Social media has already become an essential tool in building a company’s brand and growing a loyal audience base — but could it also be used to attract talent and fill available jobs?
Glassdoor reports that 86% of HR professionals feel as if recruitment has become more like marketing as U.S. employers
Recruiting platform CareerArc uses a company’s social media presence to attract candidates. The platform takes all the job opportunities at a company and makes them accessible on social media, while also giving companies the tools to promote information surrounding issues future hires care about, such as DEI, benefits and company culture.
Read more:
“We are in a job seeker market and job seekers are checking out the companies that they're applying for,” says Anna Bersudsky, chief product officer at CareerArc. “It's important that a company can tell a good story about who they are if they're looking to attract candidates that really want to move in and grow within their organizations. ”
And potential candidates do care about a company’s story. According to CareerArc’s 2021 Future of Recruiting study, 82% of job seekers consider a company’s brand and reputation before even applying. This means companies need a steady stream of content that makes their values clear if they hope to attract compatible talent, explains Bersudsky.
The newest version of CareerArc’s platform now includes AI technology that can automatically create and publish job postings optimized for social media platforms once the company provides images, videos and text they wish to share with their audience.
“We call those magic posts because they do kind of happen magically,” says Bersudsky. “You give us all this information, and then we apply AI technology to create job posts and rich content about things like company news, diversity or new benefits.”
This technology could help take the pressure off of recruiters and HR teams, who have shouldered a lot of burden in the pandemic. When Jobvite, a recruiting software company, surveyed 800 U.S.-based recruiting and HR professionals last year, 61% reported an increase in stress. The 2021 Pulse of HR Report found that 70% of the 1,000 HR professionals surveyed felt that this has been one of the most stressful years of their careers. All the while, CareerArc claims that its clients on average save 800 hours in recruitment labor each year.
Read more:
“Recruiters are seekers, but social media allows the candidates to find them,” Bersudsky says. “The old ways of doing things are just not effective. When it comes to any choices folks make, they know they have options. All of those options are available to everyone through social media.”
Bersudsky views job boards as more work for less reward. Even if many people apply to a position through a job board, there is less of a guarantee that the listing will attract candidates who are genuinely invested in the company’s brand and mission, she says. On the other hand, candidates sourced on social media will most likely have already formed a connection to that company by simply seeing it on their feed every day or being directed to a job posting because they were scrolling through content they already found interesting.
Read more:
This could be the start of a more productive hiring cycle, since candidates may already feel aligned with a company’s goals and products — and less likely to feel like the job is a bad match a couple of months after being hired. According to CareerArc, clients have reported up to a 50% increase in hires and an 85% retention rate for those who were employed through the platform.
But like anything on social media, companies have to tell a story that will reach and engage a relevant audience. In turn, a company’s social media presence has the potential to be more than branding and advertising but an opportunity for the company to evolve according to the talent it needs.
“The more authentic you can make your company's story and your voice, the better quality candidate you'll attract, and that will decrease your cost to hire as well as the time to hire,” says Bersudsky. “Candidates are looking for a story and aren't just looking to apply to the first thing that they see.”
