6 Social Media Recruiting Benefits You Can’t Ignore

If recruitment is a priority area for your team, then paid advertising is a must-have for your digital strategy. But have you considered social media for recruiting top talent?

Whether it’s a more professional network like LinkedIn, a news-related platform like X, more casual networks like Facebook and Instagram, or even entertainment-based platforms like TikTok, social media can be a strong channel to include in your recruitment marketing mix.

On this page, we’ll share six social media recruiting benefits, including:

1. Showcasing company culture
2. Reaching prospective applicants who aren’t searching
3. Expanding reach through creative targeting techniques
4. Retargeting interested job candidates
5. Building a talent community
6. Gaining data

Keep reading to learn more!

6 benefits of utilizing social media in a recruitment strategy

Ready to see how social media can benefit your recruitment strategy? Let’s dive in!

1. Showcasing company culture

Have you ever considered applying for a job, but wanted to learn more about the company first? Most people do! Yes, you can go to the company’s website, but one of the best ways to get a “real feel” of the company is by reviewing their social media activity! This includes the social pages of the company, tagged posts, employee activity, and more.

To showcase company culture and highlight your business to prospective employees, you can use an organic social media content strategy. This includes regularly creating content to post on social media profiles to give users an idea of who you are. Think of your social profiles as a “landing page” that gives users details about your company before considering applying.

A strong social media content strategy is cohesive and aligned with key pillars that the company wants to regularly reinforce. For recruitment purposes, just some of those key content types include:

• Employee highlights and testimonials
• Company events
• Community service involvement
• Rewards and recognition 
• Employee internal communication

Being active on social media also increases engagement from your employees. When your employees see that their content can be shared on the business page, they will be more likely to share photos/videos of their day-to-day experience and tag the company in their content (UGC or user-generated content).

A strong social media presence can encourage applicants to feel comfortable when applying to your organization!

2. Reaching prospective applicants who aren’t searching

Now that you have a solidified organic social media content strategy, you’re ready to take full advantage of a paid social media advertising strategy. This is a key element in a strong social recruitment strategy.

One of the top benefits of using a paid social media advertising strategy is the ability to reach people who are not searching. Why? Because even though users are not actively Googling “open jobs near me”, you are able to reach a target demographic and increase awareness of your company as a potential next step in their career. 

New user targeting strategies are strong on social media and the ways to target people are endless! Let’s talk about those techniques next.

3. Expanding reach through creative targeting techniques

If you want to reach brand-new users, social media is a great way to do that! Depending on the social media platform you’re using, there are endless possibilities for audiences. You can:

• Aim to reach target demographics
• Find people in very specific geographical areas
• Target people who are similar to current employees
• Reach users who have related interests to our open jobs

Targeting can be limited on certain platforms, like Facebook, to eliminate any discrimination from occurring. Keep in mind that, targeting does not always have to be direct in order to be effective!

For example, if we want to target high school students that would be eligible to join a post-high school training program, we can use a supplementary targeting strategy aimed at reaching family members and encourage those individuals to refer users who may be interested. This is something that social media has the unique opportunity to take advantage of!

Explore: How to Find Your Target Audience on Social Media

4. Retargeting interested job candidates

Seeing high volume traffic on your careers website but not getting the application numbers you want to see? Then retargeting could be a great fit for your goals! Social media advertising offers advanced customer matching and targeting capabilities to reach users who have previously engaged with your company in various different ways. This includes:

• Reengaging with people who have previously viewed open job postings on your website within the last 60 days
• Reaching users who are followers of your current social profiles or have engaged with any of your social posts/ads recently
• Delivering ads to any users who visited your website within the last 30 days
• Utilizing a lookalike strategy to find people similar to current employees or past applicants

Through these strategic targeting options, you can stay top-of-mind for job searchers and encourage action as they continue to search for their next career move.

5. Building a talent community

Beyond gaining direct applications, another goal that social media can contribute to is building audiences for later use. With recruitment efforts, one of the best known ways to do this is through a talent community. 

The mindset of a social media user is not always to convert right away. So, offering an option to enter their information to later be considered without asking for a large time commitment now, is a great way to generate valuable audience information and increase applicants down the line. 

By promoting talent community signups with your social advertising campaigns, your recruiters can browse prospective applicants and line up their data with the most relevant and high-need job positions that need filled.

This not only increases the amount of applications that are driven, but can also save your recruiting team time. These talent community members can also be remarketed to later from other campaigns, whether on social media or on other platforms like Google Ads.

6. Gaining data

We all know – data is invaluable with recruitment! With a social media marketing strategy for recruitment, you are given endless opportunities to gain information about who key prospective professionals are and what preferences they have. 

For example, with social media ads, top-performing creatives mention the ability to grow within the company. This indicates that this is a top interest of prospective employees and can be highlighted in interviews. Your organization can even scale these internal initiatives to increase interest in recruitment.

All of this data can be carried over to other marketing efforts and throughout the talent acquisition process to increase hiring rates.

Let WebFX help with your social media recruiting efforts

With 86% of jobseekers using social media in their job search, social media recruitment is a must. With recruitment social media, recruiters can expand their reach to new audiences, generate additional visibility for open job postings, support employer branding goals, drive new applications from qualified candidates, and gain valuable data to support other recruitment campaigns across the organization.

Interested in leveraging social media advertising for your recruitment goals? Our expert team at WebFX can support your team in attracting top talent via targeted recruitment campaigns through social media. Learn more about our social advertising services and contact us today for your free custom quote!