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8 Biggest Social Recruiting Mistakes You Should Avoid

By Nagasunder in News Stories, posted October 26, 2021

Social recruiting has revolutionized the way companies interact with their potential employees. It has evolved to be a key hiring strategy that almost every organization follows. However, it's not all about finding the right candidates on social media; it's much more than that. If done correctly, social recruiting has the potential to have a tremendously positive effect on employer branding, candidate engagement, and sourcing results.

If you're already using social media for recruiting or planning to incorporate it in your recruitment efforts, you need to know the top 8 social recruiting mistakes most recruiters make and how you should avoid them.

1. Not having a social media strategy
If you want to use social media for hiring, you need to have a clear plan with defined goals. Don't be on every other social media platform; instead, pick up the ones that are goldmines of talent you're looking for.

2. Not making a genuine connection
You're in a very competitive space on social media; you are up against other recruiting teams, consumer brands, and also marketing and social media in-house departments of giant companies. You can't fight with big brands, but you can certainly add of human touch to connect with your audience online.

If your current strategy is bombarding your prospects with job adverts in your social feeds, it's not going to do much for you in the long run. That's because candidates are overloaded with ads, and they tend to mentally block them out or turn a blind eye to them. Establishing a genuine connection with your target audience is the key to engaging them. Open up a dialogue with them and engage them in conversation. This will help create a positive impression of your brand and encourage your candidate to apply down the line.

3. Not monitoring your employer brand
Social media is a double-edged sword. It can help improve employer branding and connect with new prospects, but it can also spread bad reviews about your company like wildfire, destroying your employer brand in a matter of minutes.

If you do not have an effective brand monitoring strategy in place, you're making a big mistake. Set up monitoring tools to keep an eye on online mentions about your company. Be proactive and respond to all the good, the bad, and the ugly comments about your company. This will improve brand perception and eventually increase job applications.

4. Not having relevant content for the defined audience
Posting content mindlessly on social media is a sin. Meaningless messages and generic status updates are more like spam on your prospects' social feed. Such kinds of posts will damage your brand, and potential candidates will not remain interested in what your company has to offer.

Also, make sure that your social media posts are created, keeping your target audience in mind. To create an effective social media strategy, you need to define your ideal candidates. Then write social media content relevant to your target audience.

5. Not focusing on quality
You need to post regularly on social media to stay on top of your prospects' minds. However, don't forget to focus on quality. It's okay if you cannot be frequent in posting, but make sure whatever you post, the content is original, engaging, and relevant. Set a high bar for quality; be interesting, and avoid being repetitive. With quality playing an important role in your social recruiting efforts, you'll find more people organically following and engaging with you.

6. Not encouraging sharing
Social recruiting doesn't just help you with finding the right candidates; it amplifies your employer brand, sending more qualified candidates your way. This can be achieved if every piece of your employer's brand-related content is shared and reshared to increase your company's social reach.

7. Not having a strategy in place for passive candidates
Establishing a valuable relationship with passive candidates is a real struggle. Nevertheless, it's worth pursuing. When you target passive candidates with your social media content, it can potentially do two things:

It can get the passive candidates interested in what your company has to offer to them.

When the passive candidates become active, out in the market looking for a job, your company will be instantly on top of their minds.

8. Not having the patience for relationship building
Relationship building doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, especially on social media. Don't get disappointed or discouraged if your efforts are not showing any immediate results. Focus on building your employer brand and creating authentic relationships with your prospects. This will be helpful when you're in need of talented candidates.

Social media offers great hiring potential. By putting in effort into your social recruiting strategy and not making these mistakes, you'll be able to attract real talent to your doorstep.

Author Bio:
Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager for Jobsoid – Applicant Tracking System. She is responsible for leading the content and social media teams at work. Her expertise and experience in the field of HR enable her to create value-driven content for her readers – both on Jobsoid’s blog and other guest blogs where she publishes content regularly.