How to Use Twitter for Recruitment

Twitter is not only a mere microblogging site. Businesses nowadays use it as well to look for job applicants with the right skill sets. They use it to evaluate if a certain applicant can pass a specific set of screening tests to help them in deciding whether to hire them or not.

According to a study (http://socialmeep.com/infographic-the-social-recruiting-pocket-guide), 8 million applicants found their job using Twitter. Although the microblogging site only trailed behind LinkedIn and Facebook, it can’t be denied that it is still one of the most popular networking websites not only for tweeting news but for finding jobs as well.

In a report (http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2013/03/can-you-snag-a-job-in-140-characters-dallas-marketing-firm-interviews-summer-intern-candidates-on-twitter.html/) written by Sheryl Jean of The Dallas Morning News, a firm in Dallas used Twitter to interview interns who are potential candidates for newly opened positions. They do the interview via Twitter and initially assess the applicant’s’ creative skills on how they answer their questions which they should fully express in a 140-character tweet. The firm’s little job fair in Twitter attracted 160 people. Those who pass the initial interview move on to face-to-face interviews.

You can also do this type of recruitment through Twitter. Just continue reading below to learn some tips on how to do it more effectively.

How to Use Twitter for Job Recruitment?

Just like LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter can also help you recruit the best employees without exerting too much time and resources. Here are a few tips on how to do it.

1. Update Your Company Profile

Of course, this is the very first step you need to do. You should mention on your company profile that you are currently hiring and that you are actively looking for potential job candidates. If you have a specific page on your website that displays details about the recruitment, then put the link of that page on your Twitter as your temporary website URL. This would help job seekers to easily grab a detailed information about the positions you want to be filled up. Note: It is recommended to shorten your URL because there is a chance that Twitter would return an error if it is too long.

2. Create an Official Hashtag for Your Recruitment Campaign

Make sure that your recruitment campaign can be found throughout Twitterverse. If you are looking for a new marketing manager you can use the hashtag #marketingjobs. This would help those people who are looking for marketing jobs in Twitter to see your tweets that could lead them to apply to the positions you offer.

If you want to keep track how many people are sharing or responding to your campaign, you can create another more specific hashtag that includes your company’s name. You need to tell your followers though that if they are sharing information about your recruitment campaign, they should include that hashtag. This would help you easily track the public’s feedback and assess their reaction to what you are doing.

3. Design a Twitter Interview

It is also important that you create and design your own version of a Twitter interview. Make it direct to the point and quick. Here are a couple of examples on how your questions should sound and look like.

What is the most important element of a successful company? Why? Cut your resume down to less than 125 characters.

These examples are taken from an actual Twitter interview. Check out here (http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2013/03/can-you-snag-a-job-in-140-characters-dallas-marketing-firm-interviews-summer-intern-candidates-on-twitter.html) how these questions are being answered.

4. Look up the Profiles of Job Candidates

Checking out the profiles of your job applicants can give you more information on how they portray themselves online. The descriptions on their profiles, the tweets, favorites, and even those people that they follow can tell important details of their skills, personality, and character.

5. Use SocialCentiv to Contact Potential Job Seekers

If your campaign doesn’t receive much feedback, increase your turnaround by seeking them yourself in Twitter using the SocialCentiv (http://socialcentiv.com) tool. This tool doesn’t only help boost your leads and sales but can also help you out to easily find people who are looking for jobs in Twitter.

For example, if you are a marketing company based in Dallas and you want to hire a marketing manager, you can simply use SocialCentiv to look for Twitter users based in Dallas who are tweeting posts with content that express that they are looking for a job. The tool has its own listening feature that can understand the intent of the posts. To learn more on how you can use Social Centiv for your company’s recruitment, click here (http://socialcentiv.com/how-it-works).

Final Thoughts

With enough knowledge, you can run a successful recruitment campaign using Twitter and hire the most deserving applicant. But, if using Twitter alone doesn’t have a massive turn around, you can use a Twitter listening tool such Social Centiv so that you can instantly reach out to job seekers. Social Centiv helps you save time and effort by giving you the power to only pick those who have the most potentials.

Learn more about Social Listening by watching Google Hangout between Salma Zaman and Sarah Beacom of SocialCentiv here