Ruehie Jaiya Karri

Since the pandemic first hit in 2020, it has shuttered offices and industries had to adapt on the fly to continue working remotely. The tech industry needed to throw out ancient processes and discover newer avenues, especially in the field of tech recruiting. If you guessed where I’m heading with this, then you are on the right track!

Yes, I am talking about social media, its massive reach, and one form of recruiting that has shot into the limelight – Social Recruiting. Tapping into brand new spheres of talent while adopting creative recruiting strategies is the crux of social recruiting.

Although social recruiting has been around since 2008, it has become the need of the hour and a weapon to have in your corner with the pandemic rendering everything to a remote workspace. A study by Pew Research Centre found that a whopping 72% of Americans surveyed use social media heavily. This should put into perspective the large number of promising candidates you as a recruiter are not considering by failing to source candidates through social media.

Here are our 2 cents on everything you need to knowabout social recruiting and how to kill it #likeapro, true social media style!

What is social recruiting?

Social recruiting or social media recruiting is a talent acquisition strategy that refers to the use of social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to source and hire candidates. You can narrow down your target audience to quickly and effectively find candidates who are the right fit for your company.

Why traditional recruiting methods will no longer cut it

The global talent, mainly Gen Z do not spend time scouring newspapers for job vacancies, rather they are busy switching between Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram on their phone. Posting job ads on social media is easy, attracts a wider, more diverse pool of candidates, and is cheaper. “Some companies use tools to post to Instagram from PC, schedule content, and complete other tasks.”

Bidding adios to the old ways of recruitment has become necessary to stay competitive in these fast-paced, digital-forward times. It has been proven multiple times that the traditional approach towards recruiting brings no diversity to the company, stagnates growth, eliminates a large pool of passive candidates, and lowers profits in the long run.

Providing relief to time-consuming, archaic hiring practices is the new age social recruiting approach that is considerably cost-effective with a greater chance of bridging the ever-widening gap between recruiters and talented job seekers.

What do the numbers look like for social recruiting?

Still not convinced to make the switch? Here are the current statistics of the social media recruiting landscape in 2021.

✔️A Career Profiles study shows that 91% of companies rely on social media when recruiting.

✔️86% of job seekers use social media in their job search, according to CareerArc.

✔️35% of employers increased their social recruiting efforts from last year to now, according to CareerArc.

✔️A report by PostBeyond shows that 82% of companies attract passive candidates via social media.

✔️49% of professionals use Linkedin to scout for job opportunities, as stated by HackerEarth Developer Survey, 2021.

Pitfalls of social media recruiting

Now that you’re sold on the awesomeness of social recruiting, there are some DON’Ts that you need to take note of before you kickstart your social hiring journey.

• Don’t jump headlong into social media without a cohesive plan in place. Nobody is interested in being bombarded with generic content across different social media platforms. Identify your goals, tailor your strategy according to each platform, and measure ROI periodically to see what is working.
• Not creating quality content to best showcase your brand, company values, workplace culture, etc., and simply posting job vacancies will never attract or engage potential candidates. Bring the personal factor to your hiring strategy, nurture relationships via your content, and maintain consistency in your efforts.
• Don’t forget to take stock of your efforts regularly. Choose key metrics like reach, engagement, and conversion to measure activity; the results should guide your way forward.

What makes for a good social media recruiting strategy?

Social recruiting takes a little work to get right, but when well executed it represents a robust advantage. Tips to kickstart your social media recruiting strategy the right way.

#1 Put together candidate personas

Speaking to the right people is of the utmost importance. It helps you narrow down who you’re looking for. Establishing candidate personas enables you to have a targeted approach on social media.

Know what kind of profiles will be a good culture-fit and balance that with the skills necessary to be successful in the role.

#2 Choose the right social media platform

The role you’re hiring for, the industry you’re in and the persona you are trying to reach out to, dictates the platform you need to use.

Some roles may require digging deep into more niche social media platforms rather than the popular ones. You may even need to use a social media management tool to keep everything organized.

#3 Track metrics to create your pipeline of candidates

Every social network has its set of metrics that need to be monitored. For example, the best time to post on Instagram may be different than on Facebook or LinkedIn. Don’t get too engrossed in the likes and follows; make sure you’re tracking suitable recruitment metrics.

Depending on your platform and social media strategy, evaluate the given metrics monthly or quaterly to see where you stand, which platforms and strategies yield the highest quality candidates and what needs to be tweaked in your approach.

#4 Optimize your social media profiles

Most recruits consider a company based on its social media presence, which is why it is important to maintain a cohesive voice across all platforms being used. Maintain consistency in messaging that potrays the true reflection of your company’s brand and mission. Adjust settings to protect social media accounts. So you wouldn’t have to deal with the Facebook security issues or report Instagram account for getting hacked.

#5 Rope in your employees to be your ambassadors

Your existing workforce is your biggest ambassador. Leverage this at every opportunity by creating some guidelines so that employees understand the goal at hand and will create content with that in mind.

You can also create readily shareable content to make it easy for everyone to re-share, repurpose, and post on their personal social media profiles.

#6 Make use of video content

There are a lot of companies competing for top tier talent right now. The last thing you want to have happen is to get lost in the mix and lose out on a rockstar new hire.

Cut through the noise by using videos to portray the day-to-day life at your company is an effective way to reach prospective candidates.

#7 Measure how well your strategy is working

Speaking in numbers may not come naturally to recruiters but this is how you convince your stakeholders that your social hiring efforts are paying off.

Review the KPIs, goals and impacts of your social media recruiting strategy. From there, you can find your strengths and weaknesses to better adjust your resources and efforts.

Further Reading

Boost your social recruiting efforts with this CHEAT SHEET. Download your exclusive copy to take offline and distribute to your team.

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We have further distilled tried and tested strategies that work for social recruiting into a cheatsheet, to simplify the process for you. Go through the step-by-step breakdown on how to approach each of the 7 tips given above to better your social media recruiting strategy.

There is a bonus takeaway included in the guide as well that helps you tailor your strategy for popular social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Leverage social recruiting like a pro

Social media recruiting is fast becoming the most effective hiring tactic in 2021. It enables you to showcase your company culture, reach a larger talent pool, be authentic and connect with your ideal candidates. As Gen Z and millennials make up more and more of the workforce, social media dictates the hiring strategies for recruiters to leverage upon.

Are your potential candidates on social media? Then your recruiting efforts should be, too.

The conventional methods of recruiting can no longer keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of the tech world. With it becoming increasingly difficult to find skilled talent, recruiters have to think out of the box to attract and retain the best candidates out there.

How can that be done? Technology, of course. It is the one-stop solution for most of the challenges in the tech industry. There are automated tools for every step of the recruiting lifecycle, from sourcing to onboarding.

However, there is a lot of noise in this space, and it can be hard to tell what’s real from what’s simply a good marketing pitch. You may not need tech recruiting tools for all the stages of hiring. Depending on your requirements, do your research and choose wisely.

Tech recruiting technology tools for each stage of the hiring process

Job aggregator tools for sourcing

Talent sourcing takes up a huge chunk of time for recruiters. Without the help of sourcing tools, it will be akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. Automated job aggregator tools make it easy to grow your talent pipeline. There are plenty of avenues like job portals, placement agencies, social media, and hiring challenges to source candidates from.

Job boards and job aggregators are fundamental to the recruiting ecosystem because direct applicants make up 48% of all hires. Let’s take a look at the key features of this recruiting tool for recruiters:

• increases the visibility of your job postings across a wide range of job boards/portals
• carry out an in-depth search of candidates using filters like skills, experience, location, etc. to spot the best ones
• find resumes, contact information, online portfolios, etc., and gather the data under one profile for each candidate. These profiles can be quickly added to your pipeline and you can engage with them over a period of time
• make a quick assessment of the candidate based on their portfolio and projects
• All the data related to a candidate can be stored on one platform with easy accessibility to the entire HR team

Job aggregators to keep in mind:

• Indeed is said to be the largest platform for external hires with 75% of job applications coming in and 47% of all hires in the US
• Glassdoor has its own job board where 83% of its 64 million monthly users are currently looking for a job
• LinkedIn provides a Job Search Tool with advanced search capabilities and can filter out results based on location, skills, industry, and recommendations

Standalone applicant tracking systems (ATS)

Using numerous job boards and portals for posting your job vacancies can quickly become exhausting if you have to do it manually. A study by GetApp shows that 86% of recruiters say using an ATS has increased the speed at which they hire candidates.

A good ATS, recruitment technology tool offers capabilities like:

• job opening posting across multiple job boards and websites
• automated screening of candidates, and their resumes, which also decreases human bias and errors
• database assistance where you can store all applicants’ information
• view the status of each candidate throughout the interview process
• send out assessment invites from the ATS itself to the selected candidates and prepare a performance report in real-time
• initiate offer letters directly from the ATS, get them signed by the candidates and save the documents digitally on the cloud

Offering most of the features listed above, we have some good ATS options in the mix like:

• Lever, a San Francisco startup, focuses on diversity and metric-based recruiting
• Naukri RMS, automates the hiring process from end-to-end
• LinkedIn Talent Hub, allows customers to source, manage, and hire in one integrated platform

Recruitment CRM tools for engagement

Waiting for a role to open to begin scouting for skilled developers is not a good idea. Instead, build and maintain a talent pool of passive candidates. Keep them engaged with company updates and relevant content so that you know exactly whom to approach for any role when the time comes. This is where recruitment CRM tools step in. They help in:

• building a personal connection with the candidates during the hiring process
• keep your candidates in the know by sending timely updates at each stage of the process
• reduce time-to-hire by eliminating manual data entry and increase productivity with collaborative hiring
• effectively engage prospective candidates through social media
• nurture and engage candidates who were not hired in this phase but can be given an opportunity in the future

Recruitment CRM tools that need to be tried out for yourself:

• Zoho has a cloud-based CRM platform that offers diverse solutions for building a relationship with your candidates
• Yello provides an automated talent acquisition platform with a variety of services
• Beamery, a London-based startup offers self-styled recruitment marketing software

Tech screening and assessment software

With scores of applications coming in, it is a huge task for recruiters to identify the ones worth talking to. Do the applicants with great resumes possess the skills that they say they have? The technical screening round is designed to filter candidates who exhibit the skills they listed on their resumes. Additionally, assessments are an effective way to test the behavioral and technical skills of developers. Coding assessment tools provide features like:

• create highly accurate coding assessments or even custom ones based on the job role/skills/experience with minimum technical knowledge
• make use of an extensive inbuilt library of questions across programming languages and skills with a robust proctoring system
• set standard benchmarks for performance to shortlist candidates easily
• sync seamlessly with your existing ATS to keep candidate information in one place

Screening tools that make the lives of recruiters easy:

• HackerEarth Assessments helps you to objectively evaluate developers with a rich library of 13K+ questions across 80+ skills and shortlist candidates based purely on their performance
• DevSkiller provides an automated technical screening platform that assesses candidates based on their skills
• CodeSignal offers coding tests and assessments for hiring at scale

Further Reading

Subscribe to the HackerEarth blog to get awesome tech recruiting blogs like these delivered straight to your inbox, monthly!

Coding interview tools

HackerEarth’s recent developer survey showed that 40% of developers preferred to be interviewed on interview tools that are equipped with code editors and video conferencing. For a fair and objective screening and evaluation of the applicants, coding interview tools are the best choice. They offer features such as:

• conduct structured interviews with standard evaluation parameters
• have real-time code editors with built-in compilers (doing away with whiteboards)
• allow pair-programming
• have AI-powered functionalities
• provide real-time feedback and automated summary of each interview
• enable blind interviewing to combat bias in the process

Coding interview tools that come with most of the functionalities given above:

• FaceCode allows you to invite and conduct coding interviews on a collaborative, real-time code editor that also automates your interview summaries
• CoderPad offers an intuitive programming interface that enables you to leave the whiteboard behind
• CodeBunk provides an online real-time editor and compiler for interviewing developers

Background check tech recruiting tools

You are ready to roll out the offer letter as the selected candidate has excelled in all the rounds of interviews. It is advisable to conduct a background check before that to avoid making a bad hire as well as for additional security purposes. Some advanced features of such tools include:

• an applicant’s ID verification, credit check, drug screening, and social media check
• an applicant’s civil court records, motor vehicle records, and fingerprints for a more detailed verification
• recruiters can create custom screening packages according to job role or department

This helps create a fuller picture of the candidate to deem whether they will be a good fit for the company. Some useful tools to try out include:

• GoodHire provides an easy employee background check experience with its pre-bundled and custom-designed packages
• Sterling helps create safer environments for your employees with its myriad background check services
• Verified First enables accelerated background screening of candidates with its platform

Onboarding and core HR management software

Onboarding tools

Recruitment doesn’t end once the candidate signs the offer letter. There’s still the matter of onboarding. You are given one shot to make a great first impression on your new joiner and you do not want them to be blinded by paperwork.

With nearly 58% of organizations focusing their onboarding programs on lengthy processes and paperwork, only 12% of employees feel that their organization does a great job of onboarding. This is a wake-up call for organizations to switch to suitable tools for onboarding.

Now, let’s help make onboarding enjoyable for you and the candidate with the latest tech recruiting tools in the market. They have automated capabilities to:

• help new hires self-onboard themselves with a checklist of tasks
• finish filling out paperwork like offer letters, tax forms, and company NDAs ahead of time
• customize the onboarding workflows like creating email addresses, allocating company devices, etc. for different candidates
• introduce them to the rest of the team with welcome emails

HR management tools

Now that you have onboarded your new joiners, the next step is to ensure they have an easy and hassle-free employee experience. An integrated HR management tool allows you to manage the entire employee lifecycle from a single platform.

• has self-service options for availing leaves, travel reimbursements, and timesheet entry
• takes care of performance management and employee engagement
• provides payroll and tax filing services
• encourages internal collaboration among employees
• maintains a database of existing employees’ profiles

Tools that offer services for the complete employee lifecycle:

• BambooHR takes care of onboarding, compensation of employees, and building culture at the workplace with its integrated platform
• Leapsome enables companies to carry out performance management, personalized development, onboarding new hires and so much more
• Darwinbox provides an end-to-end HRMS Suite and provides services for all stages of the employee lifecycle

Your employees are the foundation of your company. Therefore, the onus falls on you, as recruiters, to give them the best possible experience. Armed with this toolkit of tech recruiting tools, you can simplify your entire hiring process and keep your employees happy, at the same time.

FAQs on tech recruiting tools for recruiters:

#1 How can tech recruiting tools benefit my hiring process?

Tech recruiting tools can save time and increase efficiency in the recruitment process. Additionally, they also provide valuable data and insights into the recruitment process, helping businesses make informed decisions about their hiring needs and strategies.

#2 What is the difference between an applicant tracking system (ATS) and a recruiting tool?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a specific type of recruiting tool that is designed to manage and track resumes and job applications. While all ATSs are recruiting tools, not all recruiting tools are ATSs.

#3 How can I integrate tech recruiting tools into my existing recruitment process?

Integrating tech recruiting tools into your existing recruitment process can vary depending on the tool you choose and your current recruitment process. Some tools offer seamless integration with other HR and recruitment software, while others may require more manual setup and configuration. Be sure to consider the level of integration offered by each platform when choosing a tech recruiting tool.

#4 How to use social media as a recruiting tool?

Using social media as a recruiting tool can be an effective way to reach and engage with potential candidates. Here are some tips on how to use social media effectively for recruiting:

• Choose the right platforms: Consider which platforms your target audience is using and focus your efforts on those. For example, LinkedIn is ideal for professional networking and job postings, while Instagram and Snapchat can be useful for reaching younger candidates.
• Create a company profile: Establish a company profile on the social media platforms you’ve chosen and make sure it’s professional, up-to-date, and provides a good representation of your company culture.
• Post job opportunities: Regularly post job opportunities on your social media profiles and encourage your followers to share the opportunities with their networks.
• Engage with your followers: Respond to comments and messages, and share content that your followers might find interesting or relevant to the job.
• Utilize employee advocacy: Encourage your employees to share your job postings and company culture on their personal social media accounts. This can help expand your reach and increase the credibility of your company.
• Measure your success: Use analytics tools to track the success of your social media recruiting efforts, including the number of job views, applications, and hires generated from each platform.
• Keep it professional: Remember to maintain a professional tone and image when using social media for recruiting. Avoid making any discriminatory comments or posting anything that could damage the reputation of your company.

#5 What tools do tech recruiters use?

There are several tools and platforms that can be used in tech recruitment to make the hiring process more efficient and effective. Some of the important ones are:

• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): An ATS is a software tool that helps to streamline the recruitment process by automating many of the tasks involved, such as tracking resumes, scheduling interviews, and generating reports.
• Job boards: Recruiters use job boards like Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn to post job openings and search for potential candidates.
• Video conferencing software: With the increasing trend of remote work, video conferencing software such as Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet has become an indispensable tool for conducting virtual interviews.
• Employee Referral Programs: Such programs encourage current employees to refer friends, family members, or acquaintances who they think would be a good fit for the company.
• Pre-employment assessment tools: Employ pre-employment assessments to determine a candidate’s skills, personality, and work style, which can be useful in making hiring decisions.
• Social media: Use social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to connect with potential candidates and promote job openings.
• Chatbots: Integrate chatbots into a company’s website or career page to assist with frequently asked questions, schedule interviews, and collect candidate information.