Social media can be a great recruiting tool—it’s inexpensive, accessible and can help you reach new and fresh talent you might not otherwise ever have access to.

We often recommend utilizing social media in your own recruiting strategy, but it can also hold some pitfalls if it’s not approached the right way.

When you make some of these common social media recruiting mistakes it can damage not just your employer brand, but your overall brand image.

Take a look at this list and see if you’re guilty of any of the following:

• Casting a net that’s too wide: One of the biggest issues in dealing with social media for companies in a variety of ways beyond just recruitment is the fact they don’t tailor their focus to the most relevant places. Social media is something that requires a strategy, and a very specific strategy, just like anything else you’re doing in terms of recruiting as well as marketing. Don’t just throw lots of recruiting information onto a plethora of sites and hope for the best. Narrowly tailor your social recruiting so you can remain focused and get the most value.
• You don’t have goals: Before you can jump into the opportunities provided by social recruiting, you have to put in place clearly defined goals. Perhaps you’re looking for a specific person to fill a certain position, or maybe you just want to increase your employer brand recognition and image. Whatever your goals may be, before you put anything onto a social media site, ensure you know why you’re doing it and what you hope to achieve.
• Using the wrong sites: This mistake ties back in with the first one on our list. You need to be specific with your social recruiting tactics, and this includes thinking about which social media sites are going to be best suited to your needs. If you’re looking for new Millennial talent, you may want to use less well-known or more cutting edge social media sites, whereas if you’re looking for a more established executive you may turn to sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. Regardless of which sites you choose, you need to be using them for a reason.
• Not including current employees: The very essence of using social media as a recruiting tool is the fact that it is indeed social. You want to get the word out and build a network, and that’s often best done by getting your current employees involved in the effort. Encourage your employees to participate and share your social media recruiting efforts. This is the best way to not only find new talent, but also to build your employer brand in a general sense. When you utilize your current employees as a way to build relationships with others, you’re allowing yourself the opportunity to potentially tap into outstanding talent that may not even be actively seeking a job at the moment.
• Failing to put in the time and effort to make your company appealing: On social media, attention spans tend to be very short. You need to make a great first impression with your social media recruiting efforts and continue to build on that by providing interesting and compelling content on a regular basis, just as you do for your marketing-based social media. You need to take the time to build robust and comprehensive social media profiles that are engaging and appealing, and stay that way. This may require dedicating a significant amount of time to the process, but in the end it’s likely to pay off because you’re going to have a better chance of recruiting top industry talent.

Does your company use social media as a recruiting tool? If so, what are your tips for success?

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