Social Recruiting Strategy: Target People Who Are Not Looking

By Cheryl Morgan

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Sometimes the perfect person for an open position within your company may already be working somewhere else. As a recruiter, one of the biggest challenges you face may be reaching professionals who are not necessarily seeking a new opportunity when you have one available. Here are some ways that you can improve your social recruiting strategy.
 

Skip Specifics

When you first approach a passive candidate, don't offer a specific job or even give details on one position. Instead, invite the person to have an open, casual discussion with you regarding your company and their own career goals. Talking about the career opportunities within a company can be more compelling and less intimidating than immediate expectations of a job offer. This conversation can help you sell your company to the candidate while allowing you to better establish whether the person would be an ideal hire after all.

Social recruiting
Potential job candidates often think of their overall career as more than one specific position.

 

Blog in Your Field

One social recruiting strategy is indirect but effective. Your company needs to maintain a high quality blog in your field that's frequently updated with truly helpful content that will make potential candidates want to read it. That will help them become more familiar with what your company is all about, make you look like a leader in your field and ultimately lead to relevant people being more likely to look at your job posts and consider available positions.

 

Assemble the Right Tools

The top professionals with talent and experience use a wide range of different ways of staying in touch with their industry and potential opportunities. You need to assemble the right tools to attract candidates. Be as visible as possible. Join all the most popular social media websites as part of your social recruiting strategy. Interact with people on them and join groups. The more active you are on the sites, the more likely passive candidates are to notice your company and consider what it has to offer.

 

Highlight Growth Opportunities

Emphasize the multiple opportunities for career growth that your company may be able to offer candidates when establishing contact. Do this when composing posts about job openings as well. Compensation and job duties are often the focus of posts, but candidates are likely to consider the big picture. Make it accessible and transparent in order to attract some of the most detail-oriented and ambitious candidates.

Social recruiting strategy
By appealing to the overall vision that a candidate might have for their career, you may be able to capture their attention.

 

Talk to Current Employees

Word of mouth is still a powerful tool that empowers customers and employees to tell it like it really is. In fact, in the age of social media and instant connections, word of mouth has the potential to reach more people than ever before. So it's important to talk to your current employees to figure out what would make them more satisfied. Ensure that the company is treating them well and offering what they really want. Happy employees will spread the word about your company culture, but unhappy ones will, too. Be proactive to ensure that this inadvertent social recruiting strategy is working in your favour. Also make sure that your employees know what vacancies you're looking to recruit for and invite them to ask questions if they think they might know someone who is suitable. If you don't have a referral scheme in place then this is something to consider as it's likely to encourage your employees to actively share your open positions across their social networks, which will significantly extend their reach.

Finally, keep in mind that attracting passive candidates can be a winning social recruiting strategy, so keep perfecting your methods. You may also want to attend our monthly webinar for more information on how to get results on social media.

Learn more about Social Hire

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