CHAPTER FOUR

HOW BUSINESSES USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO HIRE

HOW BUSINESSES USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO HIRE Employers are increasingly using social media to improve their recruitment processes THEY USE IT FOR THREE ESSENTIAL REASONS: To build their brand and engage with prospective customers and employees. 1 To research potential hires already on their radar. 2 To find great candidates to interview and hire. 3

The more you interact with a company, the better understanding you will have of the company culture. This can help you to decide if it is the right organisation for you. It can also give you great material to draw on when you’re answering questions in your applications and interviews about why you really want to work for them. Your interactions could be anything from “liking” a Facebook post to sharing one of their tweets. ENGAGE WITH EMPLOYERS

of companies planned to use social media in the hiring process 94% of companies successfully hired candidates they found through social media outlets 78% SOURCE: Jobvite® SOCIAL RECRUTING

BOOLEAN SEARCHING: Employers use Boolean searches using specific keywords that are central to the role in question. They then search social networks to find people with those keywords in their profiles. There are a lot of prospective employees already out there with online profiles, so you will be competing with them for attention. In order for recruiters to find you, YOU NEED TO BE EXCEPTIONALLY EASY TO LOCATE. Populating your social media accounts with the keywords associated with your target jobs can make you easier to find. It also means that if employers specific ally look you up, they will find social media profiles that reinforce your fit with the role for which you have applied. HOW EMPLOYERS FIND GREAT CANDIDATES

BOOLEAN SEARCH TERMS Recruiters use Boolean search methods to source candidates. USING AND This will give a list of profiles in which all of the terms are present. Finance AND Bloomberg AND London USING OR This will broaden the search to include results that list either of the two or more words listed “Game designer” OR “games designer” OR “games programmer” OR programmer USING NOT This search will narrow the results by excluding particular terms. “Graphic design” AND web NOT interior

FIND MORE VACANCIES Small and medium enterprises, start-ups, charities, cultural organisations, publishing houses and a myriad of other organisations don’t tend to hire along traditional graduate recruitment lines. Many will not think to alert local universities of their vacancies, but will use the main online job boards or choose specialised jobs boards for their sector. It costs money to advertise in those places. This is where social media comes in. It’s free to post a tweet about a job in your company. It’s free to write a LinkedIn or Facebook update saying, “We’re hiring – check out this vacancy.” Run searches on social media platforms to see which jobs are being advertised on social sites.

You can use TWITTER’S SEARCH FUNCTION at to find jobs that have been shared on TWITTER, or you can visit company pages on FACEBOOK to see which organisations are hiring and the vacancies posted. LINKEDIN has an ENTIRE SECTION dedicated to job vacancies, including a student jobs portal at which features graduate roles.

Connect with some companies’ social networks, whether that’s by liking their Facebook pages or following them on Twitter. This can make it more likely that you will spot a vacancy when it comes up in your newsfeed. Graduate recruiters often share reminders on social media about graduate scheme closing dates, so connecting with their accounts is a good way to stay on top of all the application deadlines as well.

Equipping yourself with a good level of information about what jobs are available, and what’s actually involved in the day-to-day of different roles, is a vital part of career decision making. This knowledge will put you in a much better position to decide which careers would suit you really well. You might think you know what certain jobs involve, but do you really? Always research jobs to understand what they really involve before you seriously pursue or discount them. UNDERSTAND CAREER PATHS

LinkedIn profiles give a useful insight into what people actually work on in different roles, so they are a great place to start your career research. Career options are changing so rapidly now that it’s nigh on impossible to know what all the options are or what options there will be in a year or two from now. You’ll find more information in blogs, Twitter feeds and the LinkedIn accounts of people who are doing the kind of work you’re considering. This is invaluable information when you are in the process of assessing prospective careers. USE THIS KNOWLEDGE TO HELP YOU FORMULATE DECISIONS ABOUT YOUR NEXT STEPS. KEEP A RECORD OF THE THINGS YOU FIND OUT.

STAND OUT IN THE HIRING PROCESS Demonstrate your real interest in the company, your understanding of the sector and your enthusiasm for the role. Try to find out as much as you can about your target companies. When preparing an application or gearing up for an interview, find and read blogs about your sector, read Twitter feeds and LinkedIn bios of people who work in these companies. Gather as much information as you can to help you develop an interesting and robust answer to the inevitable question: “WHY DO YOU WANT TO WORK FOR OUR COMPANY?” This can make you stand out from other candidates. After all, companies want to hire people who want to work with them, not people who just want “any job”.

Read people’s biographies on the company website by all means; but go beyond that, and look them up on other websites and social media channels as well. It’s probably best, at this stage, to stick to LinkedIn and any professional blogs written by members of the panel. This is where people tend to share work-related material, and it’s best to keep things on a professional footing at the interview. Find out what they do and what their achievements are, and gain an understanding of their main areas of focus in their work. These strategies may seem very basic, but you would be surprised at how few people actually take advantage of all the information that is out there to be leveraged. GET TO KNOW YOUR INTERVIEWERS BACKGROUND RESEARCH INTO THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BE INTERVIEWING YOU CAN HELP YOU TO ACCURATELY TARGET YOUR ANSWERS ON THE DAY.

Social media branding and marketing are growing sectors, and because this is a relatively new development, many organisations are still learning how best to use it to promote their products and services. Organisations are complaining that a lot of graduates tend to include “social media” as a skill in their CV and application, when it often emerges later that the applicant is not adept at online engagement at all. Simply writing “social media” in your skills section won’t create much of an impact. GET HIRED FOR YOUR SOCIAL SKILLS IF YOU CAN SHOW HOW WELL YOU BRAND AND PROMOTE YOURSELF ONLINE, EMPLOYERS WILL BE INTERESTED IN HOW YOU CAN DO THE SAME FOR THEIR COMPANY.

Follow your favourite companies on Twitter and like their company pages on LinkedIn and Facebook. Interact with their social media posts now and again within reason – don’t like every single update as this creates an impression of desperation. If you overstate how much you want to work for a specific company, others may feel like you don’t really want to work for them. Nobody wants to hire someone who is overzealous or appears too single-minded in his focus. On the other hand, companies are interested in hiring somebody who truly wants to join their team. AIM FOR BALANCE WHILE JOB SEARCHING BACKGROUND RESEARCH INTO THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BE INTERVIEWING YOU CAN HELP YOU TO ACCURATELY TARGET YOUR ANSWERS ON THE DAY. ABOVE ALL, AIM FOR BALANCE. Recruitment practices are often kept highly confidential, and companies can react negatively to candidates who share too much about the process online. Candidates have been rejected because they divulged too much online during the hiring cycle. A great online brand is as much about what you keep to yourself as it is about what you share. IT’S BEST NOT TO POST ABOUT INTERVIEWS WITH SPECIFIC COMPANIES ONLINE, AND DEFINITELY KEEP YOUR DECISION- MAKING PROCESS TO YOURSELF. BE DISCRETE

Employees can be great brand ambassadors for their company, so you can continue leveraging social media in a positive way once you have a job. You do need to be mindful of confidentiality, and many organisations have social media policies. Once you’re clear on what you can and can’t post, you could share updates about interesting projects and work trips that you go on, and keep sharing news and thoughts about developments in your industry. SOCIAL MEDIA WHEN YOU HAVE A JOB IT’S IMPORTANT TO READ THE SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES SO THAT YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR EMPLOYER EXPECTS.