Five Ways to Use Social Media to Attract Talent, Boost Recruiting

This week our president said that our priority needs to be on jobs and growth. Our local economy seems to be on board with that, as this week’s Hiring and Social Media workshop had a great turnout. I partnered with my colleague Mickey Kampsen of Management Recruiters International of Charlottesville to offer an educational session for people in charge of hiring and recruiting for their companies. The representatives that participated were from very large international companies down to small shops; all with many of the same challenges and needs.

Mickey’s expertise is on the recruiting and HR side of business, while Jaggers Communications offers expertise in social media. Our firm HAS been engaged to recruit community managers and social media/marketing associates and team members, so we have gained first-hand experience in the recruiting field, as well.

In the workshop, we shared five ways anyone in a hiring position can use the tools of social media to attract better talent and boost recruiting efforts:

1. Use monitoring tools such as Topsy to watch competitors or other companies you admire, to see new jobs posted and their techniques for attracting talent.
2. Use monitoring tools that search the social web to qualify a candidate and see if they’re behaving themselves professionally on social networks.
3. Use the LinkedIn company page to full advantage, and further your reach into internal referral sources by growing your network and encouraging colleagues to improve their profiles.
4. Blog — even in regulated industries you can blog to share your corporate culture, the stories of the  people who represent your team, and a sense of what it’s like to work within your company.
5. Consider (especially if your company is large) establishing a Facebook page just for the hiring division of your company. Marriott takes this approach with success,  as does Unilever and Boeing — all great examples of how this can be done successfully.

We’re excited to see this much interest in jobs and growth on a local level and look forward to assisting companies with the next stage of sharing their stories through the growth cycle.