How To Use ‘Social’ To Increase Your Candidate And Client Leads

Social media, done right, is about building relationships, and as a recruiter, effective relationships are central to your success. However, because there are so many channels and conceivable strategies to social selling, it can be overwhelming to know where your energies should be directed.  

Here are some of the most effective strategies to build candidate and client leads through social.  

 

1. Remember that candidates, just like clients, have ‘buyer cycles’. 

A passive candidate will be browsing for opportunities long before they’ve made their final decision, which is why a good social strategy is so important to ‘get on their radar’ before they decide to jump. If you can use social to create a connection in the early stages of planning their career move, you are perfectly positioned to be the one that they call when the day comes.  

 

2. Make your social media engaging enough that the candidate remains connected. 

It’s not enough to post jobs on social media. While a candidate might hit ‘follow’ while they’re job-hunting (assuming you are known to them already), if your Facebook or Twitter page is dull, or your LinkedIn page never updates with interesting links or articles, chances are that candidate will unfollow you or forget about you as soon as they have landed a job.  

You want to retain that candidate over their career lifetime, as well as hopefully get referrals and recommendations out of them too, right? You’ll need to spice up your social feeds to ensure they stay interested, whether that’s through posting interesting articles, funny memes, or the latest trend in their sector. 

Don’t be afraid to put a bit of personality in there: people react to authentic behaviour and connection, not just job posts on a screen! 

 

3. Don’t stretch yourself too thin. 

To ‘win’ at social media in a way that translates to better billing numbers, you’re going to need to know your audience, and which channels they like to use. There is zero point building up a Twitter-heavy campaign if you know that your candidate base doesn’t use Twitter. Conversely, your client pool might use Twitter a lot but steer clear of Instagram.  

Knowing your audience means that your social efforts don’t fall on deaf ears (and you don’t waste your precious time on channels that don’t get responses).

So, do some market research on the demographics of your client and candidate bases, and find out where they spend their time online. Either way, LinkedIn is a must for both candidates and clients—but you already knew that, didn’t you!  

 

4. Use the power of social to compete against the big players. 

Before social selling, how clients and candidates heard of and thought about your agency was largely driven by word of mouth and how big your recruitment companies advertising budget was, as well as superficial things, such as how fancy your office space is!  

Word of mouth still matters of course, but social media ‘evens the playing field’ to the extent where no matter how small your agency, if you have a great social media presence, you can punch above your weight.  

Social media means you have your own ability to publish, without having to rely on newspapers or your agency advertising budget. Social media, in many ways, has created opportunity for all, so use this to your advantage.  

 

5. Use tech to make the job easier.  

We know, adding social media management to your already busy day sounds like a bit much to ask. However, there are so many tools out there to make it easier and to drive your billing numbers sky-high.  

Wondering how to find that engaging content to post on your social media feed? Why not try Buzzsumo, where you pop in a keyword, and it will produce relevant trending content for you?

Tweet Deck is a winner for alerting you when there’s a relevant keyword trending, so you can tailor your tweet to take advantage. You’ll also want to get on top of a social media scheduling tool, like Hootsuite or Buffer if your company isn’t investing in marketing. 

 

6. Use social media to build your brand.  

A recruiter is known by their brand, and social media is the easiest, most time-effective way of getting your name out there. Sure, it would be great if you had time to go to every networking breakfast, and seminar out there, and you’d love to spend all day meeting with passive candidates for coffee, but realistically, you need to make money and social media, (done right) is a fast route to a large audience. Moreover, a large audience means a larger client and candidate pool. 

We’ve written on why it’s so important for recruiters to build their personal brand before, and social is a crucial part of that project.  

 

7. Know what works.  

Because social media is an added task to your day, it’s really, important that you know what is working, and what is not. You don’t have time to waste, after all. So track your follows and engagement religiously, and always remember to comment back when someone interacts…they could be your next client or executive candidate! 

 

Until next time, 

Cheryl 

 

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