Two hundred eighty characters may not seem like a great deal to get your message across, but if you play it right, Twitter can be an excellent way to find and recruit top talent.
A staggering 61 percent of job seekers use Twitter as part of their job search, and according to statistics, there are more active candidates using Twitter than LinkedIn, whose whole purpose is to network and find work! What’s more, using Twitter to fill your positions is free!
So, how exactly do you use Twitter to find and recruit top talent?
Use the Advanced Search Feature
Many companies struggle to find top talent with Twitter because they rely on hashtags to find and attract candidates. This can throw up some good options, but you’ll likely be bombarded with unsuitable candidates. Not only that, but it simply isn’t the most efficient way to find the top talent.
It would be best to use the advanced search interface to help with staffing issues. This allows you to leverage hashtags, geocoding, and RSS feeds on Twitter to narrow down the field and find the best candidates. This will allow you to filter out candidates by location and specific skill sets far more quickly than searching hashtags alone.
To use the advanced search, follow these four steps:
- Enter your searcSearch the search bar on twitter.com.
- Click Searched Search underneath Search filters on the upper right of your results page, or click More Options and then click Advanced Search.
- Fill in the appropriate fields to refine your search results (see below for helpful tips).
- Click Search to see your results.
Follow Candidates
FolSearch candidates are a great way to see if they’ll fit in with your company culture and learn more about them. Retweeting them will also give them a bit of an ego boost, and as you undoubtedly know, flattery can get you everywhere in the world of work!
Send Personalized Tweets
When you’ve identified a potential candidate on Twitter, you should contact them as soon as possible. However, you should not simply spam them with a job advert or lots of heavy information. You’re far more likely to get a response if you send a personalized Tweet. You can do this by looking at the candidate’s Twitter profile for any info and, of course, by looking at their Tweets to see what they’re like/ what skills they have/ etc.
Use Referral Bonuses
Candidates like to know about a company’s culture before agreeing to be interviewed by them. That means taking a more personal approach on Twitter is a good idea. You can do this by having your employees Tweet about positions for a less corporate feel. You can incentivize them to do this by offering them a bonus for every candidate they convince to apply via their Twitter feed, which they should use to show what working for the company is like in as positive a way as they possibly can. Just give them a unique link so they can claim their reward.
Build Your Brand
The best way to recruit top talent on Twitter is to build your brand’s presence. Tweet often, regularly tweet about the most important subjects in your niche, show off your company culture a lot, and interact with others in your industry daily.
Setting up a separate account just for recruiting may also be a good idea so you can more easily stream out candidates from general followers.
Twitter can be a powerful recruitment tool if you use it well!
