You’re probably wondering what kind of results other recruitment businesses and teams are getting on social media. You’re probably also wondering whether your business is missing out—and whether that should be a cause for concern or not. I’d like to lift the lid on this subject and share with you the kinds of results you can expect. Plus, I’ll help you to figure out how you can improve the results you’re getting—because you’re going to want to, once you realize what’s at stake.
The Size of the Prize
We have numerous clients across the world and their goals for being on social media are vastly different. But let’s try to put a marker down, so you can determine the types of results you might see in your business.
A recruiting team that has made driving candidate traffic to their website their number one priority can expect to attract 1,000 to 2,500 candidates each month with only a modest budget (and for most small recruiting businesses and teams that’s likely to be a huge number of visitors compared to what they already attract). If you’re in a big business and have a bigger budget, the candidate flow can be many times this—and could even become the single biggest source of new candidate traffic to your careers pages.
For those who’ve prioritized getting recruitment client leads into their business, a dozen or more leads a month is perfectly attainable. While those who want to produce authoritative content for their market can expect to see their posts shared several hundred times each month (with some months breaking the 1,000-shares mark).
If any of these results sound like they would be beneficial to your business, then perhaps it’s time to start prioritizing getting an understanding on the right social media strategy for your business? To put things in context, you’re looking at allocating $1500 a month to develop a budget to start having a significant impact, i.e. far less than the cost of a new employee. Results don’t happen overnight, but striving for these outcomes within three to six months of starting is certainly realistic.
The good news is that as of today, the majority of all recruiting businesses and teams have yet to really crack their social media strategy. But with more and more figuring out how to get ROI from social media, it’s not going to be much longer until your business is falling behind in a way that’s costing you tangible dollars each and every month.
So if your team has not been getting the results you’d like from social media, here are five reasons to explore that could explain where you’re going wrong.
Reason One: No Personality
The best salespeople are those who naturally make others warm up to them, who can build rapport and who easily prompt their prospects to open up to them. Instinctively they understand that the harder you try to sell, the less you end up selling. Social media is no different.
Think of a recruiter or a recruitment brand on social media and the odds are you can picture them sharing an endless series of job adverts. Rather than using it as an engagement channel they use it as a broadcasting channel.
Let me ask you this: If your company were going to exhibit at a careers fair, which do you think would be more beneficial for your company? One: Handing out 500 flyers to candidates at the event or … Two: Speaking in person to 500 candidates at the event. The second option would win hands down, wouldn’t it?! Well, the same is true on social media. The strongest results are achieved by those recruitment teams that focus on being valuable, helpful, and interacting with people in their market.
(I could easily blame the various job posting software tools out there that encourage you to automatically post your jobs on social media, without question, one of the most misinformed social media tactics a recruitment business can deploy. Maybe a theme for a future blog!)
First published on Talent Culture by Tony Restell.