All current information about social recruiting

Finding and retaining new employees is one of the biggest challenges facing many companies today. It's not uncommon for positions to remain vacant for extended periods, for restaurants to close, or for tradespeople to turn down jobs simply because suitable employees cannot be found.

The shortage of skilled workers in Germany, which has been exacerbated by the Corona pandemic, is being felt everywhere. While companies used to be able to choose the most suitable candidate from a large number of applicants, today it is important to convince qualified talents and trained specialists of their own company.

A shift from an employer market to an employee market has taken place and new ways of recruiting employees must be found. One of these is "social recruiting", which starts where potential employees spend most of their free time: on social networks.

Antje Stensel from the SEO-Küche online marketing agency reveals what new opportunities this presents for companies and what to look out for.

The term “social recruiting” encompasses all personnel marketing measures in which companies use social networks to attract new employees.

Popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are just as suitable as classic career networks such as Xing and LinkedIn, as are discussion forums that are only known in certain industries.

Social recruiting includes both passive measures such as maintaining a career page as well as the active search and direct approach to potential candidates.

Social recruiting methods

Career portals and job advertisements: Business networks such as Xing and LinkedIn offer their own, highly frequented career portals that companies can use to publish their job advertisements. And there are also numerous apps for social platforms such as Facebook to create a suitable job market.

A job post with a brief reference to the vacant position and a link to more information is quick to create and, in the best case, will be shared by users of your own network to increase your reach. If that's not enough, you can increase your visibility even further through paid campaigns and ads.

Employer Branding: Another important component of social recruiting is the presentation of the company as an attractive employer in the form of employer branding.

By regularly publishing exciting content on social networks that provides insights into everyday working life and highlights employee benefits, companies can sharpen their brand as an employer.

This makes it easy to build an image as a sought-after employer, particularly among a young target group, because the younger generation usually places more value on a good working atmosphere and flat hierarchies than on big names and high salaries.

And topics like sustainability or a company's social responsibility can also be the deciding factor for potential employees when choosing a job. So don't hesitate to actively communicate these topics as well.

Active Sourcing: However, the greatest potential of social recruiting probably lies in the opportunity to actively search for employees yourself.

Based on the data that users leave on social networks and their communication style, recruiters can pre-select candidates and decide whether the person they are targeting could be a good fit for the advertised position and the company - and then get them excited about the vacant position.

The platforms' corresponding search functions, which allow you to filter by skills, location or keywords, make the search easier for recruiters.

Opportunities and Challenges of Social Recruiting

Active sourcing in particular has a crucial advantage over traditional recruiting, which makes it a unique method of recruiting employees. The greatest opportunity lies in attracting potential employees who are not, or at least not actively, looking for a job and who are difficult to reach through normal job advertisements.

At the same time, reaching out to these candidates on platforms where they primarily visit for private reasons is also a major challenge for recruiters.

An individual approach that is convincing in terms of content and adapted to the chosen social network is therefore one of the most important success criteria of social recruiting, the success of which depends not least on the personal bond and uncomplicated mutual interaction between recruiter and candidate.

Therefore, be sure to adapt and simplify the application and selection processes accordingly in order to comply with the rules of social recruiting.

And last but not least, don’t forget to keep an eye on employer rating portals like Kununu so you can respond professionally to any negative feedback.

SEO-Küche Internet Marketing GmbH & Co. KG is a professional online marketing agency with a total of eight locations. Founded in Kolbermoor in 2009, SEO-Küche now consists of a team of over 100 experts and is one of the 100 leading online marketing agencies in Germany.

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