5 Tips for Social Recruiting on Twitter

For years now LinkedIn has served as the most popular network amongst recruiters looking to source talent through social media. Twitter has proven to be a distant second choice both in 2011 and 2012, but remains under-utilized by recruiters, according to the 2013 Social Recruiting Activity Report. The recent report revealed that recruiters’ Twitter network sizes were much larger in 2012 than 2011, but only 38.3% of recruiters said they plan to increase their use of the channel in 2013.

This information either suggests that recruiters still aren’t recognizing Twitter’s value as a recruiting channel or perhaps they still struggle to define the most effective social recruiting strategies on Twitter.

Twitter is a great recruiting tool because it is a very simple platform. There are only a few things you have to know to get started and it’s completely transparent. You can easily learn from watching others as you become more comfortable with the tool.

Here are five tips for using Twitter to its full potential:

• Expand Your Network: First of all, you will find that as your network of Twitter followers grows, more and more users will begin following you as well. The larger your network size is, the more job views and applications you will receive. Bullhorn’s 2013 Social Recruiting Activity Report stated that the average Twitter network size of a U.S. recruiter is 290 followers.
• Use the Search Function: Even though you may have called this symbol (#) “pound” your whole life, it’s now referred to as “hashtag” and is used to make words and  phrases searchable. Using Twitter’s search functionality you can search for specific keywords that relate to positions that you’re trying to fill (e.g. #lead #engineer). Twitter will return a list of tweets that have tagged your search term with a hashtag. This works reversely as well. If you use hashtags in your tweets, then users will be able to find yours more easily. This can be very helpful when trying to fill niche positions!
• Engage Targeted Influencers: Twitter makes it easier to engage with top influencers in different industries. If you’re looking to fill a finance role, then you can engage with finance thought leaders and use it as a way to get in front of their followers. Start a conversation with them and look for savvy (and perhaps passive) job seekers to join in. You can also use Twitter Lists to organize your followers into subsets of users. You may create a finance list in this case and keep a close eye on finance candidates as you attempt to engage with them.
• Keep in Touch: Often times you may connect with a candidate on LinkedIn at one point in time, but then won’t have a reason to interact with them again for quite some time. Twitter is a great place to interact with strong candidates who you may want to keep in touch with until you have an opportunity for them. It’s a great way to build the relationship in a professional way that keeps you top of mind.
• Do the Work: Twitter is a great social recruiting tool, but you have to do the work! You can’t just create an account, build a network and expect job seekers to find you. It’s an engagement tool. You have to work hard at posting compelling content, mixed in with job postings. You have to participate in discussions and work hard to engage quality candidates.

Twitter is conversational. This is quite possibly the biggest advantage Twitter has over all the other social channels. Recruiters can participate in real-time conversations throughout the workday as they tackle other routine tasks. The limited amount of characters in a tweet also keeps the conversation short. Not to mention, you can use Twitter on-the-go. It’s as easy as texting!

This Bullhorn Blog post was written by Ashley Healy.

Ashley Healy specializes in integrated marketing communications and a wide range of marketing activities including social media management, SEO copywriting, content marketing, promotional strategies and employment branding. She previously worked as Content Marketing Manager at Bullhorn and prior to that, as a copywriter and marketing coordinator at Verndale, a full-service digital agency.