Are You Using Social Media in Your Recruitment Strategy? Why Not?

If you’re struggling to hire good people in a tight labour market, read on.

It’s no secret that recruiting can be a challenge for any employer. It’s complex, risky, and takes a lot of time. Maybe it’s time to try something a little different: let’s dive into the world of recruitment using social media advertising. Spoiler alert: it works.

Right now, in New Zealand and around the world, employers are on the hunt for qualified candidates, and it’s tough out there. At the time of writing, employment in New Zealand is up 0.3 percent (6,407 jobs) since last month. How do we find people to fit our roles in such a competitive market?

DID SOMEONE SAY FACEBOOK?

The two main players here in Kiwi-Land are of course Seek and Trademe Jobs. Candidates looking for a new role can spend hours scrolling to find their ideal job. Sure, that works for some people, but what about the candidates that are missed?

Facebook is by far the largest marketplace for actively sourcing candidates, with over three million monthly active users in New Zealand.

“Why use Facebook for recruiting?”, you ask, isn’t it better to advertise jobs on Seek, Trademe, and LinkedIn?

When a company posts a new job opening, it is typically advertised on job boards. This makes sense because that’s where all of the active job seekers flock. However, depending on these job boards means you’re missing out on “passive” talent. These people aren’t actively looking for work, but may be interested if the right opportunity presents itself.

Using Facebook also gives you more opportunity to sell the job to potential candidates. You can include a video, multiple images, link to a landing page with qualifying questions – the options are endless compared to the limitations imposed by the dedicated job website.

FINDING KICK-ASS TALENT IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK

Facebook and Linkedin can find talent that may not be searching on job boards. It can bring your role to them.

Earlier this year we created a job listing for a Junior Graphic Designer.

We promoted the job via both our Linkedin and Facebook Pages – boosting the ad to targeted audiences related to the role. We were able target the ad to the people who most fit our criteria: age, location, and even behaviours and interests. 24-26 year old, living within 15km radius of our office, who has an iPhone 12 and likes ancient history memes? No problem! (No, that wasn’t the actual criteria, but you get the point. On that, if you are looking for a job in New Zealand’s raddest social media agency, get in touch.)

Tip: Remember that candidates are looking at you as well. Many candidates will check out your company’s social media presence to get a sense of who you are, what you’re up to, and how you vibe. Having active and regularly updated social media will benefit your company.

But what about Linkedin?

With over 690 million users in over 200 countries, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. According to some sources, over 40% of New Zealand are on the platform. We’re a little dubious about that statistic, but even if it’s half that, it represents a huge slice of the market.

LinkedIn is particularly popular with recruiters due to its access to such a large dedicated pool of professionals, its specialised candidate search capabilities, and ability to network.

Is it better to use Facebook or LinkedIn?

It depends.

While Facebook focuses on demographic and interest-based targeting, LinkedIn focuses on more professional targeting; such as job titles, industry, or even where you work. As a result, LinkedIn can be better suited to more ‘professional’ roles.

According to Hubspot, people on Facebook spend around 35 minutes per day scrolling through their feeds and engaging with their friends. In contrast, LinkedIn users spend only 17 minutes per month on the site. You can argue that people log into LinkedIn to actively look for something to do or find, rather than just scrolling aimlessly. If you want to use these platforms for more than just sharing your latest updates, this is crucial.

LinkedIn profiles, as well as the wealth of professional information provided by users, allow you to quickly identify candidates who meet all of your requirements.

Facebook, on the other hand, may help you learn about your candidates’ personality traits and behaviour, which are always good indicators of whether or not someone will be a good employee.

If you want your company to attract the best employees, you should use both of these social media platforms – after all, finding the perfect employee requires some effort on your part as well.

Being active on social media is critical to your success. You’ll need to become an active member of the online community surrounding your industry or sector if you want to build a strong employer brand that attracts talented candidates. Define your objectives, establish your employer status on the social media platforms of your choice, and you’ll have candidates flocking to your door in no time.

Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Ads

Finally, let’s talk about the advertising features of both platforms.

While Facebook has had a diverse range of ad types for years (we’re talking canvas, carousel, video, dynamic, and lead ads, to name a few), LinkedIn has recently added video, carousel, lead ads, and Sponsored InMail content to its mix.

If you think Facebook can reach more people in terms of targeting, you’re correct. This isn’t to say that LinkedIn doesn’t have effective targeting capabilities; on the contrary, it does.

The cost of advertising on these platforms is another distinction. The median CPC (Cost Per Click) for Facebook Ads is $0.51, the lowest of the four major social networks, while the highest is LinkedIn Ads at $5.61. At that price, you better be attracting quality talent.

Both Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to target people based on very specific demographic and psychographic criteria, but Facebook allows you to go a step further by targeting users based on their life milestones, behaviour, and more personalised information.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Both Facebook and LinkedIn have proven to be beneficial social networks for recruitment efforts, but for different reasons. Ultimately what it comes down to is what your audience interacts with more and what they prefer to use.

When you know where your customers spend their time on social media, you can develop your strategy and interact with them in that space.

Recruiting is expensive, it costs a lot of money and time to do it well. In a tight labour market, we need to push ourselves to try new methods. If you’d like to chat further on what a Recruitment Campaign might look like for you, get in touch.