Blog

Browse Topics:

more

Twitter 101

If your recruiter asked if you wanted to engage candidates in a cost free way to provide exposure for your job openings, how would you respond? Your first instinct might be an adamant YES! What if they told you it was Twitter?

Many have a tendency to be skeptical of this channel for recruitment activities. If your organization is particularly risk averse, you may not have a Twitter presence at all. The unknown, the heightened need for on-demand responses, and our inability to control all public forum conversation can seem daunting. However, if you search for a hashtag or two for example “#jobs” or “#careers”, you can see the many benefits of advertising in this space. Organizations can be as minimal or creative as you want with this sourcing method, but the more engaging and transparent you can be in providing information to potential applicants and customers, the better your success rate.  When beginning to tweet jobs & career related information, here are some basic ways to implement a social media solution that works.

I Want to Talk About Me

Have you ever gone to a party and met someone who kept bringing the conversation back to how great they were? This is the danger many companies face in this space. Understanding your audience and providing relevant, timely and useful information for your followers is key. If you’re already providing job tweets highlighting how great your job opportunities are, take some time to balance this with re-tweets & promotion of interesting industry topics, photos, and other fun engaging content.

Identifying a Social Media Coordinator with an HR Background Can Help

This allows the opportunity to capitalize upon promotion of public events like job fairs, hiring blitzes, etc. Since we’re limited to 140 characters in this medium, those with a recruiting background will also have a stronger sense of the content that will be most important or attention grabbing for passive applicants. There are also details that seem minor but make a big difference, such as ensuring we advertise a job that is still active on the company’s career portal.

Establish a Response Plan Ahead of Time

Determine what types of tweets mentioning your business will warrant a response from the social media team or point person and which will go ignored. It is good to craft some standard responses ahead of time that can then be edited for a variety of situations. For example, candidate’s often request more information on a position or to check their status because they want to hear from a live person. Even if we can’t offer them that opportunity, we can provide general direction with a Twitter reply to drive a desired positive interaction…. as long as it’s under 140 characters of course….

Create a Sense of Reliability

Visit websites of professional industry organizations who’s content you think will be helpful to potential candidates whether they decide your organization is right for them or not. This information can be provided on a recurring basis on a pre-set day of the week so followers know with some regularity when to expect this content.

Scheduling & Analytics

Utilize the many Twitter related tools & analytics available to provide insights into when your seekers are most likely to view your content. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allow scheduling and analysis into which tweets are popular with your audience and what time of day is best to post. Others like SocialBro allow you to dive deeper into your followers’ activity to see what they’re following and join those conversations. Similarly, wefollow.com can provide information on industry terms you may wish to include in creating your tweet content. Lastly, for those hiring in multiple geographic locations, trendsmap.com is a neat way to see what topics are hot in particular city.

So go ahead… dip your toes in the Twitter waters. You may be surprised by the response you receive!

This article was written by Heather Moffitt who supports a Yoh client in Albany, NY. Heather has been a staffing professional for 10 years and is currently involved in supporting client training initiatives, e-HR troubleshooting, metrics analysis, and Social Media accounts.

























Related Posts

The Top 4 Marketing Channels to Recruit The Candidates You Need Read Post Online recruiting strategies: How job seekers find you Read Post Leveraging the power of social media in your recruiting strategy Read Post