If you are not already utilizing social media platforms for the hiring process, you’re missing a great opportunity to connect with your best candidates. LinkedIn is tailor-made for this purpose, but other platforms can be just as useful. We’ve gathered six ways that you can tap this technology for the benefit of your apartment community or property management firm.
• Build (or Expand) Your LinkedIn Site – LinkedIn should be your bread and butter site when it comes to hiring. Make sure your profile is complete and your page is full of information that would be useful to a potential candidate. Then, keep up with connections and messages so you can grow your network.
• Brand Your Talent Search – Creating a “brand” for your talent search is much easier using social media. Build an image that shows more about your company culture and take advantage of the share-ability of social media. Think about Google, and how everyone knows it is a wonderful place to work—much of that is due to Google being open with its employment practices through social media. Regularly post pictures of what your employees are doing within the community. Do you regularly reward your employees? Do you team up and get involved in community service? What about fun events and outings just for your employees? Why not post it? It shows that you value your employees and the community and recent studies show that the millennials see this as almost as important as compensation.
• Post It – When you have a job opening, post about it. Make your post public, send it through to all the main networks and share that information. The beauty of social media is that not only will your connections see it, but others may share it further. Facebook now has a very user friendly and responsive program to post your jobs on your company’s Facebook page. You can target your potential applicants by choosing the location(s) of your open positions. You can include work experience and education to target the proper audience. Select a budget and how many days you want the job post to run and Facebook sends you the applicant as a “message”. It is important to respond to these applicants right away. It is not only professional and courteous, but it also affects your status with Facebook. Facebook shows how many typical days or hours it takes you to respond.
• Use Hashtags – Most of the major social networks utilize hashtags. Research hashtags that are popular among those who are talented in the areas of which you are hiring (for instance if you had a marketing position, “#marketingjobs” has thousands of hits on Twitter and Facebook. Make sure you tag all your job posts with appropriate tags. Using hashtags allows your message to spread far and wide.
• Video-We are inundated with thousands upon thousands of messages every day. One of the most popular forms of engaging your audience is with video. A professionally produced video about your company, the culture, your unique vision, your growth and opportunities, is much more likely to be viewed than most other forms of content. Using your own employee’s testimonials of why they enjoy working for your company shows personal insights to the potential candidate about your company and a possible fit for the candidate.
• Use Social Media for Research – The same tool you use to find candidates can be very useful in the screening process. Check out your candidate’s LinkedIn profile or see if other accounts are public. You may be able to learn more about a candidate and his or her experience by seeing what information is available on social media.
While social media is a good place to look for some types of candidates, filling those specialized positions can still be a challenge. If you would like assistance with your search for employees or temporary staff, reach out to us at The Liberty Group. We are eager to help you, every step of the way. For further information, please contact Shonna Marquis (CAS), Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations, toll free at 855-961-7666.