Social media is how people stay in touch – not just occasionally, but multiple times throughout the day. If your organization is not using social media in its recruiting efforts, says Meghan M. Biro, of Forbes, it is very much behind the times. Social media recruiting is considered industry standard at this point, and it is a great way to reach candidates.

Why Should You Use Social Media to Recruit?

• You don’t necessarily have to know statistics on social media use today to know that it is incredibly popular and very powerful at connecting people. Through social media, you can reach individuals who are not necessarily looking for work but who are still using social media. They might apply if they knew about your company and saw that you had an opening. You can start building relationships with them by getting them acquainted with your brand, according to a white paper by social recruiting software company icims,
• Your organization can also lower its recruitment costs because Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts are all free to set up. You can post job openings through social media accounts and get better results than if you just put up one posting on one job board.
• It’s important to stay ahead, or at least with, the recruiting competition. In a social media and recruiting infographic on Jobvite, 73 percent of recruiters planned to invest more in social recruiting in 2014.
• Companies and recruiters that use social media recruitment saw increases in candidate quality (44%), candidate quantity (44%), and improved time to hire (34%).
• The problem is that just 18 percent of recruiters consider themselves to be experts at social recruiting. For example, 59 percent of recruiters don’t invest at all in mobile career sites, but 43 percent of job seekers look for jobs on their phones.

How

• Avoid starting several social media accounts at once. Use one social media account regularly, and get to know its possibilities. Grow your presence there. Besides the big social media companies, you can use niche communities as well, such as MyVetwork, which is a professional social networking site for veterans. There are similar communities for different ethnic communities and different professions. (Check out professional associations, for example.)
• You can also use social media as an employee referral term. This is a good way to find high-quality hires, and you can use social media to get your current employees to use social media for professional purposes and encourage them to help the organization through both their personal and professional social media accounts. Another idea is to have employees share industry news to engage potential employees.
• You have the opportunity to share “your company culture to potential recruits and attracting new staff. You can brand your social media channels, post photos, and host videos. Customers and job seekers should be encouraged to participate in discussions, and employees should promptly address questions and comments,” according to icims.
• Use social media is to check out the profiles of potential candidates. You can read through their job histories and see recommendations from others, what groups they have joined, etc.

To get the best candidates before your competitors do, whether you represent a company or a recruiter, it is time to start investing in social media recruitment.