How Facebook Can Be Just as Valuable for Recruiting as LinkedIn

Hiring managers want to hire passive candidates and, therefore, must look to where these candidates spend most of their time to effectively recruit top talent. The modern recruiter not only taps into the 259 million users on LinkedIn and 645 million on Twitter, but the more than 1 billion on Facebook too. In fact, 83 percent of LinkedIn members also use Facebook, and 84 percent of social media users only use Facebook, according to Work4. Companies that leverage talent networks and extend their recruiting efforts to social media are going to find better talent faster, argues Tim Sackett, president of staffing firm HRU Technical Resources.

Facebook can be just as fruitful as LinkedIn for recruiting, it's just about employing the right strategies. Yet only 65 percent of recruiters use Facebook for that use case, according to Work4. Here are some insightful ways to use Facebook to recruit employees:

LinkedIn groups are known as a place to find job postings, and that same concept can be applied to Facebook. Employment-focused Facebook groups are a haven for recruiters to post job openings and provide valuable information about an industry and for job seekers to find a job. Jessica Miller-Merrell, a HR consultant and author of Blogging4Jobs, suggests creating a community for a specific industry, location, position or a combination of both — for example, Electrical Engineers in Silicon Valley.

But these groups shouldn’t just be a post-and-pray job board site — they should be a community. When new members join, current members should make introductions to appropriate hiring managers and career resources.

Just as job seekers can search for a job posting based on whether they’re a recent graduate or what department they’d like to work in, companies should bring this same strategy that they apply to their careers page to their Facebook page. For example, Verizon uses apps to target different groups, such as Experienced, Students and Military, according to Adriana Kevill at KRT Marketing.

To get the attention of potential candidates, recruiters must engage them by providing valuable content on Facebook. While job postings are informational and cover the legal bases, they don’t grab the attention of someone who’s scrolling through a news feed. Kevill suggests that companies provide online presentations or webinars about company culture to illustrate what it's like to work for the company. Marriott is embracing this strategy by doing just that. The hotel company leads career chats providing advice about resumes and cover letters as well as giving candidates an opportunity to ask about careers in specific locations, such as Germany. Providing a glimpse into employee life is valuable for potential employees too. Take Ernest & Young Middle East: its Facebook page features Q&As with employees about their backgrounds and roles at the company.

Many recruiters see social media as a replacement to the traditional résumé, but Heather Huhman, founder of Come Recommended, a PR consultancy for HR technologies, argues that it’s more of a supplement than a replacement. Social media can give insight into how a candidate is connected to current employees, but Huhman writes, "It cannot show you someone’s interpersonal skills, ability to lead a project, or knack for working as a team. Soft skills cannot be truly evaluated on Facebook or LinkedIn pages." Thus, in-person interviews still hold a vital role in the recruitment process.

Adds Jonathan Wasserman, director of global talent management at Campbell Soup Company: "The days when companies rely on classifieds, job fairs, and employment exchanges are long gone. As more ’digital natives’ enter the workforce, companies that don’t integrate social media into their HR function and don’t adopt a systematic social recruiting strategy will be left behind."

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