Social & Online Recruiting Tips

• July 28, 2015
• Newsletter Article

If your primary recruitment tools are job boards such as AgCareers.com, it is helpful to provide your company website address in postings so candidates can easily click to find out more about your organization. Your company website’s career section may be the first impression on a candidate. In order for your company to compete for the best talent, it is essential to create an enticing career section on your site.

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A candidate has found your job posting and wants to know more about your organization.  Where do they look when they are searching for additional information about potential ag employers?  First, candidates check out the company website, then conduct online searches; 27% search for more information on social media.¹  This reiterates the importance of an up-to-date career section on employers’ websites and active social media presence.  Employers need to be aware of what online searches yield about their company and make efforts to provide positive online content.

 

Agricultural employers consider industry-specific jobs boards (e.g. AgCareers.com) to be one of the top methods of reaching prospective applicants, followed by collegiate recruiting, their corporate website, and social media sites.²  Even if your primary recruitment tools are job boards such as AgCareers.com, it is helpful to provide your company website address in postings so candidates can easily click to find out more about your organization.  Your company website’s career section may be the first impression on a candidate.  In order for your company to compete for the best talent, it is essential to create an enticing career section on your site.

 

Are you using social networks to support your recruitment efforts?  Social job seekers tend to be younger, earn more and have a higher education level.³  There is close to universal adoption of social recruiting, with 94% of companies reporting that they use or plan to begin using social networks to support recruitment efforts.⁴ 

 

When we look specifically at the agricultural industry in 2014, 74% of employers used or planned to begin using social media to support recruitment efforts.²  The use of social media in agriculture is rapidly increasing as preliminary results from the 2015-2016 AgCareers.com HR Review indicate this number could top 90%!  Of ag companies that use social networks, Facebook was the most common, followed by LinkedIn, and then Twitter.²

Recruiters are looking at candidates’ social profiles, but keep in mind it is a two-way exchange and candidates are in turn evaluating organizations’ social presence.  Candidates tend to look at Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, so those networks are a good place to start.  They may be evaluating social media content to see if they are a good fit for a potential employers’ culture.  Or, they want to identify contacts in their social networks that work at the company to contact for “insider” information about the organization.