Social Recruiting

Referrals are the number one source of quality hires. They significantly improve time to hire, and referred candidates consistently outperform candidates hired through other channels.

Here are seven best practices for creating a referral program that works:

Build a Solid Infrastructure

Your referral program needs a solid structure to build upon.

“By launching an effective ERP, Vistaprint increased referrals from 19 percent to 42 percent of its total hires in one year.” Source: Wall Street Journal MarketWatch

Before you start asking employees to go out and spread the word about your jobs, you must have a plan.

• Assess your recruitment needs to help you set goals.

• Make sure that you understand your team, so that you can tailor the program to fit your staff culture.

• Put standardized policies in place to ensure that the company is well represented.

•  Address the need for tracking your referral process, so that you can measure success and reward successful referrals.

• Create a manual that lays out your recruitment goals and explains the referral process to your team.

Having a sturdy foundation will mean significantly fewer problems down the road, increased efficiency, and better results overall.

Prioritize

Focus your efforts on hard to fill positions, and finding top talent.

“On average, it takes just 10.4 referrals to lead to a hire.”  – Click to Tweet Source: John Zappe, ERE.net

Referral programs are one of the best tools you have for accessing passive candidates and higher quality talent. Make this kind of hire the priority by communicating this to your team, and even offering bonus rewards for those who successfully refer for especially hard to fill job openings.

Create Candidate Profiles

Your team do not necessarily know what makes for a good referral. This can lead to employees referring friends based on how much their friend needs a job, instead of how right their friend is for the job.

So, show them exactly what you’re looking for in a great hire

Draw up a profile of an ideal candidate. Focus on soft skills, such as drive, problem solving, and teamwork skills, but also, clearly state education, training, and experience minimums.

Have your employees ask themselves:

• Would I want to work on a project with this person?

• How well will they fit in at our company?

• What skill gaps might they be able to fill

   

  for

   

  our team?

Remove Friction

Make it as easy as possible for candidates to make referrals. That means providing email templates, education, and elevator pitches.

You can even use apps to help automate the referral process for your employees.

Have a Social Strategy

Your employees have an average of 150 connections through their social media. Many of these connections are past colleagues and schoolmates, which are ideal for referrals!

… but, your employees may not have these contacts’ phone numbers, or even interact with them in real life. So, to reach these potential candidates, you must encourage your team to make referrals via social networks.

Teach your employees about social media best practices, explain the value of reaching out through social networks, and then make it easy for your team to make referrals with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Make it Part of Your Culture

“46% of all hires at top performing firms are referrals.”  – Click to Tweet Source: John Sullivan

Explain to all of your employees the value of employee referrals.

Tell them about how using referrals as a core part of the company’s recruitment process will directly benefit their happiness at work, because it means hiring people who will fit the team dynamic.

Everyone wants to work with people that they get along with!

Encourage open dialogue by openly celebrating successful referrals, and making a point of commenting on how much you appreciate your team’s efforts.

Reward Accordingly

If you have made referrals a positive part of your company’s culture, then your employees will be happy to help, but you should still reward them for doing so.

Most of the referrals they make will be outside of office hours, and they should be compensated for taking the time and effort to help you recruit qualified candidates

“Referral hires are 69 percent higher when companies offer a reward.” – Click to Tweet

Vary your rewards depending on the situation.

For example, give a $10 gift card for a good lead. Give a day off, or a larger gift certificate, for referrals that result in interviews. Give monetary compensation for successful hires.

You can even add bonus rewards for especially hard to fill positions.

Get as creative as you like, so long as the reward system is consistent, enticing, and always, always, includes a thank-you!

Referrals are the fastest and most effective way to hire. With these best practices, before you know it, you’ll be swimming in qualified candidates.

What is an employee referral program?

For a simple definition of an employee referral program, I turned to BusinessDictionary.com.

Here’s what they had to offer:

“Recruitment method in which the current employees are encouraged and rewarded for introducing suitable recruits from among the people they know.”

All right, blog post done. That was an easy one…

If I left off this blog post here, the chances of it being successful (educational and shareable) are slim to none.

Yes, technically it answers the question: “What is an Employee Referral System?”, but it is far too basic, and adds nothing to the dialogue that would inspire or help you, or anybody else.

Unfortunately, many employee referral programs are built in a similar fashion.

According to employee referral program expert, John Sullivan, when it comes to employee referral programs, “most are pretty dull.”

Sullivan explains that this is because “many organizations task the management of their program to a loosely organized committee that rarely invests the time required to build anything more than a conservative, basic program.”

Just like I was tasking the development of my blog post to BusinessDictionary.com!

But, unlike boring blog posts, even basic employee referral programs achieve greater success than most other external recruiting sources.

That is how valuable employee referral programs are to an organization.

Even the bad ones work.

And the good ones?

Well-run, creative referral programs are on average twice as effective as basic ones.

Here are some key features that separate these excellent employee referral programs from the basic ones:

Employee Education

Great ERPs provide employees with the confidence and tools that they need to make quality referrals.

Teach your employees where to look for referrals, what to look for in a referral, and how to approach them.

Arm them with some stories about your company that sell your employer brand.

Provide them with a few basic script options to fall back on when they are unsure of how to approach a potential referral. Provide examples for phone, email, and social networks.

Clear Communication

Tell your employees exactly what you want from them, and why.

Be very clear about what you are looking for in potential hires, and the basic standards that referrals must meet in order to be considered.

Transparency

Employee engagement is mandatory for any referral program’s success.

To boost your employee engagement, make your ERP process transparent.

Keep them in the loop about their referral’s progress and status throughout the hiring process.

Social

Many of your employees no longer communicate with former classmates or colleagues in real life, but maintain relationships with them via social networks.

Your employee referral program must include a social element, which encourages your employees to reach out through these channels.

Odds are, if you do not encourage them to reach out through the internet, you’ll miss out on some of the best potential candidates.

Smart Compensation

The rewards you offer should be relative, enticing, and creative.

Offer small rewards for recommendations, and larger rewards for successful hires.

Add bonuses for job posts that are especially difficult to fill.

Instead of cash rewards, offer prizes, or even prize draws. Prize draws allow you to offer one very large reward. The chance of an exciting prize (such as a car, or vacation package) is often more motivating than the promise of a smaller one.

No matter what type of rewards you choose to give, make sure that a thank-you note is always a part of it.

Your employees want to feel like they are making a difference at work. Expressing to them that their referrals are an essential part of the company’s success can be even more rewarding than a cash bonus.

Measurable

ERPs must be easy to track.

If you aren’t tracking your employee referrals, then you won’t be able to run a consistent rewards program, dole out thank-you notes, or make data-backed strategy adjustments.

Great referral programs also make it possible for employees to track the status of the referrals they’ve made.

A quality employee referral program system, like Jobcast Social Referrals, makes it possible for employees to check in on the status of the referrals they make, and to assess which social networks are the most effective for referrals.

Check out John Sullivan’s site for more great information about employee referral programs.

Learn more about using social media and employee referrals.

Happy social recruiting!

Passive candidates are as elusive as they are desirable, a recruiters golden fleece! Why are passive candidates so desirable? Well, other than the fact that poaching a top performer away from your competition is a major win in the “war for talent”... Passive candidates are more driven and 17% less likely to need skills development than active candidates. - Click to Tweet This is according to research by LinkedIn that points to passive candidates as a better source for quality talent overall. Passive candidates also make up the vast majority of the labor force! 60% of job seekers are considered to be passive candidates. - Click to Tweet

When asked by LinkedIn to describe their current job search status, here’s how fully-employed professionals responded:

• Approximately 25% of global respondents claim to be actively looking for their next role.

• A whopping 45% are open to talking with a recruiter.

• 15% are talking to their networks about other opportunities.

Unfortunately, these candidates are not looking on job boards, career sites, or in the help wanted section of the newspaper. They have jobs. Good jobs.

Sure, they’re open to a chat, but you have to find them first. If you want to reach passive talent, a combination of social recruiting and employee referrals is your best bet. Remember that 15% of passive candidates reaching out to their network about potential opportunities? Chances are that some of them are chatting with your current employees. A good employee referral program incentivizes those employees to jump at the chance to pitch your company to their peers. Employee referral programs also encourage, and reward employees who can help connect you with that other 45% of job seekers who are open to exploring new job opportunities. With referral based hiring you get the added bonus of improved retention rates, better cultural fit, and decreased time to hire. Now lets add social recruiting to the equation. According to research from Pew Internet, 73% of adults have social media profiles, 42% of them have profiles on multiple networks. The average employee has at least 150 connections through social networks. That’s a lot of potential referrals! Then there’s the fact that even though passive candidates are not checking job boards, chances are pretty good that they are checking checking Facebook. They belong to Facebook groups related to their field, they search twitter for hashtags relevant to their work, and they may even pop onto LinkedIn to see what past colleagues are up to. If you have an employer brand presence, and a solid social recruiting strategy, you can reach those passive candidates. Creating a branded Facebook Career Page, sharing job posts to Twitter that include relevant hashtags, and keeping up your LinkedIn presence makes you more searchable, more attractive, and improves your chances of engaging the passive talent you seek. So what are you waiting for? Win the war for talent with a social recruiting and employee referral 1,2 PUNCH!

The future is now. Recruiting technologies abound, and social recruiting is on the rise. Everywhere you look, there's another hot new hiring trend emerging. Last week, we shared an article that explained how to decide which of these trends to adopt. This week's article explores three of the most useful new recruiting trends, explains why they matter, and how you can implement them into your own recruitment strategy (no matter what size your budget!)

The Resume is Being Overshadowed by Data

Resumes have a lot of flaws... For one, they are inaccurate. “58% of hiring managers said they’ve caught a lie on a resume!” (CareerBuilder Survey) - Click to Tweet Resumes do not provide insight into an applicant's soft skills. According to a study by the American Management Association of over 2, 115 managers, “communication, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration are important to employees' success.” The resume does not provide insight into any such skills. Oh, and to top it all off, one of the main pieces of information that resumes do provide may not actually have anything to do with job performance! That’s right, I’m talking about education. Pegged Software actually found that there was “zero statistically significant correlation between a college degree or a master's degree and success as a software developer." (Source: NPR Planet Money) These are just some of the reasons that companies are turning to people-analytics as a way of replacing old school, resume dependent hiring. Companies like Evolv are changing the application process to incorporate people-analytics. They worked with Xerox to gather very specific data about their applicants. Some of this data came from resumes, but the majority was acquired through tests on pattern recognition, detailed survey questions such as “which word better characterizes you: consistent or witty?” and responses to difficult customer service scenarios. Xerox then tracked the candidates they hired, and how these employees came to perform. They analyzed the application data they gathered, and along with the performance data, are now using it to assess all potential hires. Most companies are not big enough to perform a study like this, but data mining knowledge from by large companies has begun to trickle down to smaller businesses.

How you can benefit:

Here are 12 non-standard interview questions worth asking.

Here is an excellent article explaining more about using people-analytics to hire, with excellent examples of techniques you can apply, and some of the drawbacks to try to avoid.

Employ Insight is a company that helps employers assess candidates based on application questions that measure their soft skills, and then compare them side by side to find the best fit.

Employer Branding and Company Culture

The trend towards building an employer brand, and showcasing company culture online is growing every day. And for good reason! Today’s candidates have easy access to information about your company. “85% of candidates google potential employers." (CareerBuilder) - Click to Tweet If job seekers do not like what they see, or cannot find you, they are much less likely to apply for your jobs. In fact, 91% of candidates surveyed by CareerBuilder said that employer brand influences their decision to apply for a job. They listed a company's culture/reputation for treating candidates well as the most appealing features of an employer's online brand.

How you can benefit:

In this recap of TChat’s “The Talent Science Of Cultural Change”, you’ll learn how to improve company culture with advice from a top social psychologist, a culture expert, and the TChat community. Then have a look at this article by Gareth Cartman, "How to make your employer brand searchable."

Referrals Are Going Social

Companies like Google are taking social recruiting far beyond Facebook Career Sites, and sharing job posts on Twitter. Referrals are a top source for quality hires, have the best retention rates, and are less expensive to recruit. 51% of employers said it was less expensive to recruit via referrals. (Source: Jobvite) - Click to Tweet

Google is using social media to improve upon their referral program. The company is implementing an automated system that uses employee’s social graphs to source potential hires. Considering that the average employee will have 150 contacts on social media networks, social referrals just make sense. Even to companies without Google’s immense resources.

How you can benefit:

TalentBin aims to help employers find qualified candidates through their social graph. TalentBin is focused on the recruitment of technical talent. Zao is a program that allows employers to analyze their referral program’s data in order to measure success and track rewards. Jobcast has recently implemented an employee referral system as well. Jobcast's social referral program is a great way for employees to access your company’s job posts, and then easily share them with all of their social networks. Employees can track and monitor the status of their referrals, learn which social networks get the best results, and track the rewards they’ve earned. By providing employees with this data, Jobcast's social referral program incentivizes them to increase the quantity and quality of their future referrals.

Jobcast's social referral program provides detailed metrics for employers, so that they can monitor the success of their referral program, track each employee’s results to facilitate your rewards program, and manage information about applicants. The program is still new, but if you are interested in learning more, email team@jobcast.net, or shoot me an email directly: samara@jobcast.net.

Happy social recruiting!

Staying on trend doesn’t always matter. Food trends can be ignored in favor of eating whatever looks good and is on sale. Fashion trends can be neglected, so long as you stock up on neutrals... Or, for virtual workers like myself, opt for PJs all day every day. Music trends can actually be detrimental to your life, especially considering the current enthusiasm for EDM. And fitness trends ought to be ignored at all costs. For the love of bread, moderation, and an injury free body (please stop trying to stand on giant rubber balls whilst balancing a kettlebell on your head!) But, when trends apply directly to your company, or profession, they do matter. Winning the war for talent requires that you understand current recruiting trends and implement the ones that work. - Click to Tweet Especially if your competitors are doing the same. Considering the sheer volume of recruiting trends out there it can be a real pain trying to track them, understand them, and choose which ones to implement. Here are some ways that you can make that process easier. How to identify which recruiting trends you need to pay attention to:

Watch the Competition

Recruiting can be a lot like marketing, and all good marketers know that keeping your eyes on the competition is essential for success! Your competitors are your competitors because they are after the same candidates as you. So it follows that the trends that work for them will probably work for you too. Look at other companies in your field with a similar budget and employer brand. Analyze their hiring strategy, then use that analysis to help improve your own. If your competition is using Twitter to successfully reach qualified candidates, you should add Twitter to your strategy. If they tried Pinterest and it was a total disaster, then you can probably skip it. This is not to say that you should mimic your competition Tweet for Tweet, but learning from their successes and failures can save you a lot of time. You can then use that time to innovate.

Know what you're working with

Assess your own company culture and employer brand. This will help you determine whether or not a new recruitment trend makes sense for your specific needs. If you have a youthful culture, and strong brand, then you can use a much broader range of social networks. The trend towards highly visual social recruiting on platforms such as Instagram makes sense for companies like Lululemon. The same cannot be said for an accounting firm. On a more basic: assess your budget and resources. If you have a minimal budget, and no creative types on your team, then the growing trend towards video recruiting, though popular, is just not a good fit for where your recruiting is at right now.

Follow HR and Recruiting Blogs

Top 10 trends articles are the bread and butter of the blogging industry. Not only will good blogs provide you with lists of all the latest innovations hitting your industry, but they will also provide you with helpful reviews, case studies, and tutorials.

Here are 7 blog picks for HR trend spotting:

• TLNT

• HR Solutions

• ERE.net

• Blogging4Jobs

• Recruiter.com

• Talent Culture

• Switch and Shift

Follow Marketing Blogs

Basic marketing strategy: Reach people, engage with them, and convert them into customers. Swap out the term customers for applicants and you're hiring. Marketing and recruiting are similar in a lot of ways, but much to HR's chagrin, the marketing department tends to get a significantly larger budget. That's why there are a lot more blogs, magazines, and newsletters devoted to marketing strategy. These resources are great for learning about trends in social networks, engagement tactics, and branding methods.

Here are 5 marketing blogs that are great for HR too:

• MarketingProfs

• Kissmetrics Blog

• The Buffer Blog

• Social Stacked

• Fast Company

Do you have any recruiting trends that you would like us to cover on the Jobcast blog? If so, let us know in the comments!

The main pain point with adopting new hiring platforms is having to share the same job ad over and over again. Sharing the exact same job ad to each of your individual social networks and job boards is a huge waste of time. It is also frustrating because you are must adjust your ad along the way to fit each platforms’ unique standards. Not fun, not efficient, and thankfully, not necessary! With Jobcast you can use our Auto-Share feature to automatically share your job ads to your Facebook Timeline (Personal and Business), Twitter Feed, and LinkedIn Page (Personal and Company). You can even use the Auto-Share feature to push your job ads to several different job boards such as Indeed, and Simply hired. Here’s how to set up Jobcast Auto-Share for one step social recruiting!

1) From the Admin section of the Jobcast App, click on "Customize":

2) You will automatically be directed to the "Settings" tab, from here, click on the clock icon:

3) Click on the "Add Scheduled Post" drop down:

4)

Select the social network you wish to automate sharing for:

5) Authorize the Jobcast app to share on your behalf

6) Fill in all relevant information (make sure to include hashtags, like #hiring, for Twitter and Facebook):

7) Select the days, rate, and the sharing window for sharing your job ads, and tick the "Re-Share" box if relevant. Click "Save":

8) Review your handy work:

9) If you find an error, simply hover over the spot you need to change and click "Edit":

10) Add your Facebook Page, your Facebook Account, your Twitter, Your LinkedIn, and your LinkedIn Company Page:

11) Here's what your job ad will look like once shared to LinkedIn (imagine your logo, face, and hopefully fewer InMails!):

Once you have set up Jobcast Auto-Share: sit back and let Jobcast do the work for you :D Don't have Jobcast yet? Install the Jobcast Social Recruiting App and you'll get a 30 free trial of our Premium plan. Have Jobcast already? Get your whole team on board by giving them admin status on your Company Facebook Page. This article explains how to add admins to your Facebook Page. Then send your team this tutorial so that they can set up the Jobcast Auto-Share feature for their social networks too. Happy social recruiting!

If social recruiting is the future, then the future is now!

94% of companies are using social to recruit, but as often happens with the introduction of new technology, many of these companies are applying outdated strategies to these new mediums for hiring.

They focus on just one network: LinkedIn, and just one form of content: The job ad…

This version of social recruiting is outdated, and ineffective. Especially considering that:

Only 14% of LinkedIn users even check their account on a regular basis! – Click to Tweet

To drive applicants to your jobs, target the right talent with your content, and build a strong employer brand, using multiple networks collaboratively is the most effective strategy.

Why employers need to build diverse, multi-network social recruiting strategies if they want to win the war for today’s talent!

14.4 Million Job Seekers Have Used Social Networks to Find a Job

73% of companies successfully hired a candidate with social media

42 percent say candidate quality has improved and 31 percent saw an increase in employee referrals.

93% of companies use LinkedIn for recruiting, 66% use Facebook, and 54% use Twitter. – Click to Tweet 

Only 36% of job seekers are actually active on LinkedIn.

40% are active on Twitter.

83% are active on Facebook.

Don’t drop LinkedIn from your strategy though, as LinkedIn still drives more actual job views than any other social network.

If reaching a large quantity of job seekers is a priority, then it’s best to use all three networks!

What about reaching different types of talent?

To reach users over the age of 45 both Facebook and LinkedIn top Twitter

To reach millennials Twitter is your best bet: 45% of Twitter’s users are between the ages of 18 – 29.

If you need to reach more women, LinkedIn is not for you.

LinkedIn is primarily used by men, their user base is 67% male.

Twitter is balanced with an equal percentage of female to male users.

Facebook wins the war for women, with 58% female users.

Unless we count Pinterest boasting an 80% female user base!

What about education?

64% of LinkedIn users have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

40% of Twitter user’s have a degree, compared to Facebook’s 30%, which is especially interesting considering that Twitter’s user base is also younger than Facebook’s!

The type of content you share also effects who you reach, and how many candidates apply for your jobs.

700 video are shared on Twitter every minute.

Job posts get 36% more applications if accompanied by a recruiting video.

40% of people respond better to visual information than plain text.

What does it all mean?

The size, demographics and engagement level of the audience you reach depends on which social network you choose and what content you choose to post.

“Organizations with an integrated approach to talent management have an 87% greater ability to hire the best people.” – Click to Tweet

You’ll reach more job seekers on Facebook, but your actual job posts will get more views when posted on LinkedIn.

You’ll reach more millennials on Twitter, but you can’t actually post a full job description in 140 characters.

YouTube doesn’t receive a high level of traffic from job seekers, but recruitment videos are one of the best ways to increase application volume.

The real takeaway here is that diverse social recruiting strategies work better!

The best social recruiters use image based Twitter posts with hashtags to drive traffic to your Facebook Page where you can share full length job ads alongside recruitment videos, and even create a career site where candidates can apply. They share job ads to LinkedIn to capitalize on the high level of views they’ll receive, but also share a shorter version of your ads to Twitter. They mix up their content, ask questions, and share more than just job ads!

For tips on how to incorporate multiple social networks into your strategy, check out last weeks article 🙂

For an easy way to automatically share job posts to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, check out Jobcast enterprise.

For an easy way to make your life just a little bit happier, check out this adorable video:

Cute Baby Bunny Washing Her Face Happy social recruiting!

Sources:

• http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-innovation/digital-marketing-statistics-2014/

• http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/01/08/social-media-update-2013/social-media-sites-2012-2013/

• http://www.careerealism.com/recruiting-new-rules/#!boVKvN

• http://socialmediastrategiessummit.com/blog/state-social-recruiting-u-s-2014/

• http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/30/pew-social-networking/

• http://socialmedialondon.co.uk/using-social-media-recruitment-infographic/

Historically, when humans began to collaborate and work together, a fundamental shift happened. A shift that prioritized intelligence over forceful competition. Cool huh?

Thank you Discovery Channel!

The importance of intelligence in today’s society is undeniable. We all strive to be more intelligent in all aspects of our lives. We want to work smart, live smart, and even exercise smart!

“Cooperation leads to intelligence.” – Click to Tweet Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

We also want to be smart with our use of social media. So, doesn’t it make sense to apply this idea, that cooperation leads to intelligence, to our social strategy?

Instead of arguing about which social network is the best, pitting Twitter against Facebook, yelling “Google Plus is dead, long live LinkedIn”, or choosing to abandon Pinterest in favour of Instagram, why not just accept that collaboration is the key to a great social strategy?

Besides providing bloggers with attention-grabbing headlines, setting one network against another really doesn’t do anyone a lot of good.

The Case for Collaborative Social Networking

More eyes on your content

If you want to get your content seen by a lot of people, social networks will do the trick: 

At 1.19 billion, Facebook has the most active users of any network – Click to Tweet

Which is great, but quantity isn’t everything!

A greater diversity of eyes on your content

You also need to consider the type of user you are trying to reach. What if, for example, you need to reach a “more mature” demographic?

Google Plus, and rather surprisingly, Twitter, tend to have a high percentage of users over the age of 35:

So, just because one network boasts more overall users than another, doesn’t necessarily mean that it has more of the users that you are trying to connect with.

Different mediums get different results

Then there’s the fact that different types of content serve different purposes.

Job postings that are accompanied by video receive a 36% higher rate of application – Click to Tweet

YouTube is, therefore, a valuable asset for recruiters, as it allows you to upload and share videos that express your employer brand. YouTube also ranks #2 when it comes to active users.

So, YouTube must be every recruiter’s top choice for social recruiting then right?

Wrong!

In fact, according to Jobvite, this couldn’t be further from the truth:  

Why don’t hiring pros simply put a recruiting video up on YouTube, and wait for the applications to come rolling in?

This brings us right back to the beginning…

Getting more eyes on your content

Recruiters want as many potential candidates to see their job posts as possible. YouTube alone won’t make this happen for them.

Unlike LinkedIn, YouTube isn’t geared towards job seekers, nor does it allow for candidate targeting, as Facebook does.

So, in order to get their recruitment videos seen by the most potential hires, it makes sense for them to share the videos they make on LinkedIn and Facebook as well.

Innovations in social tech

Social tech is evolving in a way which proves how the idea we opened with, “Cooperation leads to intelligence,” is true for media as well as humans. 

All of the latest social management Apps, like Buffer, Sprout Social and Swayy, allow us to manage multiple networks. 

Hootsuite, although not as new as the apps mentioned above, is one of the most used apps amongst social media pros, and its primary function is making social sharing across multiple networks easier. 

This is in response to all this evidence that the use of collaborative social media yields better results across the board.

This is especially valid when considering trends that show an increase in the amount of social media users that spread their activity and time across multiple networks:

The only real downside to using multiple networks is that it is more time-consuming than simply focusing your efforts on a single social platform.

This problem, though, is easily resolved for most types of content with the use of the tools mentioned above (Buffer, and Hootsuite.)

These tools make it incredibly easy and efficient to share most types of content across multiple platforms at a time.

Unfortunately for social recruiters, “most types” doesn’t include job posts.

That’s where a tool like the Jobcast social recruiting app comes in handy.

With Jobcast you can automatically share jobs from your Career Site to multiple social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can even schedule posts so that they are shared multiple times throughout the day, at the most effective times for your user-base, and with the hashtags of your choice.

You can also set up social sharing for multiple team members, to harness the power of their social connections.

Learn more about how Jobcast can help you share your jobs to multiple social networks without have to post more than once…

Or shoot me an email (samara@jobcast.net), I’m always happy to help 😀

Have a collaborative day, and stay social!

Hourly workers, you want ‘em, we got ‘em! Except not really… Having a warehouse full of eager baristas, elevator mechanics, and house painters is illegal in Canada. What we do have are some helpful tips for recruiting qualified hourly workers with the help of social media. Next best thing… Right? If you want to attract the best candidates, you need to have a solid understanding of the talent pool from which you’re fishing. Today’s hourly workforce is not all teens and indecisive “job-hoppers”, as the internet might have you believe. According to TLNT (one of the best sources for recruitment info out there), the hourly worker labor market is extremely diverse in age, gender, and attitude towards their work.

Here are a few interesting stats on hourly workers they shared:

• 39 percent of hourly employees are under 25 years old

• 33 percent are 25–44 years old, and a full 28 percent are 45 or older

• More than 80 percent work within a 5-mile radius of their homes

• Over half (56 percent) consider their jobs a full-time career

• The vast majority (74 percent) prefer to work 30 or fewer hours a week

• Most apply for three jobs at once, making employer responsiveness critical in recruiting. The most important factors to these job seekers are: (1) Being hired quickly (37 percent); (2) pay (33 percent); and (3) being close to home (17 percent)

Helpful tip number 1: Tailor your recruiting strategy to your audience

You wouldn't try to woo a meat lover with steamed tofu, or meet the vegetarian of your dreams at Outback Steakhouse would you?! Hopefully for your love life the answer to both questions is an emphatic NO! Well, same goes for hourly workers. If you want to recruit them, you’re going to have to build a recruiting strategy that targets this specific audience. This strategy may differ substantially from the one you use to recruit for salaried positions. For example: Using LinkedIn works extremely well for filling salaried positions, hiring managers, and recruiting suits. Facebook, and Twitter are a much better option for sourcing, engaging with, and recruiting hourly workers because that’s where they spend more of their online hours. Oh, and less than 36% of them even have LinkedIn, let alone visit the site regularly! You’ll also want to hit up local job boards specifically, as (the majority of) non-salaried positions require local talent, and do not warrant relocation costs.

Helpful tip number 2: Lay it all out there

Hourly positions often lack benefits like stellar vacation packages, and full dental coverage, so you need to broadcast what you do offer, especially if it’s something your competitors don’t! If the wage is competitive, list it. If you have amazing staff parties, post about them on Facebook. If you offer flexible hours for students, put it in bold! Our last post used Earls restaurant as an example of a company effectively using social media to recruit hourly workers. One of the things they make sure to highlight again, and again on their Facebook Career Page, is the fact that they offer tons of room for education and growth within the company. They entice candidates applying for lowly line cook positions with the prospect of gaining the education, and training required to become head chef.

Helpful tip number 3: Make your job titles recognizable and searchable

Do you know what a “Chief Chatter” is? Neither did I, until I read Business Insider’s list of weird job titles and learned that Chief Chatter is just fancy talk for call center employee. Please do not do this. For the sake of all job seekers everywhere! Not only is the job title the first thing a candidate will notice when scanning through page after page of job postings, but it’s the main SEO factor for any of the jobs you share online. I’m not saying you can’t have some fun with your job titles, I am all for fun, just not at the expense of being findable on Google, or the sanity of your potential candidates. For example: Another of the weird job titles was Retail Jedi. That’s actually a pretty rad job title. I would definitely want to work for someone with whom the Force is strong, but I would also want to know what exactly I would be doing for this Yoda of an employer. Try “Comic Book Shop Assistant/Retail Jedi” instead. It’s much clearer, still fun, and has a bunch of great SEO words to boot. Remember, if your job description or title is too vague, and you are receiving applications from scores of unsuited candidates, there are fixes: these are not the droids -- ahem, I mean candidates -- you are looking for. Alright young Jedi get out there and recruit those hourly workers like a pro. Do or do not... there is no try! Oh, and if you haven’t already, check out the Jobcast Facebook Recruiting App for all your social recruiting needs.

Hiring hourly workers is easy: there’s a huge candidate pool to draw from, hourly positions require little to no experience, and these workers have minimal impact on an organization’s success.

Wrong.

Wrong.

WRONG!

Yet many HR articles, and HR tech solutions seem to focus on recruiting for salaried positions.

I don’t know about you, but what our clients want most, is an effective way to engage, recruit, and hire hourly workers.

The high demand we see for this category of candidate indicates that recruiting hourly workers is no cake walk. In fact it’s often an extremely competitive market (depending on the specific position of course.)

Nor has my experience led me to believe that hourly workers are not a vital part of a company’s culture and achievements. At Jobcast, we work with so many incredible organizations where the majority of their staff is comprised of non-salaried positions, and we wouldn’t dare suggest to them that those employees do not have a huge impact on their company’s success.

Take Earls Restaurant for example:

“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!”  – Jessica Slussar, Earls Family of Restaurants

Jessica also makes it clear that although many of the candidates Earls hires do not come to the company with a huge technical  skill set, this does not mean they hire just anyone.

In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Earls recruits new employees with potential for advancement in mind. They have found a huge return on investment when they put stock in their employees’ future by providing training and encouraging advancement from within.

At Earls there are many great examples across the company of partners who started out as hostesses, and dishwashers, only to become President, GM, and Chef.

So, when the HR team at Earls hire these “unskilled workers”, they are looking for the soft skills required to excel in higher level roles.

Then there are organizations like Fraser Health Services.

Fraser Health is currently building capacity to address unprecedented population growth. This means they need hourly workers; lots of them!

But, the hourly workers they need are not your average candidates.

Fraser Health provides the best care possible: they prioritize safety, quality, and innovation in healthcare. This means that they rely on their staff to be highly skilled, well trained, and educated.

Fraser health Authority is not the only health care organization preparing for increased demand, so the candidates they’re after are a hot commodity, and as such, they must do everything in their power to attract, engage, and recruit them.

These are just two examples of companies that demonstrate the importance of a focus on recruiting hourly workers. We see similar examples every day.

At Jobcast, our clients have taught us that hourly workers are vital contributors to your company’s success, that the quality of hourly workers does matter, and that recruiting these candidates is a challenge that needs to be addressed!

Another thing our clients have taught us?

Facebook is a powerful tool for engaging hourly workers – Tweet it!

Fraser Health currently has a brilliant Facebook recruitment strategy. They use their Facebook Page to promote job openings, to show potential candidates the positive work environment they can expect, and to highlight incredible innovations and projects that inspire job seekers.

Earls has used Facebook to run their hugely effective “Earls Wants You” recruitment campaign, successfully meet recruitment goals in one of their most competitive markets. They have also built up a recognizable employer brand using Facebook’s photo galleries, and run effective, highly visual Facebook Ads campaigns to reach passive candidates.

Facebook allows both organizations to target specific demographics, reach passive candidates, and entice those potential hires by showing off their company culture, and perks.

Both companies also use Jobcast’s automated social sharing feature to broadcast their open positions across LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google Plus.

Fraser Health Tweets all of their latest job openings!

This way they reach as many potential candidates as possible!

We’ve worked with so many fantastic companies to help build their employer brand, and implement successful social recruiting campaigns with a specific eye towards hiring for non salaried positions.

Next week, we’ll go over some of our favorite strategies and discuss how you can recruit qualified hourly workers using social!