Recruitment Strategies to Attract and Win Top Talent

It’s not enough these days to post a job listing on your company website and hope that the candidate of your dreams will apply. You need to be active to attract talent, or else someone is going to snatch up that dream employee. In order to compete, you need to make sure your recruitment strategies are to snuff.

What is Social Recruiting?

Nowadays, the name of the recruiting game is social: social media. Jobvite found that social media has been used by 73% of recruiters to hire candidates. And don’t assume this trend is all flash and no substance. According to Jobvite and LinkedIn and Altimeter Group :

44% of recruiters say that social recruiting has increased both the quantity and quality of candidates

Socially engaged companies are 58% more likely to attract top talent

It’s not surprising. Social media lets you learn more about prospective employees than a resume on its own, whether it’s because you can see their endorsements on LinkedIn, or their personality on Facebook helps you gauge their potential fit with your company culture.

As for candidates, getting to know a company’s culture through social media can be a powerful draw.

So let’s take a look at how you can make the most out of social media. Each property has its own unique feature that you'll want to leverage for maximum gain.

How to Leverage Twitter 1. Make use of your network If you have a great job, ask your followers to share it out. Just don’t do it too often. That gets annoying. 2. Rejoice in hashtags Those little “#” symbols before every word count. Use them. If you’re posting about a marketing job in Atlanta consider #Marketing #Job in #ATL. And if you need a little guidance with which hashtags to use, try a tool like Hashtracking . 3. Search for colloquialisms If you want to do outreach to potential recruits, know the local lingo. For instance, while a developer on LinkedIn might say Ruby on Rails, on Twitter expect RoR. Or they might use Jet City instead of Seattle.

How to Leverage Facebook 1. Try out Facebook ads People share so much on Facebook — use it to target them. Do you need someone with a certain degree, someone that lives in a particular city, someone two years out of college? Facebook’s robust ad platform lets you target exactly who you want, and remove anyone you don’t. You can also retarget ads to people who have already visited your Careers page. You know these people are already interested in your company, so Facebook retargeting ensures that they keep seeing your brand. 2. Create a jobs tab There are countless apps that let you add a Jobs tab to the top of your Company page. LinkUp is just one example. This helps put your open jobs in front of the people who love your company and its products the most. 3. Create a job-specific page L’Oréal’s Facebook pages are an model of recruitment success. Its L’Oréal Careers page has almost 215,000 Likes and has become a dedicated hub to post job openings, answer questions from candidates, and share behind-the-scenes photos to give a sense of the company culture.

How to Leverage LinkedIn 1. Test LinkedIn Recruiter Do you want access to the entire network of professionals on LinkedIn? You can have it ... for a price. Depending on your needs, LinkedIn offers a few plans to personally connect with that perfect candidate. If you do commit to spending money, try their Recruiter Lite version first. It’s less of a hit on your wallet and probably has most of the features you need. 2. Target candidates with ads Just like Facebook, people share all about their professional lives on LinkedIn. Use this shared information to target individuals at specific companies and with specific job titles. 3. Take advantage of Groups Imagine talking to a whole bunch of people who do exactly what you’re looking for. There’s a LinkedIn Group for that. Let’s say you’re looking to recruit an inbound marketer. You’d want to join the Inbound Marketers Group, which has nearly 115,000 members! Groups can get pretty niche, which is great when you’re searching for a very particular type of individual.

How to Leverage Pinterest 1. Highlight culture The visual nature of Pinterest makes it the perfect place to feature company culture, employees, and your brand personality to attract people who could really fit in. Pin photos of company lunches or happy hours, your office space, or latest projects.Have employees represent themselves and their work, adding a personal touch to the board. Pinterest lets you expose your brand to a new audience and share your culture in an authentic way.

How to Leverage Instagram or Vine 1. Explore portfolios We don’t mean this in the literal sense — candidates are not uploading their actual portfolios to Instagram or Vine. But you can definitely find snippets of their work if you know where to look. Are you hiring for a videographer or content producer? Search different channels in Vine to find people with experience creating content in different niches (comedy, food, travel, sports, etc).If you’re looking for an illustrator, graphic designer, artist, interior design, or chef (among many other things), search hashtags on Instagram to see pictures of their work (the hashtags can be as simple as #interiordesign or #veganchef).

Try just a couple recruitment strategies from one social network first. Once you feel comfortable, ramp up to your next network.

Recruitmen Case Study

Our client Geeks2U , an Australian tech support company, came up with an innovative strategy that leverages their strong culture to attract applicants. Geeks2U needs to find top-class and friendly talent. After all, they’re in the business of providing great customer service. Rather than just saying they’re a great place to work, they prove it.

Take a look at the screen shot below, taken from their Join Our Team page:

Geeks2U is using actual numbers to show that they have a great work culture. First, they display their individual happiness scores over time, easily showing prospects that Geeks2U has some very happy employees. And thanks to TINYpulse’s company benchmark reporting, they’re able to show that they are above average when it comes to employee happiness.

If you were a job candidate choosing between a culture you knew was positive, and one you knew nothing about, which would you choose? That’s right, the positive one.

Companies using employee engagement surveys should consider publicizing their results on their websites and other platforms job candidates use to assess a company. If you’re like Geeks2U and you have really positive feedback, it’s an incredibly effective recruitment strategy.

Creative Recruitment Strategies

Digital strategies aren’t the only ones you need, of course. Here’s a list of 10 creative techniques you can add to your recruitment arsenal:

1. Referral incentives

Get your existing employees to refer their friends and colleagues. Current employees know your company culture, so they’ll be able to pick people who will fit in. You can offer a monetary incentive, a free lunch, or some other perk.

2. Pay them to leave

Zappos has a great policy where they pay new recruits who aren’t a cultural fit to leave. If they don’t like the culture and aren’t fitting in, Zappos encourages their departure to avoid polluting the culture they work so hard to build.

3. Sponsor an open house

Invite people to your office for drinks and snacks and just get chatting.

4. Attend events that are NOT job fairs

Look on sites like Meetup.com or your local chamber of commerce to see what events are happening in your area. You’ll get to network with relevant professionals that could be just what you need.

5. Consider past candidates

Remember that really awesome person you loved meeting but just didn’t have the right skills for a role? Maybe your needs have changed and now they’re the perfect fit.

6. Sponsor school clubs and events

Do you need young candidates excited about marketing? Or maybe candidates ready to jump into the entertainment industry? Look to local universities and colleges and support student clubs in your field. It’ll put you top of mind when they’re looking for jobs.

7. Focus on fit

Sometimes you find a person with a personality and can-do attitude you love, but they’re light on the skills you need. Consider training them up or supporting their continued education.

8. Talk about culture

When we tell employees about giving away 1% of our product to non profits and 1% of our time to community organizations, they perk up. Leverage the interesting things about your work culture that make you stand apart.

9. Say hello with joe

In a formal interview setting, candidates are nervous and are overthinking every answer. Casual coffee meetings allow you to see them in a new light and build personal connections. You’ll also gain valuable insights and find the right cultural fit for your company by being able to observe the candidate in the new context.

10. Focus on perks that matter

Many companies don’t have the budget to offer free lunches every day, free parking, or weekly workplace happy hours. While those perks sure are fun, do they provide real value to candidates? Instead of focusing on the “free,” consider what’s really important to employees — offer strong mentorship programs or lots of opportunities for career growth.

Watch Out for Word of Mouth

Even people who don’t have contact with a candidate can impact their decision to join. What do the actions of your organization — and even those outside of it — tell the rest of the world about your company?

1. What Do People Think of You?

The age of social media means that bad news about a company’s behavior can become very public very quickly. It can create a bad reputation that haunts an organization, with ripples that reach potential applicants. Respondents to a survey from CR Magazine and Allegis Talent2 say that what they hear about an organization affects their job decisions:

75% wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation even if they were unemployed

And for those who would say yes? Many of them would only accept a job at a company with a poor reputation for significantly more money:

One-quarter said they would need more than a 50% pay raise

15% said they would need more than double their salary

Even once they join a company, respondents would be swayed by what others are saying:

87% would consider leaving their company for one with an excellent reputation

Most would only need a 1% to 10% pay raise in order to leave

If your company makes a poor showing in the world of public opinion, don’t be surprised if new hires jump ship—or never sign on in the first place.

2. What Do Applicants Think of You?

Reputations aren’t just about splashy scandals that make headlines. They can be created from unexpected sources. You may think that a recruiter only makes an impression on the applicant they’re interacting with, but CareerBuilder found that many applicants would share bad experiences:

Over three-fourths would tell family and friends

17% would post on social media

6% would blog about it

Poor communication during the application process, a rude interviewer — it could all end up shared with the online world at large, free to be read by someone you might want to hire.

3. What Do Your Employees Think of You?

And maybe the most important opinion of all comes from your current employees. Even though recruitment strategies have gone digital in recent years, the members of your organization are still vital in finding you new recruits. According to a CareerXroads report, employee referrals are the single most significant source of hires, right above career websites.

This means that employee engagement and satisfaction affect more than just your current company — what your people say to their friends and colleagues can shape the future of your organization. If your employees are unhappy and telling potential candidates about it, you could lose out on the talent you want to hire.

Give your employees a chance to give you feedback, and then act on their concerns before unhappiness has a chance to fester. Listen to how TINYpulse client Blue Box made use of anonymous feedback tools to make employees feel heard and stay happy even through a tough business transition:

Recruitment strategies are more than waving sky-high salaries and fancy perks in candidates’ faces. The real way to get top talent is to use resources like social media and your own creativity to make yourself stand out from the competition.