Using Facebook for recruitment

I have a friend in Germany who works as a HR-Marketing Online Specialist at PwC.

He started in that field of work 2010 – when the company were pioneering in the social recruitment field. Before 2010 – most of the businesses were using social media for marketing products only. Suddenly some businesses started to treat careers as products, with the upcoming of career-specific Pages and advertising. This way of looking at social recruitment has lead to great innovations and outcome.

The fact that recruitment through social media works in Germany is interestin. Germans are very risk aware and pointy when it comes to sharing personal data online. But we are in a time where we’re moving towards the upcoming of generation Z – who has grown up with sharing information. They will set the premises for how many things will work in the future. Including recruitment.

With the rise of social media and the growing understanding of different mechanisms, the traditional way of recruitment has to make way for recruitment 2.0: social recruitment.

So, why should you use Facebook as a recruitment channel?

It’s cost effective

Using Facebook to reach potential candidates for a job is really cost effective – as you find and pay for people who fit your profile of a qualified candidate, and is likely to apply. For instance – if we were to post an available job for an accounting firm, this is how I would target potential candidates:

I can target candidates with a degree from specific schools, field of study and when they graduated.

Speed up the process

With the immense amount of information and users online at any give time, you can remove some of the bigger barriers the traditional recruitment process brings. When posting a job in a traditional way – you distribute your job to several outlets, newspapers and online magazines and wait. With Facebook you have the opportunity to meet people who meets your hiring needs. As shown above you can target people who are most likely to react to your job listing. Facebook makes greater minds, easier to find.

The power of referrals

85% of all people with internet access have a Facebook profile(*). Imagine if I like your job post interesting for myself or my friends? Naturally, I’ll share it. Talk about free advertising? Engagement with Facebook recruitment can affect employee branding, increase referrals and ultimately: influx of candidates.

I also want to share how we went along when we wanted to hire people to join our family in Oslo. We built a landing page in 24SevenSocial Creator – and posted an ad. I haven’t got access to the exact numbers – but we didn’t spend much on ads. It’s safe to say our Director of Sales, who was then in charge of new hires, was up to his neck with people eager to come in for a chat.

We removed many barriers by simply asking for basic information such as name, email and address as well as a link to a LinkedIn profile. The cover letter was not mandatory, but limited to 140 characters.

We have now been happy to house Elisabeth and Katrine for a year!

Want to talk to us about recruitment through Facebook? Click here to get in touch with us.

*http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/infographic-how-use-facebook-social-recruiting/