Social media recruiting: Attracting new employees through social media

Just a few years ago, recruiting was easy in most industries. You place a job ad, hundreds of candidates apply, and you invite the best ones for an interview. Today, the situation is different for most companies.  That’s because the employer market is becoming an employee market: companies aren’t choosing between multiple candidates, but the other way around. Social media recruiting is one answer to this challenge. 

What is Social Media Recruiting actually?

Social media recruiting (alternatively: social recruiting) includes all measures for employee recruitment via social media such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and TikTok. A distinction must be made between push mechanisms such as job advertisements or direct approaches and pull mechanisms such as social media content on HR topics or even channels and campaigns completely tailored to employer branding. What they all have in common is that they are only successful if they are conceived by the candidate and not by the company. As always in marketing, the bait must be to the liking of the fish, not the angler.

Goals of social media recruiting

Basically, there are two goals that social media recruiting can achieve:

1. Push marketing

   People who are looking for a new job find out about a specific job offer. To do this, they are shown job ads or are approached via direct messages. A job opening is shoved in front of their noses – which is why this communication is also called “push” marketing.

2. Pull marketing

   People who are not specifically looking for a job are confronted with their own advantages until they develop the desire to become an employee of a company. Here, for example, image advertisements, photos of extraordinary employee benefits such as the company ski tour or the free massage as well as reports about uncomplicated career paths, compatibility of work and family, possibility of workation and others come into question. Because these measures are used to attract employees to the company, this communication is called “pull marketing.”

Difference push and pull marketing

A good social recruiting strategy includes both directions – push and pull. Potential employees ideally learn about a company before they actually start their search (pull) and receive an offer quickly as soon as things get serious (push).

Social Recruiting Strategy: Organic or Paid

As always when it comes to communication in social media, the question arises whether to go for paid or unpaid outreach. Especially when it comes to social media recruiting, a combination of both is recommended.

1. Organic social recruiting: employees as ambassadors

For organic reach, you need ambassadors to carry the content into the world. For topics related to recruiting, these are your own employees. They have reasons why they work for a company. You should identify them and encourage your own team to carry their enthusiasm into the world via their own social media channels.
A good company account is also useful here, and many companies also rely on an extra career or education account, on which only content about the company as an employer is published and on which ads can also be placed.

2. Paid social recruiting: Ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn

Since the communication of the company’s own employees only addresses their networks, it makes sense to use paid formats as a supplement. The social networks offer opportunities to play out advertising very granularly to specific candidates. With the LocalUp software, there is also the possibility of placing individualized ads on social media within the vicinity of specific locations. 

Which social media platform is best suited for social media recruiting?

The different social media platforms are suitable for different target groups, strategies and content in social media recruiting. They can be roughly categorized as follows:

1. Present employees on Instagram

Instagram is a bit older than TikTok in terms of target audience – you can find young professionals, trainees, etc. here. Instagram is suitable in terms of content especially to introduce your own employees. It is also popular to let employees from different departments use the channel on a weekly basis – in the long run, this gives users a broad overview of a company.

Employee introduction on the Instagram account of LocalUp

2. Show corporate culture on Facebook

On Facebook, you can reach all age groups today. The platform is ideal for providing insights into the culture. For example, showing pictures and videos of weekly feedback sessions or events where different job levels and departments get to know each other shows viewers that flat hierarchies prevail here. Like Instagram, Facebook is a channel that users choose out of private interest. You can be more serious here, but by no means boring – because your friends’ posts are just a thumb movement away in the smartphone app.

3. Use TikTok to recruit trainees

TikTok is particularly suitable as a platform for addressing young people – for example, trainees, interns or temporary student workers. To attract attention on the platform, employees can take part in TikTok challenges, for example. When creating your own content, it is important that it fits TikTok – fast cuts, music, etc. are important here.

4. Post job ads on LinkedIn or Xing.

Xing and LinkedIn is the classic place for job ads – users deliberately search for new jobs here. So why not take advantage of this opportunity and place a classic job ad?
In parallel, LinkedIn in particular has also developed into a content-rich career and specialist medium. Here, companies and, above all, individual experts can position themselves as subject matter experts and thus offer an attractive environment for experts.

Learn more about personal branding on LinkedIn and how you can use your employees as brand ambassadors to drive your business forward.

Social media recruiting campaign with LocalUp: DPD is looking for employees for various locations

An important success factor for all social recruiting campaigns is that they meet the needs of the target group. Logistics service provider dpd showed how this can work together with LocalUp on Facebook and Instagram. Candidates for the parcel delivery job are primarily looking for jobs “nearby.” So the company decided to prominently include the location in the job ad. Result: social media ads with the text “We are looking for parcel delivery staff in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen” were significantly more successful than ads without mentioning the location.

Social Recruiting Kampagne der DPD Service GmbH

Read in our case studies how the locally individualized recruitment campaign for DPD was played out on Facebook, Instagram and Google.

Social media recruiting offers many opportunities

For modern employee recruitment, social recruiting is a kind of Swiss Army knife with a lot of possibilities. Crucial for success is to think about your own goals and strategies at the beginning of the planning and only then go into implementation. We wish you every success in this endeavor!