We often hear that we don’t have to limit ourselves to using just LinkedIn when looking for IT professionals. In this article, using Facebook as an example, we will show how social networks can be useful for recruiters at work.
Why Facebook?
I really love the topic of recruiting on Facebook, and I believe that the future belongs to it. Facebook is actively developing and becomes a really social network. And just look at the statistics of active users per month in comparison with other social networks. Even because of these numbers, you should pay attention to the social network.
So how can Facebook help us in recruiting? Below, we will tell you about how we use this social network in our work.
How to write posts with vacancies?
Many recruiters have been using this feature for a long time. Below, you can see some basic rules for posting vacancies to make them effective and getting good results:
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Do not repost vacancies from the Job website. It’s better to make a personal post from you where you will tell about this position and explain why it is interesting.
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Add some creativity.
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Ask colleagues and friends to share the post, you can even offer them something tasty for this.
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Use a picture, or even better, an animation or video, they grab attention and increase your reach.
A few examples of how we did it:
The RoR Developer vacancy got a lot of shares and comments thanks to the fact that I promised delicious coffee for repost. Thus, I not only increased the reach of the vacancy, but also drank coffee with interesting people I had not seen for a long time :)
I recalled my childhood and made a Ruby Developer vacancy in the form of a rebus. A lot of people were actively involved and solved it in comments.
We paid our attention to the topic of football to create posts vacancies on the company's page. Why? Because this topic was on everyone's lips then. Our recruiter Olha knows how to write cool texts ;)
Liuda loves to use GIFs. Here is an example of one of her Frontend Developer vacancies.
Develop an employer brand!
It will not bring quick effect, but it will be useful to you in the future. People, loyal to your brand, can become your employees in the future. Therefore, gather your audience around you: write useful content, as well as talk about the team, work process, projects.
Involve your audience in such a way in the life of your company, and it is possible that they will not only recommend you to friends in the future, but will work for your company.
Publish the vacancy on the company's page
Facebook gives us an opportunity to publish vacancies on the company’s page. Go to the Publishing Tools section and there you will see the Jobs section.
A vacancy on Facebook looks like it usually does on a regular Job website: there is a picture, text and an “Apply” button. At the same time, Facebook, when responding, fills out the form on its own based on the information that is in your profile: name and surname, location, contacts, places of work, university, etc.
Also, a candidate can find your vacancy by the keyword following the link: https://www.facebook.com/jobs
Use specialized pages and groups
In groups, you can also make posts with vacancies (if it is allowed) or search for candidates among group members.
To find such groups or pages, just type in a keyword phrase.
A few examples of IT communities in accordance with technologies:
UAJADE - Ukrainian Javascript developers
There are also HR groups where you can share resumes and references.
How to source candidates on your own?
In addition to the passive search for candidates on social networks, you can actively search for the specialists that are suitable for you by yourself.
I would mention three effective ways of sourcing candidates:
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Using tools (the easiest way)
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Using the URL method
In this article we will share with you tools that help automate sourcing, though the second method is more complicated and deserves a separate article :)
Talking about Facebook Search tools, I recommend trying:
Intelligence – a plugin for Chrome which is probably the best one for search and it updates faster if Facebook changes its algorithms.
Inteltechniques – search is performed using an ID (a unique number that each page has: a person, company, location, etc.). You can find this ID number on the website and then use it for queries.
Stalkscan – searches for information about a person (search for classmates and colleagues; events or places that the person visited; his/her groups)
We also wrote an article about how to search for candidates on Gitter, which works well for remote vacancies.
To find out more about sourcing, take our sourcing courses.