Social Recruitment: Challenges and Opportunities

​The "new economy" has created the need for a new set of guidelines for recruiting. Every day the Human Resources department feels immense pressure to expand its every day responsibilities to recruit and keep an extraordinarily productive and committed workforce.

​In this case, social media is the ideal way to find new talent. In the same way, applicants also use social media for digital marketing job opportunities. The recruiter and the candidate face an extremely complex environment with myriad difficulties.

One of the most effective social tools that recruiters can use is LinkedIn and Facebook (with more than 600 million users and 2.4 billion users, respectively) leading the pack. As the popularity of social networks increases, companies are becoming aware of how important it is to connect with high-quality candidates more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional recruitment methods.

Companies use social media in their recruitment strategy for a variety of reasons. One of them is to look for potential candidates. Find those who can make money.

​The days of advertising in newspapers and waiting for resumes to arrive in the mail. Nowadays, LinkedIn offers reasonable prices for job advertisements that can reach a vast number of candidates or even those who are passive (active) applicants.

But the plans still need to be finished there. Indeed, companies use social media to find candidates with specific talents and skills. They do this not just on Facebook or LinkedIn but also on professional associations' forums and their portals for recruitment.

Whatever platform you choose to use in the process, it's worthwhile to consider social recruiting as a general method for the company. It is possible to gain tangible advantages such as:

• Locate those candidates who need help to reach. Finding the best candidates is a daunting task if job seekers are fierce. Social networks are the best way to connect with people who are hard to locate using other means.
• Building brand. Social media allows potential candidates to understand the company's culture before applying for a position. Therefore, who can use it to learn about the organization's culture before taking a job?
• Make yourself the preferred employer. If your company is actively using social networks, it sends the message that you're a connected firm that can reach them. This way, people interested in working within the company will promote good practices on social media, increasing the message's impact.
• Get background details. When you're an employer, you'll be able to learn much about a candidate from their LinkedIn profile. It includes the recommendations of colleagues and colleagues in other posts and the various organizations and associations to which they belong.
• Lower recruiting costs. Social platforms can lower the cost of recruitment by avoiding recruitment firms and jobs boards.

With the centennials and millennials being the most significant generations of the current workforce, It is vital to tweak social skills to identify the most suitable candidates.

• Finds out which networks have the best performance. So, it would help if you spent a lot of time finding the most efficient social networks. Consider where your top candidates originate from. The answer allows you to narrow your focus to the networks that are most popular with them.
• Post videos. There are more ways to ensure that people will be interested in your job than the content alone. The latest trends in social recruitment suggest that videos with short messages in which section managers present a job are beautiful and draw top talent.
• Create relevant content. When recruiting, companies must focus on building an 'employer brand' for their talent instead of an 'employer brand.' What exactly does this mean? LinkedIn defines the former as a social, open version of the brand you work for, incorporating your skills in your past and considering and discussing your business as a beautiful workplace. Since potential employees consume a ton of content on their prospective employers, developing relevant and engaging narratives is always a great idea. It includes testimonial videos, blog articles, research, thought leadership, and social events.
• Practice social listening. Make a schedule to keep tabs on social media platforms for mentions about services, brands, products, and competitors. Analytics tools such as Hootsuite, Snaplytics, and Sprout Social let you take it further by providing relevant data on specific recruitment and management of talent in your sector.

​It's also worth looking into the possibility of using social media for recruiting to build relationships with individuals before when they are candidates. It's not about creating an online presence just for the sake of it.

Social media platforms can only help recruit if they can provide qualified candidates we have already taught about our talent brand.

In this regard, social media content is the primary source to assist you in creating a long-lasting and well-known brand that can be capable of engaging with your target audience in a planned and strategic manner.