Is Social Media The Recruitment Panacea
Can I sucessfully manipulate free social media services to help me recruit staff ?
Social media pitfalls for recruitment
Unless you are a social media genius these can include:
- Poor advert placement
- Restricted editorial
- No ability to view results
- Restrictive algorithems
- Limited lifespan
So in a word, NO I don't think you can. You might as well be asking if you could use a washing line to climb a tree, that might work too. Well contradicting myself marketing to staff via social media did work for a while but that's all changed and I hope this article can explain why.
Growth of The Social Media Page
Unless you are still using a 1984 Motorolla DynaTAC and hand writing your invoices to send via royal mail you have possibly noticed the increased use in social media pages covering everything from funny animal videos to members of the public doing incredibly stupid things around trees with a chainsaw. Since the launch of social media pioneers like arbtalk, arborists online and arbjobs the plethora of social media pages now seem to cover everything from "Rate my hinge" to "How sexy do I look up a tree".
With new social media pages popping up on an a monthly basis, when does anyone in the industry actually get any tree work done? So, you'd think it would be easy to find staff via the plethora of new industry specific jobs groups/pages and yes occasionally you may strike it lucky. However, unless you pay the social media platform your post will only be seen by a minority of the group followers.
Questions To Ask Before Posting on Social Media
You probably want to ask these questions before posting anything on a social media page:
- How many arborists are really "following" each social media group/page?
- Are they mostly the same people on each group/page?
- How many of these users are actively looking for jobs in your area?
- How many meet your requirements?
- How many will get to see/like/apply to your free post?
- When the page owner finally gets bored of moderating posts for free and shuts it down where will you go for recruitment?
Should You Use Free Social Media Advertising
Yes of course, you'd be mad not too but don't be surprised if you get limited or poor quality applicants. Your not paying anything and you kind of get what you pay for. Of course you have to balance the use of free mediums with how urgently you need to fill your post.
Understanding Algorithems and an Advert Life Span
You also need to understand social media algorithms; these work out what each Social Media user wants to see. Platforms are not silly, they want to keep users interested if every time users log in all they see is job adverts they will lose interest and platforms income stream will suffer. So guess what, boring stuff like "jobs" gets pushed down the priority list.
You can get them to prioritise your post by paying a fee but then you fall foul of their new "special categories" (equal rights) criteria preventing you targeting your audience. With arboriculture making up something like .03% of the U.K work force can you afford to waste money having to include the other 99.97% ?
Add to this what we have previously described in our blog as "mayfly marketing" (it lives briefly) any post on social media has a very short life maybe only hours before its replaced by newer items.
So, are we anti social media? No not at all but it must be used correctly, users have to understand how the platform algorithms work and how they prioritise your posts and how to target your audience and when best to launch a campaign. Oh, and don't forget nothing is for free you will also need to pay for the promotion.
Specialist Arboricultural Recruitent Services
The Arbjobs social media team know how to work with social media to get the best results for our clients but I am afraid we are not a free service.
Arbjobs leads the arboricultural recruitment service with around 10,000 registered users. You can not only promote your vacancy to our site visitors but also target matching staff directly via a Premier Job Alert. We have a growing social media following us, over 11,000 across our social media platforms at the time of writing this article. Whilst loadign your advert you have the option to target this industry specific group by selecting a social media marketing budget our team will do the rest.
If you'd like to know more about our services please click here ARBJOBS