Currently, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have accounts on social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and increasingly more organizations are using these platforms to target candidates for certain jobs. The tendency of the companies and recruiters to target and find candidates or future employees through social networks is known these days as "social recruiting."
However, it is not enough to know that these social networks exist and can be used like a huge database for recruiters. The hundreds of millions of users that these sites host mean nothing if recruiters and companies will not use them in their favor to find and attract new talent through them.
Tools that help with finding suitable candidates
We all know that LinkedIn is a social network that brings together professionals from multiple industries and countries. The tens of millions of users can establish connections, can join various groups and can establish beneficial business partnerships. At the same time, LinkedIn can be used to promote job ads and to attract those interested to apply.
The professional network offers users many paid tools, but most of them can be successfully used for free to find and attract new talents. Those organizations that don’t have the financial resources to invest in such methods of recruitment can begin by building contacts on LinkedIn, establishing connections with former colleagues from school, work, former and present clients, local entrepreneurs or even with friends and family members.
Also extremely useful are groups that anyone can join, where you can post job ads, and you can follow other announcements that can be used to identify new candidates. When the candidates are discovered, their profiles need to be analyzed, to see if they have connections in their field or if they have recommendations from former managers and if they have a complete profile.
Facebook and Twitter, platforms that host millions of talents
Although it was not designed to be a professional network, Facebook is the largest social network and can be used as a database through which the suitable candidates could be recruited. First of all, an organization can post an ad for an opened position, and then promote it (paid promotion or not) in certain groups with common interests or to target people of a certain age or a certain geographic region.
Twitter is a microblogging platform through which hundreds of millions of users can share short messages, limited to 140 characters. The best way to recruit using this platform represents posting an announcement accompanied by keywords, tags with "#" symbol, that are relevant to the job. Accordingly, using these keywords you can search people and companies with common interests and new connections can be built.
In conclusion, we live in times when we can’t deny the benefits of new technologies and we can only try to use them in our favor. Although it may be an extra effort, recruiting via social networks is beneficial for the long term and may be the source for attracting valuable talents for an organization.
BIA HR TEAM