Image credit AllFacebook
Over the last few weeks I have spoken to a good few people that are using Facebook for social recruiting, and as I expected, they all have different ways of approaching recruitment via their Facebook pages. Some amazed me, others bored me!
But have they got it right?
Well, the whole recruiting piece on Facebook is still very new indeed, so the answer will be in the end results at some stage in the future (so I don't have that magic answer I am afraid!). After all, we are still in the 'Klondike phase' of Facebook Fan Pages - put your stake in the ground and prospect until you find the gold - the Fans.
But there is no denying the fact that Facebook pages are hear to stay - you only have to look at TV adverts that display Facebook Fan Page URL's instead of the website URL's to see that!
A really interesting post this week on AllFacebook by Brian Carter, looks at the biggest mistakes people make with Facebook Fan Pages. It makes for very interesting reading when you have a few minutes. There are two points that I want to highlight with reference to the use of Facebook for recruiting.
1. Don't assume people will go to your Fan Page. They are more likely to read/see your updates in their Facebook News Feed. Very few people actually go to the many pages they 'Like'. As Brian says:
- When you log on to Facebook, what you see is your news feed, and this is all Facebook is, to most people.
- Your news feed doesn’t contain every post from all your friends or all the pages you’ve liked.
- You can change your news feed to show more, or everything, or the most recent from everyone, but fewer than 10 to 20 percent of people do this.
- If you have a Facebook page, all your fans do not see all your posts. The fans who have liked or comment on your page’s posts will see more of your posts.
[The image above in this post shows the level of Facebook Fans that will visit your page]
2. Not using Facebook advertising (or allocating a big enough budget) to grow your Fan base. The cheapest way to get targeted fans for your page, is with Facebook ads - especially if you do not have a recognised employment brand or are a very niche recruiter.
Now, let me put these into perspective with three examples of different recruitment approaches using Facebook.
Method 1 - Feeding nothing but jobs through your Facebook Wall.
So effectively what we have here is a Facebook jobs page/stream. Great if that is the way you want to promote jobs- personally I prefer an RSS feed! They are working on the basis that these jobs (or some of the them anyway, according the Brian theory above) will appear in the Facebook users stream (if they have liked the page). There is no engagement, very few 'Likes' (allowing for sharing) and it is very unexciting. For some this might deliver -but in my opinion, this is not the way to best use an engagement channel. [Caveat - if of course it delivers candidates to your career site, then it works.]
[caveat 2 - it works for other channels that just provide job feeds - maybe it is a way forward?]
Method 2 - Use Facebook Fan Pages to engage and grow your community, but take the candidates back to your own career site
G4S have only have had a Facebook page for a relatively short amount of time, but already have 470 fans, with good amounts of engagement on their updates. They are treating their Facebook page as a proper engagement channel and rightly have had success doing that.
They have a jobs page (accessed via a tab in the side wall) where many of the jobs are posted, but importantly, none of these jobs are fed through The Wall - G4S keep them apart.
All the job links take candidates back to the G4S community career site built on the community platform Tribepad. They can they engage with them in their bespoke (in my opinion, fantastic) and fully interactive online community career site.
So they engage with candidates, offer them jobs, but ultimately take them away from Facebook for the final stage of the process - the application process and candidate experience - which is all very good.
Method 3 - Do ALL the recruitment and engagement on your Facebook Fan page.
Very simply, this method is purely Facebook.
Everything is channelled through the Facebook Fan page - all the candidates, recruitment and importantly the applications themselves. The theory being that the candidates don't ever need to leave the Facebook page.
For me this is an example of how Facebook can be so effective as a recruitment tool - the caveat here though, is the brand.
Let's be fair, Hard Rock is a much more household name brand than the other two here, Reed Business Information and G4S. And not just a household name, but a sexy brand as well! As we know, people relate more to brands on Facebook, so Hard Rock have a distinct advantage over the others when it comes to gaining potential interest!
However, this really is a great case study of how to use Facebook in a creative and engaging way. They used the Work4 application to publish all the jobs, Eventbrite to book self-book all the interviews and Livestream to stream videos to help candidate understand the application process. Genius! >> and it delivered all their objectives!
[To read the whole case study - see how Bill Boorman created and delivered the project for Hard Rock here]
So they got what they wanted, a fully enclosed Facebook experience. But what about the Hard Rock career site for the future? As successful as this campaign was, it surely can't replace their career site in the future, can it?
So, which is the right way to recruit through Facebook then?
Any of them? All of them? A blend?
For me:
- Facebook is a passive platform for recruitment. What I mean, is that candidates don't join Facebook to look for, or be approached for work directly (as opposed to the more business networks like LinkedIn etc). So user expectations are different.
>>> So I don't think splurging jobs at people works.
- As a platform it is a fantastic way to engage with and grow a community around your company/brand/industry - G4S do this so well in a sector that is not the most sexy! - so why wouldn't you use it that way.
>>> Thumbs up for the community style approach for me.
- Just feeding jobs through a page, for me is extremely limited - and is this how you want people to see your brand - just as a job feed with no candidate engagement?
>>> Not for me.
- If you have invested in a good career site (and I mean a good one that has a great candidate user experience), then you should be taking your candidate back there - it is your your domain, under your control and most importantly your data. What happens if Facebook made changes on a whim (which they are prone to doing), that suddenly affected your Fan Page? What if they started to charge loads of money to use their pages (and they will at some point - they are a business aren't they?)The word 'screwed' comes to mind!
>>> A good career site rocks for me.
- The way that Bill set up and managed the Hard Rock campaign was brilliant (and brave of Hard Rock), but it wouldn't work that way with small and unheard of brands. But it is worth taking note of the way that he got the fans to engage and participate in providing content, that was very clever.
>>>Superb innovation - really liked the Eventbrite tip. Take lessons from this case study.
- Facebook apps can work very well, and the Work4 app is proving very successful - but as Brian highlighted above, you first have to get the candidates to the page - a challenge in itself!
>>> Use the apps by all means, but open up those wallets for the accompanying Facebook advertising as well.
- Facebook advertising has HUGE potential, as long as there is an understanding that a budget does need to be allocated for candidate attraction.
>>> Need to spend to do it properly - alternatively get yourself over to the Facebook advertising experts at NetNatives to help you!
- Finally - for me personally, the power of Facebook is engagement and community - get those right and your Fan Page will be a great success.
So, have you figured it out yet?
There is no right and wrong answer - it is whatever works for you and your company. But you must try different things and keep testing, testing and testing. The more times you fail, the more you will learn how to make Facebook Fan Pages work for you!
Feel free to join our growing Facebook community focusing on social recruiting - I would love to see you there :)
Have you had success using Facebook as a recruiting channel, and if so which methods did you use?
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Over the last month I have put together another e-book on Social Recruiting - this time, a whole range of tips on the different social media platforms to help get you started. (The last one - a compilation of all my best social recruiting blog posts, has had over 500 downloads and is still going strong!)
