As we approach 2014, most employers are using at least one social media platform for employment branding and recruiting. Many are using the big 3 (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter), and a few are using niche and emerging platforms. One of the biggest challenges organizations face when launching social media branding and recruitment campaigns is effectively measuring their efforts.
In this 3 part series, I will cover:
- The 3 primary phases of social media in recruitment – awareness, engagement and action.
- Platforms and measurements to consider for each primary phases.
- What to do with the results.
When launching or revising your social media recruitment strategy, you must consider the goals and purpose of your activities. I recommend separating them into 3 primary phases – awareness, engagement and action.
If you are trying to build awareness of your company, employment brand or career opportunities, your approach and measurements will be specific to this phase. For example, you may be opening an office in a new location and need to build awareness with the local workforce. Or, you may be entering a new market where you aren’t known as an employer. In these instances, your social media platform selections would include those with the greatest reach with your target candidate segments. Your activities and initiatives would be closer to large branding advertising and further from specific job postings.
If you have established awareness with specific candidate segments, but need those individuals to have a greater understanding of your employment value proposition and keep you top of mind in their career planning efforts, you are in the engagement phase. You should select social media platforms that allow for significant engagement with candidates – where candidates can share information about your company, where they can ask questions and get answers, where your employees can talk about their career experiences with your company. You may be in the engagement phase for a specific candidate skill set that is going to be important to your company in the near future, but you aren’t yet hiring for those roles.
Finally, you are likely to be using social media to encourage action with your target candidate segments. In this phase, your platform selection and activities would be designed to elicit specific actions by a candidate. The desired action is typically a qualified candidate applying for an open position. You are usually in this phase for candidate segments for which you regularly hire and candidate segments that are needed to fill open positions.
One important note: you can, and should, have strategies and activities in each of the 3 phases, depending on your business needs. You should carefully look at each of your candidate segments and assign them to a phase. It is also possible that you could be in more than one phase for a specific talent segment.
In part 2 of this series, I will discuss the platforms and measurements to consider for each phase of your social media recruitment.
Related articles
- Social Insights Show How Recruiters Engage on Twitter (cmswire.com)
- Use Of Social Media For Hiring Is At An All-Time High [Infographic] (socialbarrel.com)
- Why More Companies Should Use Twitter for Their Recruitment Efforts [Study] (sproutsocial.com)
- Are you using social media for your recruitment needs? (notforprofittips.wordpress.com)
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