5 Things Employers Can Do To Simplify (and Improve) Recruiting

With the national unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent, so many people are looking for work that a resu-mess has been created that floods inboxes and cripples applicant processing timelines. It takes so much time to screen applicants that top candidates give up and go undiscovered entirely.


What can a company do to simplify its recruiting practices and yet still end up with the candidate(s) best-suited for the job? 

Social Media Summit 2011

Click here or on the image to watch video about how social media is changing job search and recruitment.

Although statistics vary, it has been reported that 80% of companies use or intend to use social media to find candidate to fill available positions.  It is estimated that, of those, 95% use LinkedIn, 59% use Facebook and 42% use Twitter.   LinkedIn has an estimated 120 million users; Facebook 800 million.  Given those numbers, using social media to source and recruit candidates makes excellent business sense.  To maximize the effectiveness of using social media, there are five things a company should remember.


  1. Careful consideration and planning must go into how the company is branded online.   The entire reason a company has (or should have) a web presence is to disseminate information to the largest audience possible, an audience that includes not only prospective clients/customers but potential employees as well.
  2. To reach the intended audience, job ads and job descriptions must be search engine optimized (SEO).  To be an effective recruiting tool and reach the target labor audience, careers sites and job postings must use language consistent with the language used in the company’s industry. Recruiters must be well versed in “how” to search resumes and social networking sites for passive candidates, too.
  3. Establish and maintain full integration across all social media platforms. The LinkedIn page should include links to Facebook and Twitter, for example, and vice verse.  The website should include links to all the social networking sites. YouTube is also becoming an increasingly important tool for recruiters and jobseekers. Employers can use video to describe the job and the company.  Employee testimonials are very effective. Jobseekers are also getting very adept at preparing video resumes.
  4. Set up links to groups and online communities with similar interests. This reinforces branding.  When a job seeker arrives at a site, she wants to know why she should apply to that company.  What does the site tell her about this employer?  What do they do?  What do they consider important?  Are there any Fact Sheets or Question and Answer pages that describe the employer, the job environment, why it’s fun to work there?  Is the applicant processing process user friendly?
  5. Beware of the current legal landscape.  The use of social media in employment is relatively new and the law around proscribed conduct is evolving and changing almost daily. An employer seeking to fill a specific need using social media must ensure it does so in a manner not deemed discriminatory or otherwise unlawful.   

It appears clear that social media as a hiring tool is here to stay.  Wise use of this tool should serve a company well in its recruiting and hiring processes and, by extension, help bolster its bottom line.

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"These are definitely things that must be done. They amount to curb appeal though. In order to improve recruiting or keep recruiting at a premium, companies must be a place where people want to work so that they refer their friends and families for open positions. Nothing like seeing a beautiful home from the inside and once you really get in it, you find out that there was mold in the basement and the previous owners just painted over it. Happens all the time with corporations.

