A Social Media Recruiting Strategy Framework

A few weeks ago I was asked to participate in a Google+ Hangout on implementing social media recruiting strategies. It was a good session with Steve Ward from CloudNine and Louis Welcome from Colleague Software, where we covered the different ways companies can effectively implement innovative social media recruitment strategies. (The recorded show and additional Slideshare presentation on different soundbites taken from the recording are included further in this post.)

As a consultant specialising in this area, I have conversations around social media recruitment strategy every day. While there is a model framework that can be applied (more on that in a minute), the actual strategies are different for every company - and they should be, as every company is different, with differing target audiences and objectives. In my new book, Social Media Recruitment, I demonstrate this by including many different case studies from around the world that demonstrates this - from using music lists of song titles in Sweden, conducting recruitment competitions on Twitter in India, augmented reality recruitment advertising in New Zealand and using LinkedIn’s Talent Brand Index in Australia, to name a few.

All these have one thing in common, they have a social media recruitment strategy sitting behind them to ensure they have every chance of being successful, and delivering the relevant results. They all worked because they knew what they were trying to achieve and how they planned to do it.

Over the last few years I have developed a social media recruiting strategy framework that has proved to be successful for companies. The graphic version of the eight step model that I use is shown here:

These eight stages are clearly defined and allows for companies to work through a process to put their social media recruiting strategy in place. The framework works because it is easy to follow:

1. Set Your Objectives: Agree your objectives for using social media for recruiting and align them to your business objectives

2. Define Your Audience: You must understand the audience you are looking to reach and which social media platforms they are on

3. Choose Your Platforms:  Select the right social media platforms that will meet your objectives and find the right audience

4. Select Your People: Choose the people in your team best suited and motivated to take responsibility for social media

5. Provide Training: Provide your people with the tools and all the training required to be effective and responsive

6. Decide On Your Content Strategy: You need to create and curate content to post and share on your social networks

7. Measurement: You need to ensure measurement is in place to assess success of objectives

8. Monitoring: Put in place online monitoring of your brand, people, campaigns and discussions

The slides ‘How To create and implement a rewarding and innovative social strategy’ Hangout with me and Steve are below:

How to create and implement a rewarding and innovative social strategy #RecHangout with Andy Headworth and Steve Ward from Colleague Software

And the video recording of the entire Hangout on YouTube is below:

If you have enjoyed this post and found it useful then you check out my new book – Social Media Recruitment . It has been described by a reviewer on Amazon, as the Social Media Recruitment Bible. It has already become a N0.1 Best Seller in a short space of time, with many HR and recruiting professionals around the world finding it invaluable. You can buy it here on Amazon UK here and Amazon US here  or your own Amazon country site.