Executive Survival Guide to
SOCIAL MEDIA & AIPart One: Build a Brand through Social to Win Talent
2 © 2019 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
Social media and artificial intelligence (AI) is reinventing
recruiting. Learn how recruiters identify, engage, attract
and hire great talent.
Use social media to engage passive candidates 3
Optimize for Google for Jobs 4
Promote company culture 5
Define and market to your ideal employee 6
Find your native social channels 7
Candidates self-select how they want
to be engaged 8
94% OF AMERICANS visit a potential employer’s social media pages when searching for a job.1
This is an opportunity for employers to market themselves before and after candidates visit their job site.
1. iCIMS, The Modern Job Seeker Report, 2017.
3 © 2019 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
While passive candidates – people not actively seeking
a new role – take more time and effort to recruit,
they’re often the most important hires.
Most people are open to considering new career
opportunities even if they’re happy in their current job.
The key to success is to peak their interest in
your company.
Social is the ideal way to interest potential candidates.
By sharing information, such as tangible insights
that they will find helpful to their current role
through social media, you demonstrate value and
understanding of their skills. The goal of engagement
is to move candidates from your social profiles to
your career portal.
Social works best for recruiting
PASSIVE CANDIDATES
“Tight labor markets are exposing the weaknesses of
traditional talent acquisition approaches. Job applicants
today interact with organizations in very different
ways, thanks to social networks, greater access to
organizational information (both good and bad) and a
greater awareness of other job opportunities.”2
- Gartner
2. Gartner, Layer Talent Acquisition Tools to Captivate and Connect with the Talent You Need, Jason Cerrato, 7 August 2018. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. | 3. Talent Works International, 8 Social Media Recruitment Statistics, 2017.
Organic posts – unpaid posts that reach your ideal audience – are more likely to be viewed by more people on LinkedIn than Facebook.
Facebook’s algorithm favors people who engage with your posts the most, making it a great place to nurture relationships longer.
Time of day matters. The majority of LinkedIn users are active during work hours. For Facebook, the opposite is true.3 Take into account where your ideal candidates spend their time and when.
Pro Tips:
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iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
Optimize your career site for
GOOGLE FOR JOBSYour career site is the absolute best resource
for candidates to quickly find and submit job
applications. The problem is that before job seekers
reach your career site, they’re taken on a detour
through third-party job boards — like CareerBuilder,
Indeed and Monster — filling out multiple forms,
duplicative profiles and turning over their data along
the way.
Launched in 2017, Google for Jobs provides
candidates with a streamlined way to find job
listings from all over the web. It puts the power of
Google’s AI searching technology into the hands
of job seekers.
By optimizing your career site for Google for Jobs
algorithms, your jobs will be displayed right in the
search window and tailored to the candidate’s
specific interests, salary, location, responsibilities,
experience and industry. Google for Jobs ensures
job seekers get to the best-fitting roles faster and
complete just one application,
eliminating middlemen.
Search engine optimized (SEO) keywords will bring your post higher in the list of Google results, ensuring higher engagement.
Complete all required fields including salary range to fully optimize postings, or you won’t rank at all.
Fill in Google’s recommended fields to ensure your site pages are being indexed for higher search results.
Pro Tips:
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iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
The key is to strike a balance between grabbing
peoples’ attention and remaining honest.
Successful job postings provide:
job requirements
salary information
company values and goals
culture and benefits
office locations & commute times
PROMOTE COMPANY CULTURE with authentic job postings
People are drawn to what’s real, and what gets them
to buy is similar to what gets them to apply. Employers
that deviate too far from their brand risk being
perceived as inauthentic and alienate candidates.
44% of college seniors said social media posts
showing strong company culture would make
them apply.4
86% of consumers prefer an authentic and
honest brand personality.5
The top two things candidates want to learn about an employer are company values and culture.6
Don’t be tempted to glamorize your culture based on what you think candidates want to see. You’re not looking to attract all candidates, just the right candidates, so an honest representation is the best representation.
Pro Tip:
4. iCIMS, Class of 2016 Report, 20165. Sprout Social, Consumers Aren’t Looking to Buy from Brands that are “Cool” on Social, 2017.6. Talent Board, North American Experience Research Report, 2017.
6 © 2019 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
Market to your
IDEAL EMPLOYEELearn from your very best employees by asking
them what drove them to apply, what keeps
them engaged, and where they spend time. Use
insights from current employees to channel your
recruitment efforts.
What attracts and excites an engineer may be different than what works for a sales role. Unique landing pages or career sites make prospective candidates feel valued.
Eliminate unintended bias. By focusing exclusively on current employees, be careful not to end up attracting only candidates with similar backgrounds.
Pro Tips:
Think like a marketer by asking yourself:
Who are your ideal candidates?
How do you get their attention?
Spend time with your ideal employees to learn:
what attracted them to their roles
what keeps them engaged
what motivates them to work hard
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iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
Find your
NATIVE CHANNELSNever use the same technique on multiple programs.
Each social channel is unique, and while audiences
often overlap, what works on one channel does not
on another. Focus efforts on 1-to-2 channels before
expanding to every channel.
Social is an invaluable way to understand your target
candidate(s). Read their posts, and what they share
to really understand their aspirations and point-of-
view about their professional interests, such as if they
follow industry experts or trade publications
on Twitter.
43% of companies report social networks as their top
source of quality hires.7
Determine which social programs works best for you by keeping in mind:
LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Pinterest Instagram
Audience Predominately white-collar
UniversalPersonal and professional
80% female. Visual (photo/images posted, not copy)
Millennial and Generation Z. Visual.
Ideal post length (in characters)
1,300 40 280 200 125
AdvantagesTrusted by job seekers and recruiters
Most active social network
Reach a diverse and massive audience quickly
Educate and inspire through imagery and visual story telling
Fastest-growing social media network
Disadvantages
Passive candidates may not be active and therefore overlooked
With so much new content, it’s a challenge to be seen
Newsfeed moves quickly; need to post daily to be seen
Users typically engage mostly for personal use
Newsfeed algorithm can negatively impact audience reach
Hashtag performance Medium Low High Medium High
7. LinkedIn, Global Recruiting Trends, 2016.
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iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
Enable candidates to
SELF-SELECT how they want to be engaged
What does a candidate do when they don’t find a job
post they like on your site? They leave.
Turn ‘not now’ into ‘let’s stay in touch’ by giving
candidates the ability to opt into your talent pipeline.
74% of candidate experience-winning employershave a candidate relationship management (CRM) system in place.8
Pro Tips:
Create a customized experience by suggesting relevant jobs to candidates based on their interests. Candidates have come to expect this type of experience from the technology they use when they shop (Amazon) or stream movies (Netflix).
Use iCIMS TextRecruit to attract, engage, hire and onboard candidates through text messages, live-chat (JobChat) and artificial intelligence (Ari).
Having a general pool of people interested in
potentially working for your company is a great
first step. But what really makes a talent pipeline
smart is the ability to alert potential candidates
when a position that matches their interests
becomes available.
Build experiences into the recruitment process to
create congruency across your brand. Why?
When there’s a gap between what candidates
come to expect and the reality of applying, many
opt out of the process altogether.
Use natural language processing and machine
learning AI chatbots (like TextRecruit’s Ari) to
engages candidates in two-way conversations,
as well as:
∞ Send applicants status updates and/or
personalized messages about your company’s
culture and openings.
∞ Automate repetitive tasks like confirming
interview appointments, which also saves
recruiters time.
1
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8. Talent Board, North American Experience Research Report, 2017.
9 © 2019 iCIMS Inc. All Rights Reserved.
iCIMS | Executive Survival Guide to Social Media & AI
iCIMS is the leading recruitment software provider for
employers to attract, engage and hire great people.
Established in 2000, iCIMS supports 4,000 customers
hiring 4 million people each year and is the largest
software provider dedicated to talent acquisition.
For more information, visit www.icims.com.
İCIMS CAN HELPSocial Distribution:
iCIMS social distribution, an integral part iCIMS Recruit,
enables recruiters tp build a social talent community and
drive recruitment through branded, mobile-optimized,
social media pages.
Google for Jobs:
Google partnered with iCIMS to optimize the candidate
job search experience by driving more job seekers
directly to the originating career site.