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By: Monica Schaus on December 15th, 2016

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A Top Recruiting Trend Review: Social Media Sourcing

HR Tech | Total Rewards | Talent Acquisition

A Top Recruiting Trend Review

A top recruiting trend we're seeing for 2017 at Helios HR is a shift between social media platform used for candidate sourcing. For years, we’ve seen recruiting firms like ours, use LinkedIn as a primary tool to find passive candidates. As this site continues to become more saturated and competitive in the war for talent, we believe recruiters utilize other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to find passive candidates on a much greater scale.

Social Media Sourcing Strategies

Instagram

What’s great about utilizing Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as part of your recruiting sourcing strategy is that the hashtags and posts can be shared across the various networks, giving your message a larger opportunity to be discovered.  Recruiters can also use the direct messaging feature with Instagram to send prospective candidates job postings or share the corporate culture through short videos and pictures stories with Instagram snaps.

Snapchat

Similar to Instagram snaps, Snapchat is another increasingly popular way to attract cutting-edge, millennial candidates. A strategy we are finding to be highly successful is by providing candidates with a glimpse into a day in the life of a team member. So, for instance, a recruiter hiring an event coordinator, could ask the current event manager to take over the Snapchat for the day to highlight corporate events, what goes on behind the scene to prepare, and an overall preview of what it would be like on the job.

Facebook

Another opportunity with Facebook is the ability to search for candidates by phone. Savvy recruiters will use this feature to their advantage when trying to separate their message from the crowd by utilizing text messaging and taking into account the appropriate times that would be best for the candidate. Organizations can also use Jobvite to enable employees to add job tabs to any Facebook page and create a community/group on Facebook where you share job openings and the corporate culture.

A Highly Customized, Compelling Pitch to Passive Candidates

With these personal social media accounts, recruiters have the capability to search for talent based on data provided by other sources and use that intel to their advantage to present a more compelling opportunity. For instance, should a high potential candidate appear to have a family with young kids, one might adjust the times they reach out to be more accommodating with school schedules and highlight flexible working hours when they pitch the opportunity. Perhaps if the candidate seems active and interested in sports, a skilled recruiter may emphasize the company sports teams and activities available. By considering the personal, public data available, recruiters can be more creative to make the presentation highly customizable to each prospective key hire.

That said it’s important to note that we are seeing total reward benefits becoming more and more competitive in the marketplace for top talent weighing almost equally as salary pay. One benefit in particular that was once a nice bonus, remote working, is now becoming the norm. We’ve experienced across industries that no matter how creative the pitch or competitive the salary is, candidates are passing up opportunities if they don’t have the flexibility to work remotely.