Social media recruitment has become an essential tool in many recruiter’s toolbelts. It can be used to widen your candidate pool, filter candidates, and get more people seeing your job ads. But which social media platform is best for finding quality candidates?

What is Social Media Recruiting?

You may have heard before about social media recruiting, otherwise known as social recruiting. This term refers to finding candidates through various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others. You can also potentially find job applicants through blogs, online forums, or job boards; however, these are not always thought of as social recruiting tools.

Generally, businesses use a social media platform or two in addition to their other, more traditional, recruitment methods. However, it can also be used on its own to reach plenty of candidates if you do it the right way. Did you know that nearly 75% of people between 18 and 35 got their job through social media? The majority of recruiters have used the social media platform LinkedIn to hire someone. So, social recruiting is a popular and effective tactic.

What is the Top Social Media Platform for Recruiting?

(1) LinkedIn

LinkedIn Pros

• It’s Ideal for Finding Passive Candidates – Even the most passive candidates may have LinkedIn profiles. The number of users is well over 600 million across the world, so there is likely to be someone qualified for your position. If you want to open up your talent pool by accessing passive candidates, LinkedIn is the ideal place to find them.

• LinkedIn Is for Working Professionals – LinkedIn prides itself on being a professional networking site. While other platforms aim their content towards social needs, LinkedIn is the only genuinely successful platform for careers and self-development. That makes it ideal for recruiters to use, as it is a professional way to go about business.

LinkedIn Cons

• LinkedIn is A Popular Tool for Other Recruiters – LinkedIn has a built-in recruiting element with the ability to create a company profile and a job board. This has enticed many recruiters to use it as their social media platform of choice for finding job candidates. That can make it harder for you to break through the pack and get your jobs to stand out above the rest.

• It’s Time Consuming – A common strategy used on LinkedIn is searching for qualified candidates and messaging them directly. This is time-consuming for recruiters, and therefore not the most cost-effective recruitment method out there.

(2) Facebook

Facebook Pros

• Wide Range of Demographics – Facebook is a social media platform with one of the broadest range of demographics you’ll find anywhere. Compared to Tik Tok, for instance, whose audience skews much younger, Facebook is used by people of all ages. This means you’re not targeting your roles to only one age group.

• Reach Passive Candidates – Passive candidates make up as much as 70% of the global workforce. These are the people who are not actively seeking a new job but could be interested if one came along. Using Facebook, you can target your job ads towards passive candidates, thereby drastically widening your talent pool.

Facebook Cons

• To Stand Out, You Need to Get Creative – It can be harder to break through the noise of all the other content and ads that constantly appear on Facebook – even more so than on any other social media platform. So, to stand out, stunt marketing on Facebook works best.

• It Requires an Excellent Strategy – As the demographic range is so broad, you need to develop a great recruitment strategy to find the type of candidates you’re looking for. Start by defining the skills, personality, and experience you’re seeking and start advertising with that in mind.

(3) Instagram

Instagram Pros

• Most Recruiters Aren’t Using It – Even though Instagram has been around for years, recruitment teams don’t seem to have jumped on board with using it as their social media platform of choice. This is excellent news for you, as you will have little competition if you use Instagram to promote your roles.

• It’s All About Images – Many candidates will respond better to visual cues rather than written information about a job. Instagram is ideal for targeting these people. It’s easy to take pictures around the office or create a beautiful job ad in Canva, and this is precisely what you need for Instagram.

Instagram Cons

• The Demographic is Young – Generally, the users on Instagram are younger than those on Facebook or LinkedIn. Depending on what you’re recruiting for, this isn’t always a bad thing, just something to be aware of. This may be what you want for a role, or not, depending on the skills and experience you are seeking.

(4) Twitter

Twitter Pros

• Understand How Your Candidate Thinks – The whole point of Twitter is to write about what you’re thinking. Reading a potential applicant’s posts can give you excellent insight into how they communicate and whether their personality might be a good fit within your team.

• Cost-Saving – Twitter is a far cheaper recruitment tool to use than any comparable social media platform. To get your job seen by lots of people, you would spend far less money on Twitter than you would on its competitors’ platforms.

Twitter Cons

• You Need to Post Often – To get noticed on Twitter, you need to be constantly posting. Posting all the time can be a huge drain on your resources, both timewise but also in thinking up creative things to post on there.

• Posts Have a Short Shelf-Life – Twitter counts on people posting all the time, which means that tweets from yesterday quickly fall to the bottom of the heap, never to be seen again. Content should be relevant and extremely timely. This is not the place to update people on your large events as you would on Facebook, for example. Instead, write short bursts of content that you understand will not be seen for long.

So, what’s the conclusion? Which social media platform is the best for recruitment? It entirely depends on what type of business you work for and what kind of candidates you want. For younger candidates, Instagram could be an excellent choice. Otherwise, LinkedIn or Facebook are perfect for reaching a variety of candidate demographics.