Attracting the Best Candidates

A few years back, when the economy was really looking poor and the job market was in shambles, a headhunter friend of mine told me that it was the best time to be hiring. Granted, they weren't so happy about the situation, but companies didn't have to be all that great at recruiting or impressing candidates as many highly qualified candidates were looking for jobs. Instead of trying to pick from the bottom of the barrel, they were able to choose from highly skilled candidates for even the most junior of jobs.

Well the tide has turned and some of those companies are now having a harder time finding those qualified candidates to fill their top positions. They can find someone right out of college to be an analyst but managers and VPs are harder to come by nowadays. Sure the headhunter is happy as he no longer has to impress his clients with lavish dinners and nice seats at the Yankee games, but now the onus is on both of them to attract the best and the brightest. And some of that attracting has to start with your social media presence.

Recruiter.com has some advice on how to impress candidates. The first has to do with social media:

Did you know that a whopping 24 percent of Millennials said that a company’s social media policy would be a key factor in accepting a position? This particular group puts a huge emphasis on their gadget and social media freedoms, so create your social media policies with this in mind and make it known. Until just recently, social media policies didn’t even exist, and now people are accepting or rejecting job offers based on them! Who cares if other companies aren’t doing it, tweet your policy, Facebook it, include it in job listings. Like it or not, this is a major factor today. This is a cost-free and really simple bullet for your recruiting arsenal. Companies like Coca-Cola and Apple make theirs public and so do all these companies.

Career Cloud looks at one company, in particular, that does a great job of social recruiting--GEICO. This one ad caught their attention and with good reason--they take advantage of both in-person recruiting as well as a strong Twitter presence. "Job hunting has never been more complex and time consuming. If you help people understand it better and teach them, you can use it as a branding opportunity & recruit them at the same time."

There are certain jobs that you can post and sit back and let the resumes roll in but the best job postings that result in the best candidates are now going to involve some instances on social media on your end. The key is to make sure that your social media presence is clean, professional and fun. But most of all, it should be another avenue to differentiate yourselves from your competition in the job market.