Recruiting, Tweet by Tweet

Whether you work for a small organization or a large corporate entity, you can use Twitter to expand your digital recruiting reach with little or no cost and very little time. To make Twitter an effective part of your recruiting strategy, you need to accomplish three things: promote your new Twitter feed, share relevant information, and develop relationships.

1. Promote Your Feed

First, create a Twitter account dedicated to your recruiting efforts. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and it should reflect the name of the organization. For example, if you work for XYZ Corp, your Twitter jobs handle could be simply be “XYZ_Jobs.” You want potential applicants to easily find your company and your job feed.

Now that you have created your Twitter account for recruiting, you need to let potential applicants know about it by build up your followers. There are several ways you can do this.

If you have a careers page on your organization’s website, make sure you invite people to follow you on Twitter through this page. Let them know that your Twitter account is where they can go for all the latest information on new jobs and what’s happening with your organization.

Next, let your current employees know about your Twitter jobs account and invite them to follow you. You can make this fun by offering a $100 reward for the first employee referral that results in an actual new hire that mentioned your Twitter account as the referring source.

Finally, make sure the new Twitter jobs account is promoted via your organization’s other social media outlets, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on.

2. Share Relevant Information

Don’t just share job announcements: Share information that is relevant to potential applicants. Your Twitter jobs account can be an important part of your organization’s employer branding efforts.

Yes, you want to post job announcements with links back to your ATS, but if that was all potential applicants wanted, they would go right to the careers page of your website.

Keep the Twitter feed fun and visual. Post links to articles about your organization. Share photos of employee recognition, team accomplishments, training program graduation ceremonies, special events, etc. You can also post links to stories that have to do with your industry overall.

Make it fun, make it professional, and give your followers information that will stimulate their interest in your organization. You want your Twitter feed to stoke their desires to work for your company and share your job tweets.

3. Develop Relationships

Use Twitter just as you would use other social media platforms to build relationships. Keep track of who favorites or retweets your messages. Reach out to those individuals and ask if they (or someone they know) might be a good fit for your organization. If possible, invite them to public events your organization is sponsoring. Invite them to job fairs you might be attending.

Try to come up with additional ideas to engage with and build your following. Maybe you recognize a job applicant with a $25 gift card for the “Most Creative Cover Letter of the Month” or something similar. The possibilities are endless.

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Don’t rely on Twitter to bring you hordes of qualified job candidates, but do count it as another tool in your recruiting arsenal, one that will help you expand your digital footprint within the talent markets you hope to draw from. With the right promotion, the most engaging content, and strong relationships, you can make this low-cost and very accessible platform work for you and your organization, attracting skilled talent that you might have otherwise missed.