Social Recruiting: Complete Guide 2025

The “typical” internet user spends 2.5 hours a day on social media and over 5 billion people use it worldwide. That’s a lot of eyeball time!

Further, a study from CareerArc found that 86% of job seekers leverage social media to search for relevant jobs, apply to jobs directly from social sites, and engage with job-related content.

So, if you’re not using social media as part of your recruitment efforts, you’re missing a trick.

My teams and I have had a lot of success recruiting through socials (it's fun too), so I wrote this article to help get you started or improve your efforts.

What Is Social Recruiting?

Social recruiting means using social media platforms and online networks to find and attract talent.

It leverages the wide reach and interactive nature of social media to connect with potential candidates.

Social recruiting also takes advantage of the personal connections you may have built during your career. As they say in recruitment, good people know good people!

I’ve used socials for recruitment countless times, and the same CareerArc study mentioned earlier found that 92% of organizations use it in their recruitment efforts.

For example, a company I worked at was looking for entry-level candidates for a call center in the north of England, and the candidates were not going to be found on LinkedIn.

Instead, we posted the role in local Facebook groups and ran some ads as a key element of your overall recruiting strategy. We managed to fill 20 roles in a week and a half!

How Does Social Recruiting Work?

Social recruiting is a mix of advertising open roles and posting content to promote the employer brand AKA recruitment marketing. 

You can even message people directly as part of your sourcing efforts, although be careful there because sometimes certain platforms prohibit that kind of thing.

Typical social recruiting activities include:

• Sharing job openings on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• Posting content that highlights company culture, events, employee testimonials, and success stories (some examples further down).

• Searching for potential candidates through LinkedIn Recruiter or similar tools.
• Sending personalized direct messages to candidates.

• Responding to comments, questions, and messages.
• Hosting live Q&A sessions about working at the company.
• Using social media advertising to target specific candidate demographics.

• Sharing industry-related articles, tips, or thought leadership pieces to attract talent interested in the field.
• Current employees promoting roles on their socials as part of the referral program (highly effective)
• Hosting competitions or challenges that attract skilled candidates while promoting the brand.

Benefits Of Social Recruiting

Wider reach

As the figure in the intro demonstrates, billions of people use social media, providing you access to a larger pool of candidates including passive job seekers.

Depending on the role, certain platforms will likely be a lot more suitable than the “standard” LinkedIn. For example, creatives might be more present on Instagram or TikTok.

Even if they don’t result in hires the first time round, you’ll still be building your candidate database.

Value for money

A strong social presence can help lower costs associated with traditional recruiting methods such as agencies or hiring a massive sourcing team. This includes using social media connections or social media ads.

Speed

Socials can help speed up the hiring process due to the instant nature of social media interactions. 

For example, if 100 connections see a post and they or the algorithm share it with 5 people each then you’ve reached 500 potential candidates.

Enhanced employer brand

Socials are a great opportunity to make people aware of your org’s culture, values, and what you do to attract the right candidates for your roles.

Employee generated content, or content created by current team members (examples below), is particularly powerful for building trust.

Better candidate insight

Access candidates' social media profiles for a more holistic view. Often people post their thoughts, opinions, and expertise so you can see more about them beyond their CV.

A classic example is Github where you can see which developers are passionate about contributing to open-source projects.

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Key Social Recruiting Platforms

1. LinkedIn: The most popular professional networking site, ideal for finding and engaging with industry professionals. Quite general purpose.
2. Facebook: Useful for reaching a broader audience through job postings and targeted ads. I've found Facebook to be particularly useful for entry-level jobs in areas where people generally don’t use LinkedIn.
3. Twitter/X: Effective for sharing job openings and connecting with industry influencers. Some industries like politics, media, and journalism are prolific on the platform.
4. Instagram: Great for showcasing your company culture and appealing to younger demographics. It requires more consistent participation and more variety of posts rather than just job ads.
5. TikTok: Emerging platform for creative job postings and engaging with Gen Z. This can be a really productive platform if you can jump on the trends.
6. Reddit: Houses a wide variety of interests and can be useful to cover all grounds for very niche opportunities (I once managed to find one of three senior iOS developers in a tiny town in the UK called Grimsby through Reddit).
7. Discord/Slack communities: Often overlooked but depending on the role and interest there may be a forum/community that can gather people of the same expertise together that you can reach.

8 Best Practices To Build A Social Recruiting Strategy

1. Build a strong brand

This will take time. If you’re starting from scratch, you'll need to define your employer value proposition and employer brand.

If you already have those, think about what aspects of them you want to communicate and how you’d like to communicate them.

For example, it’s generally better to post long-form content about you on LinkedIn and the more visual and creative stuff on Instagram or TikTok.

You can interlink posts but watch out as some platforms don’t like it when you put links to another social media site in your posts.

Also, ensure your profiles are clear, use certain keywords associated with your industry, and show a little personality.

2. Know which platforms are most popular for your target audience

When deciding on content and platform, it’s crucial your target audience is at the forefront of your thinking.

For example, if you’re a creative agency, what might your target candidate be interested in knowing about? Your process? Your visual identity?

Just like with any marketing, think about where your audience is and how to engage with them—this could be target role, target candidate personality, or demographic.

3. Use advanced search and targeting features

Many platforms have wisened up to the X-ray search—a technique where you could search for people on LinkedIn without going on LinkedIn.

Now LinkedIn and other platforms have locked the key information behind doors Google can’t reach behind and it’s not as effective as it used to be. However, you should be using other searches like:

• On Linkedin, search via groups, ex-companies, or connections of connections. You can also search via Hashtags on posts.
• On Facebook, search via location or groups/pages of interest
• On TikTok, search via hashtags mostly. The algorithm is quite buttoned up.

4. Get existing employees involved

Your current employees should be pumping that engagement! Always, always promote roles internally and encourage team members to share roles.

5. Be consistent

If you normally only post sporadically, and suddenly post a flurry when you have a bunch of roles, it won’t have as much impact because people will see that it’s less about you wanting to truly build a social media presence, connect with people, and create a community.

6. Monitor effectiveness

Like with everything, it’s important to track if your social recruiting efforts are yielding results. 

Key metrics to start with are likely things like engagement, reach, and any upticks in applications. (You can lean on your applicant tracking system or similar for this part since it's already tracking key metrics for you. Plus, there's a good chance you can integrate it with the social media platforms you're targeting too).

However, to justify spending time on all this, you need to be able to show that you’re getting hires.

One thing to note is that you should set realistic expectations—do not target virality!

7. Pay attention to the trends

It’s cool to tap into the latest trends and have some fun, but also pay attention to the trends you most definitely shouldn’t participate in.

One example that comes to mind is DiGiorno’s who tried to jump on the #WhyIStayed trend with “They had Pizza”. The hashtag was for women who had survived domestic abuse sharing why they stayed. Check the hashtag before you post—is this the one you want to be associated with?

Especially for platforms like TikTok, never forget this meme:

A good way to keep an eye on social recruiting trends and best practices is by attending a recruiting conference and learning from others who are searching for people using online platforms.

8 Examples of Social Recruiting

1. New joiners

Celebrate every person as a new joiner and make their joining the envy of everyone else (so they would want to join too!).

2. Employee takeover

This can come in many formats: AMA, scheduled posts from the employee’s perspective, “day-in-the-life-of”. Here's one I've always liked:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by WebinarGeek (@webinargeek)

The way it was worded it was almost like Tech support was going to be there to help everyone!

Top tip: Before handing them the reins, ensure employees are trained and have guidelines on what to post and how to handle interactions.

3. Influencer takeovers/collaborations

Depending on your industry, you’re probably already making use of influencer marketing.

For example, I see a lot of beauty brands have influencers come and tour their facilities (although that has been overused).

As well as showing off the production process and products, they can also highlight the company as a workplace.

At Twitch, the recruitment team was encouraged to join streamers with our staff Twitch accounts and sometimes we would be invited specifically to a streamer’s chat to discuss what we do in the background.

Again, ensure you train your team on guidelines and best practices.

4. Celebrate milestones

First day - celebrate! Been here a year - celebrate! Been here 5 years - celebrate more! Here's a cool example from ASOS:

@michellejoseph__ First day vibes⚡️ @asos #workoffice #newjobcheck #asoslifestyle #asos #foryou #CinderellaMovie ♬ Aesthetic Vibes - sxldi

New baby addition, get a company onesie and show it off (if parents are comfortable of course). New puppy/kitten/tortoise? Snap a few photos and post.

5. Employee spotlight/kudos

For most people, public recognition of achievements is a powerful motivator and it’s a useful marketing tactic too.

Recently I came across this and thought it was so nice and heartwarming. 

I kept on seeing “office”, white-collar folk being celebrated so it was something different to see a bus driver being celebrated.

Everyone across all levels should be celebrated so think about who you may be forgetting. Not to mention that this was posted on the company page as well as the CEO personally.

6. Office/home office tours

These are essential for more creative offices or places that want to attract people coming into an office.

@typo_shop Welcome to Typo HQ #thingsthatjustmakesense #officetour #work ♬ original sound - Typo

If you have a remote team, you can always ask employees to do a highlight of the offices they have at home. They can also highlight some creative places they're working in (on the beach, mountain, etc.)

7. Team highlights

Highlight your team working or relaxing or getting out and about. Have you recently been on a retreat? Hackathon? Visited an event? Highlight it all!

8. Educational content

Educational content can take on many forms e.g. some companies create a tech blog where their engineering team writes about their work while others support their employees to speak at events or write about their passions. 

In both instances there are opportunities to share content on social media. Take my company Focaldata as an example:

Highlight your team’s expertise and help them increase the reach of their knowledge.

Creating A Social Recruiting Strategy: 8-Step Process

1. Define your goals

1. Identify objectives: Determine exactly what you want to achieve with social recruiting (e.g., increase brand awareness, fill specific positions, attract a diverse talent pool).
2. Set measurable targets: Establish clear, measurable goals that you can track using your recruiting software, such as the number of applications received, hires made, or engagement levels on posts.

2. Understand your audience

1. Identify ideal candidates: Determine the skills, experience, and characteristics of your ideal candidates.
2. Choose the right platforms: Select social media platforms where your target audience is most active e.g. LinkedIn for professionals, Instagram and TikTok for younger demographics, etc.

3. Build a strong online presence in preparation

1. Optimize profiles: Ensure your company’s social media profiles are up-to-date, professional, and reflect your brand.
2. Consistent branding and posting: Maintain a consistent brand voice and visual style across all job board platforms.

4. Create an engaging mix of content

1. Job postings: Share clear, detailed job postings with compelling headlines and visuals. You can use my guide on how to write a job description here.
2. Company culture: Post about company events, employee stories, and day-to-day activities to give candidates a sense of your work environment.
3. Educational content: Share industry news, tips, and insights to position your company as a thought leader.
4. Mix of visual and text: Don’t just post pics or only text, tailor content to each platform’s strengths

5. Create a schedule of content

5. Build up a few posts in advance: Ensure you have content lined up at least a few weeks in advance
6. Use a scheduler where appropriate: Some platforms have post schedulers which can be very useful for automating posting.

6. Engage with your audience

1. Respond promptly: Reply to comments, messages, and inquiries in a timely manner.
2. Interactive campaigns: Host live Q&A sessions, webinars, and other interactive events to engage with potential candidates.

7. Use paid advertising

1. Targeted ads: Use social media ads to target specific demographics, locations, and industries.
2. Boosted posts: Boost important job postings and content to increase their visibility.

8. Track and analyze performance

1. Analytics tools: Utilize social media analytics, recruitment marketing tools, or cloud-based hiring software to track engagement, reach, and conversion rates.
2. Adjust strategies: Regularly review analytics data and adjust your strategies based on what is working and what isn’t.

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