5 social media tips for student employers

Jun 2, 2020 | Attraction & marketing

Samantha Hope has spent the past decade building a thriving online presence for Shoosmiths’ graduate recruitment programme. She shares her top tips to help employers attract young talent while social distancing.

You don’t need me to tell you that Covid-19 has changed the recruitment industry forever. To stay in touch with candidates, employees and clients, recruiters have had to get digitally savvy – and fast.

We’ve all seen the huge surge in the use of video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Houseparty. Social media behaviour has changed overnight, with an increase in people using social networks to stay connected and informed.

So, is it possible that we’re better connected than we’ve ever been, even though we’re all physically distanced right now?

Social media software firm Sprout Social compared social media data from March 2020 with April 2020 and found that the amount of activity across all networks increased on average by 44 engagements per day. The data also showed that engagement on each social media post generally increased by 7.3 engagements per day. All this, despite many brands posting less during this time.

While I’m no expert on global pandemics, I have spent the past decade building a thriving online presence for the graduate recruitment programme at national law firm Shoosmiths. The tips below should help you to show the best side of your business, so that you can continue to attract talent for now and in the future:

1. Share educational videos: Either through your Instagram stories or live-streamed videos on other networks. If you wouldn’t normally create video content, now is a great time to start. Be sure to watch this 16-minute video where I share nine top tips that I learnt while streaming using Facebook Live, including getting started, lighting and set-up, equipment you’ll find useful, and how to make it look professional after it’s streamed (all of which can easily be achieved from home).
2. Create healthy habits: Use this time to establish healthy habits that you can sustain all year. This could include scheduling a month of content at once or setting aside 30 minutes every day to engage with new people on your social media platforms. Remember to dedicate time to engaging with your audience, not simply posting and sharing content.
3. Create content for stories every single day: It doesn’t have to look perfect, but it’s more important to stay top-of-mind with your followers now more than ever. Even if you’re not actively recruiting, you can still give your followers a way to ask questions. One of the top things candidates tell me they want is a direct channel where they get a quick response to their questions.
4. Use user-generated content to provide variety: Ask your employees to take part in a takeover on Instagram, or to host a live-streamed video from your brand page. If people are sharing images of their home working set-ups (lunches, pets and all), then share these too (with their permission). It’s a great way to show your business pulling together during a difficult time of adjustment.
5. Share content from previous campaigns: Content can be used more than once! If your recruitment is cyclic – such as a graduate recruitment scheme – and you have the same things happening each year (eg applications/video interviews/assessment centres) then you can re-share the content. Just add a note to say that you created the content a year ago in case of any updates. Another type of content that’s easily reusable is employee profiles, case studies, day in the life content, and department overviews.

Insight to how attraction and marketing methods have change can be found in ISE’s latest research

Covid-19: The impact of the crisis on student recruitment and development.

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