yourself as an attractive employer without making them look for you.

Where is your talent? Perhaps they are Tweeting, posting pictures on Instagram, or liking Pinboards on Pinterest. Understand the channel you wish to enter, and what would suit your brand. Create and curate content to support your chosen channels. Only by first understanding, you can benefit from social recruiting. Otherwise, even the largest social networks won’t be helpful to your efforts.

3. Your posts lack value

Many recruiters are so focused on growing their networks that they completely forget about value. Take a moment to consider what kind of value you might bring to a job seeker who chooses to follow you.

Try to deliver a healthy mix of curated and created content, both which should help candidates better understand and relate with your company culture. Let the value you provide be the eventual push that turns your follower into a job seeker.

4. You’re not responding to candidates

Social media is a handy tool for researching candidates, both current and prospective. Many social media managers may post content regularly, but often fail to respond in time to their followers.  Don’t forget to participate in your community, and always respond to messages sent your way! It is also important to develop a consistent brand voice for all company communications.

The best responses are based on social listening, which is key to unveiling crucial data about your audience. By listening closely, you will be able to provide relevant content to your networks. Social listening can also help you evaluate your brand performance.

5. You believe social media users are predominantly job seekers

This is a classic mistake made by many recruiters who treat social media as if they were vast candidate pools – repositories of people who are just desperate for a job.  Only half of them might be interested in positions you’ve got to offer. Many are probably just interested in what you have to say.

A related misconception is that everyone will be interested in connecting with a recruiter. Even if candidates are looking for a new job, connecting with recruiters can pose a risk to their current position by exposing their job hunting to colleagues and employers. Don’t count on a surge of new connections, but pay more attention to your own profiles.

6. You fail to leverage the potential of your employees

Employee referral strategy can extend beyond the offline world. In fact, employee referral is the source of best hires for companies. Many enterprises ban the use of social media on their premises, effectively blocking this line of communication between employees and the world.

Employees can provide you with the best narrative about your brand. Definitely allow them to tell their story! It results in a more authentic brand image to present to your networks. Behind-the-scenes footage showing employees at work is an excellent way to start.

7. You’re not measuring your results

Finally, it escapes most recruiters that their efforts in social recruiting can actually be measured and analyzed to generate valuable insights about their practice. Here’s a quick metric to start with: think about how many candidates hired last year came from social media. Now consider how many are still with your company. Were they quality hires? As a recruiter, you need this kind of knowledge about your current workforce. It’s not only about the efficiency of your social recruitment, but your entire recruitment strategy.

Check off this list of the most common misconceptions floating around social recruiting and and ensure that none of these will finish in your strategy. Have you noticed your fellow recruiters make these mistakes? Share, tweet, or comment so that everyone stands a chance at improving their social recruiting strategy!

Thank you Torri for your contribution!

Editing and images by Jasmine Tiang

Labor Day means two things to North Americans: a day off and the end of summer.

Oh, and it’s also a day set aside to pay tribute to working women and men, hence the name labor day.

A tradition started by labour unions in New York back in 1892 with a parade, Labor Day is now a national holiday in both Canada and the United States.

We celebrate the holiday with barbecues, sparklers, and blog posts.

Blog posts like this one!

In honour of Labor Day, here are my favourite articles and podcasts about the future of work.

Three Scenarios For The Future Of Work - Jacob Morgan @jacobm

In this article/infographic Jacob explains the concept PWC researchers created around three potential worlds of work we could inhabit in the future.

How the Future of Work May Make Many of Us Happier - Anne-Marie Slaughter

This article describes the future of work as “a dramatically different economy in which most workers will be independent contractors. Freelancers will work on demand for whoever needs their services rather than for fixed periods of time for a single employer.” It also explains some of the positive benefits an economy like this would bring with it.

How Freelancers are Fighting for Their Labor Rights - Dillon Baker

But flexible work isn’t all PJs, cappuccinos, and MacBooks.

Dillon reports on the many frustrations currently facing the growing freelance community.

A tax system that punishes the self-employed—which some classify as double taxing. Little to no benefits, exploitative contracts, and not getting paid for work done and delivered.

In his article, Freelancers Union founder and labor lawyer Sara Horowitz is quoted as saying that nearly half (44%) of their members report issues in getting paid.

Hard Work Is Irrelevant - Planet Money

This podcast is fantastic! It’s about how Patty McCord helped create a workplace at Netflix that runs more like a professional sports team than a family. If you're not up to scratch, you're off the team.

I know it sounds a little harsh, but personally I do think that this would be a bright and productive future.

NUMMI 2015 - This American Life

Another podcast for the list for your future work commute.

This American Life’s piece about the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. is one of their most celebrated works.

“In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. But today, GM cars still don't have the quality of Japanese imports. GM went bankrupt. And in 2010 NUMMI was closed, sending thousands of car workers looking for jobs.”

No matter what you think the future of work is, this podcast shows just how important it is to adapt to that future.

Happy Labor Day!

Engagement is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Especially in the world of social media marketing.

Engagement refers to the ways in which people respond to your social media presence and content.

Do they like your Facebook posts? Do they retweet your tweets? Do they share, comment, follow, unfollow, click, or otherwise interact with your social media efforts?!

If the answer to these questions is no, then try these simple content ideas to boost your social media engagement and get better results for your online brand.

Here are 7 ways to create social media content that starts a conversation.

#1 Get Personal

People want to connect with other people. They do not want to interact with bots that are pushing out stiff, formulaic content.

The more your social media presence resonates with your audience on a personal level, the more likely they are to engage with your posts.

Don’t be afraid to share some personal insights or to show people what it’s like behind the scenes at your company.

For example, I am about to become a mom, so reading social media posts about the difficulties of being a working parent by bloggers like Jessica Miller-Merrell.

You don’t have to share everything, but do try to share things that will help relate to you as a person.

#2 Ask Your Audience for Help

People love to give advice. It makes us feel good to help and when our advice is followed, it makes us proud.

Ask your audience to help you make a decision or give you insight into a particular topic.

This gives your community a chance to be heard and to feel like their opinion matters.

You can ask them to help you choose blog topics or what apps they recommend for a particular project.

Asking for advice is one of the easiest ways to get your audience talking!

#3 Have Fun

The main reason that I check my personal Facebook account throughout the day is to see something lighthearted and silly.

Yes, I’ve used social to look for work, promote myself, and most recently to find a new home, but what keeps me checking back is the fun stuff!

A great example for social recruiting is to share pics of silly antics that staff get up to with a fun caption about your company’s culture.

Making your audience laugh is a surefire way to get them more engaged with your brand.

#4 Say it With Pictures

Images and video are proven to boost engagement.

Photos get more engagement on Facebook than any other kind of content and videos are shared 12x more than text and link posts combined.

With tools like Pablo by Buffer, making your content more visual is also one of the easiest ways to get your audience to interact more.

#5 Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational quotes get a lot of love.

My Instagram feed is full of beautiful images with text overlays telling me how to live my life better.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan. I rarely double tap an inspirational quote unless it is extremely cheeky or enters me in a contest to win cute yoga gear.

The rest of the world LOVES inspirational posts.

The formula for creating them is as follows:

• Think about what your audience aspires to.

• Find a quote in line with their goals.

• Find a gorgeous and inspirational image on

  Unsplash or Pixabay.

• Layer the text over the image using Photoshop or a tool like

  Canva.

• Share your inspirational post with a nice caption and some hashtags like #motivation or #inspiration

• Sit back and watch the “Likes” roll in!

All of the types of content shared in this article can be used alongside the more strictly business related content that you’re posting.

You don’t want all of your content to be staff party pics or inspirational quotes, but you do want to create a nice balance of fun and serious content in order to encourage more interactions from your audience.

Recruiting on Facebook is about so much more than just posting jobs or Glassdoor scores.

This is great content, but how it fits into your Facebook recruiting narrative is equally as important.

An effective social recruiting strategy tells a good story.

Your Page banner, your content, how you word your job posts, and even the order in which you share all create a digital narrative.

In marketing, there are two ways of thinking about these digital narratives that are proven to work well on Facebook: Funnel-based storytelling and prime-and-remind storytelling.

Funnel-based storytelling

is about using a series of messages to walk potential consumers (candidates) towards the end goal that you have for them (converting them into applicants.)

Prime-and-remind storytelling

is when you use multiple Facebook posts that “prime” people with your employer branding and then you share content that “reminds” them of those posts but are more goal focused. Facebook recently ran a series of tests to explore the effectiveness of this type of storytelling on their platform.  

For their study Facebook teamed up with 6 companies, each from a different industry, and had them run funnel-based approaches that were set up to guide a person down the purchase funnel in three phases.

“For example, the first phase, called ‘Meet the Brand,’ would be a brand’s introduction to the market. This phase occurs no matter if the brand is new to the market or an established brand. The next phase, ‘The Teaser,’ would feature a product-focused ad. The third and final phase, ‘The Hook,’ would feature a call-to-action ad.”

This is a very commonly used structure for funnel-based campaigns.

Facebook also had those companies run prime-and-remind campaigns where they used multiple ad formats, like display or video ads, to show people the brand’s relevance to their lifestyle in two distinct phases.

“For example, the advertiser would use creative that showcased the brand’s value proposition to ‘Set the Stage’ in the first phase. In the second phase, ‘The Synopsis,’ the advertiser would use their creative to ‘remind’ people of the main brand storyline found in phase one.”

They found that both forms of storytelling positively affected all of the brands’ marketing efforts.

According to Facebook, “Storytelling sells!” Their research shows that interspersing strategic brand messaging with typical calls to action significantly improves conversion rates.

For Facebook recruiting this means using content that is specifically focused on employer branding along with job posts or calls to action encouraging job seeker to Like your Page or join your talent pool in order to tell an engaging story that job seekers will respond to.

Whether you use a funnel or a prime-and-remind based strategy for storytelling is up to you and your recruitment goals. But, no matter which path you choose, your Facebook recruiting needs to tell a story!