What is social recruiting?
Social recruiting is the practice of using social media platforms to find, attract, engage, and hire job candidates. Also known as social hiring or social media recruitment, this approach leverages platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to reach potential employees where they spend time online, rather than relying solely on traditional job boards and career sites.
Social recruiting uses social media profiles, blogs, and other Internet sites to find information on candidates. It also involves advertising jobs through social channels, either directly or through crowdsourcing, where job seekers and others share job openings within their online networks. Unlike traditional talent acquisition tactics, social media presents a unique opportunity to reach candidates where they spend the most time online, build organic employer brand awareness that lasts, and reach the extended networks of your candidate audience with each like, share, and comment.
Related terms: social hiring, social media recruitment, employer branding, active sourcing
Why do companies use social media to recruit talent?
Companies use social media to recruit talent because social networks house the largest online repository of talent in the world, with 72% of all adults in the U.S. using social media and 90% of Americans between 18 to 29 years old active on these platforms. Social recruiting provides 5 key advantages over traditional recruiting methods:
Social media remains one of the few untapped competitive advantages for employers today. While 9 out of 10 companies have a social presence, most employers still lack the social strategy and solution to effectively reach and attract the right candidates at scale. This creates opportunity for companies that implement strategic social recruiting programs.
What are the benefits of social recruiting?
Social recruiting delivers 7 measurable benefits that improve hiring outcomes. Companies can target their perfect job applicants by proactively reaching out to candidates or sharing content about the company to build online relationships and get open job positions in front of target audiences. Social recruiting reaches passive candidates who aren't actively searching for jobs but may be open to new opportunities, these professionals won't be looking at job boards or career pages, but they are scrolling through social media feeds.
The approach saves companies money, as hiring and replacing employees is expensive. In general, it costs businesses over $4,000 to hire new talent, and advertising on job boards adds up fast. Social recruiting showcases company culture while social media presents opportunities to communicate with target audiences at eye level and provide insights into everyday working life. Good employer branding is particularly important for Generation Z, as the next generation places less value on big names and top salaries than on good working atmosphere and flat hierarchies.
Social recruiting shortens hiring time by streamlining the hiring process and finding the right people for the job. Using social channels, recruiters can quickly engage applicants or new hires to build more personal rapport, screen employment history, and learn about interests outside of work. Additionally, social recruiting drives repeatable results, 70% of hiring managers hired candidates using social media, and 80% of employers say social recruiting helped them identify passive prospects.
How does social recruiting work?
Social recruiting works through a 3-step process that leverages network effects. Companies share new job postings on their social media pages, followers and employees share the posts with their networks, and reach grows exponentially, making companies more likely to find the perfect candidate.
The process involves both organic and paid social content. Organic posts build continuous brand engagement, loyal followers, and long-term ROI by giving both loyal and new visitors a reason to stay and interact with the brand, follow the page, and join the community. Paid social ads offer a short-term boost to content, allowing posts to reach existing as well as new audiences who are currently outside organic reach through ad targeting.
Effective social recruiting requires strategy and scale to be successful. Companies must use images to promote storytelling, create visual consistency, highlight company values, and encourage employee-generated content. Social recruiting software and platforms help automate and streamline these processes, making it easier to connect with candidates and track results across multiple social networks.
Which social media platforms are best for recruiting?
LinkedIn is the undisputed leader for social recruiting, with over 810 million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. LinkedIn offers 55 job applications submitted every second, 50 million companies listed, 2 million small businesses using the platform to hire employees, and over 20 million open job listings posted on LinkedIn Jobs. The platform is particularly effective for recruiting professionals, specialists, and managers, with an average user age of 25-34.
Facebook remains the most popular social media network, with 79% of internet users in the U.S. logging on to the site. Facebook's Graph Search lets recruiters search profiles based on location, interests, pages liked, areas of study, and more, making it ideal for finding local talent with specific education experience or interests. Companies can add job postings directly to Facebook business pages and reach targeted audiences using paid boosts.
Instagram has around 2 billion users worldwide, most of them in the coveted 18-34 age group, making it ideal for companies looking for career starters and young talent. The platform is visually driven, allowing companies to share behind-the-scenes content and showcase workplace culture through photos and Stories. Twitter has 326 million monthly users and offers advanced search features for finding candidates through specific hashtags. TikTok introduced TikTok Resumes through a pilot program, allowing companies to post job openings and candidates to respond with short videos.
What are key social recruiting statistics?
Social recruiting statistics demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach across multiple dimensions. In terms of candidate behavior, 79% of job applicants use social media in their job search, and job seekers rank social media and professional networks as the most useful job search resource compared to job boards, job ads, recruiting agencies, and recruiting events. Among millennials, 73% found their last position through a social media platform.
Regarding employer adoption, 84% of organizations are currently using social media for recruiting, with 9% planning to use it. According to a 2021 study by CareerArc, 92% of employers said they use social networks to find talent, and 70% of hiring managers hired candidates using social media. Social recruiting is growing, with 78% of recruiters expecting the use of social media for finding candidates to increase.
For recruitment effectiveness, 80% of employers say social recruiting helped them identify passive prospects. Employee referrals have the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rate, only 7% of applicants come via employees, but this accounts for 40% of all new hires. In a survey from Monster, 65% of respondents would consider a new job opportunity if they heard about it through a personal connection. Additionally, 86% of job seekers use social media for their job search, and roughly 40 million people look for jobs using LinkedIn every week.
What role do employees play in social recruiting?
Employees serve as the most trusted resource for information about their company and play a critical role in social recruiting success. An increasingly popular and effective strategy involves getting employees active in social recruiting through employee influencing programs. Employees are the face of an organization, and when they share honestly on social media about company culture, they build authentic connections with potential candidates.
Employee advocacy programs help build employer brand and drive recruitment by giving employees the ability to share HR or employer branding content. This approach can be extremely impactful in growing talent reach, as some of the best candidates come through employee referrals. If a company has 100 employees and each employee shares posts with 150 followers, the company can reach up to 15,000 people through online employee advocacy, and these followers are likely to be more engaged than those only following the brand.
Companies need a social media policy in place and an employee advocacy platform to make sharing and reporting results easy. Most importantly, organizations must continually encourage employees to share honestly on social media about company culture. This employee-generated content adds depth and diversity to the company narrative, making it relatable and genuine for potential candidates.
How do you build a social recruiting strategy?
Building a social recruiting strategy requires 7 foundational steps. First, set goals and metrics by choosing what you want to achieve, increase the number of applicants, shorten the hiring process, or reach more qualified candidates, then select metrics that help measure those goals. Popular social recruiting KPIs include time spent per applicant, cost per hire, social media engagement, employee referral rate, clicks from social media to hiring pages, and offer acceptance rate.
Second, know your ideal candidate by identifying what experience, traits, and skills make up the ideal candidate for a role. Third, check out competitors to understand their social media presence and learn what works or identify gaps where your posts will stand out. Fourth, define your employer brand by choosing which traits and values you want potential candidates to see, then ensure social recruiting posts and employee-generated content reflect that brand.
Fifth, choose the right social media platforms by figuring out where employees and ideal candidates spend their time online, then focus on the top platforms for social media recruiting. Sixth, launch an employee advocacy program to promote company values and culture while leveraging employees' networks to boost employer brand and reach a wider audience. Seventh, measure, optimize, and repeat by regularly reviewing social media recruiting efforts, ensuring goals align with broader company goals and hiring needs, then adjusting the strategy accordingly.
What are common social recruiting mistakes?
Companies make 5 common mistakes when implementing social recruiting. Failing to be authentic occurs when recruiters simply blast out open jobs rather than fostering authentic connections with candidates. Social recruiting helps foster authentic connections, and when recruiters start a dialog in hopes of cultivating a relationship, people are far more receptive to content and brand.
Not following a social recruiting strategy happens when companies wing it instead of going in with a plan. Like any other company initiative, social recruiting needs an overarching strategy at a team level and individual strategies for specific team members. Ignoring branded social account mentions means missing opportunities to interact with people and put out any employer branding fires, companies must keep an eye on hashtags, content their brand account gets tagged in, and general appearances of the company name on the web.
Offering low-quality content fails to attract people to the company and brand. Companies need to offer a variety of blog content, videos, cool visuals, work culture content, and user-generated or employee-generated content that appeals to the candidates they want to attract. Leaving out other employees limits reach, as recruitment teams can only reach so far, but other employees have untapped networks of potentially great candidates.
What is social recruitment software?
Social recruitment software is a form of e-recruitment often included in the wider talent management software sector, which was valued at over $2 billion in 2007 by Bersin & Associates. Social recruitment software sits at an intersection of fast-moving areas including social networking, recruitment, and cloud computing. Additionally, mobile recruiting has become another hot topic, especially with the rise in tablet and smartphone usage.
In 2012, there was a rise of tech companies using social recruiting applications to find and screen applicants. As more companies saw value in filling jobs by putting them on social platforms where millions of people spend at least 37 minutes daily, there developed a much larger focus on social recruiting among the talent acquisition community. By mid-2013, major enterprise companies such as Pepsi, Gap, AIG, and Oracle had begun effectively utilizing social recruiting software, making it clear that large corporations were open to automating or streamlining their social recruiting processes.
Modern social recruitment software helps companies automatically import candidate profiles from professional social networks into recruitment platforms. These tools capture only public information and allow recruiters to send AI-generated personalized messages inviting candidates to explore specific job opportunities. The result is faster, smoother, and more efficient recruiting that saves time on manual data entry and helps recruiters focus on building meaningful connections.
How does social recruiting compare to similar concepts?
Social recruiting is often compared to 3 related recruitment concepts:
| Related Term | Key Distinction | Usage Context |
|---|---|---|
| Active Sourcing | Active sourcing is a proactive strategy where recruiters reach out to candidates directly before they apply; social recruiting encompasses broader activities including employer branding and content sharing | Finding highly qualified professionals or niche skill sets not currently job-hunting |
| Employer Branding | Employer branding focuses on building and promoting company reputation and culture; social recruiting uses those branding efforts to attract and engage candidates | Creating long-term reputation as an attractive workplace across all channels |
| Traditional Recruiting | Traditional recruiting relies on job boards, career sites, and applicant tracking; social recruiting leverages social networks to reach passive candidates and build relationships | Posting jobs on job boards and waiting for active candidates to apply |
Social Recruiting vs. Active Sourcing
Active sourcing means reaching out to candidates directly, before they apply. This proactive strategy is especially useful when searching for highly qualified professionals, niche skill sets, or talented individuals not currently seeking a new job but open to the right opportunity. Social recruiting encompasses active sourcing as one component but also includes employer branding, content marketing, and passive candidate attraction through organic social media presence. Active sourcing is a tactic within the broader social recruiting strategy.
Social Recruiting vs. Employer Branding
Employer branding is the practice of defining and promoting company values, culture, and reputation as an employer. Social recruiting uses employer branding content as a foundation to attract candidates, but goes further by actively engaging with potential hires, sharing job openings, and building talent communities. While employer branding is part of a long-term talent acquisition strategy, social recruiting delivers both immediate hiring results and sustained brand building. The two concepts work together, strong employer branding makes social recruiting more effective.
Social Recruiting vs. Traditional Recruiting
Traditional recruiting focuses on posting jobs to job boards, reviewing inbound applications, and working with recruitment agencies. Social recruiting meets candidates where they spend time online, reaches passive candidates who aren't actively job-hunting, and builds relationships before positions open. Traditional recruiting is more effective in terms of generating reach and keeping costs low than social recruiting. Social recruiting doesn't require paying on a cost-per-click basis for a single applicant, which can run up to thousands of dollars per posting in some cases. Instead, companies focus on getting job postings in front of the right people through a strong social strategy.