Can Pinterest Work for Recruiters?

Looking for fall decor ideas? Pinterest is your site. Planning a wedding? Pin away. Looking for job candidates? See you later Pinterest.

While extremely popular, Pinterest is often looked at as just a fun, mindless way to pass time. Sure, it's a great marketing platform for dress shops and craft stores, but most service-based businesses struggle to see Pinterest as a viable marketing channel.

But don't immediately discount it. Pinterest CAN and HAS worked for both direct hire and contract staffing recruiters, and it may work for you as well. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

A Sourcing Source

You can find a wealth of information on Pinterest that can't be found on other social networks with just a few simple search terms. Recruiter.com recommends searching Pinterest for terms such as "resume," "cv," and "portfolio." This is especially useful if you are filling creative positions, such as graphic artists and web designers, who often share their work via Pinterest. And as Sharlyn Lauby points out in a blog recently posted on Mashable, Pinterest allows you to see what potential candidates are interested in based on what they are pinning. Plus, you can see who else shares their interests, further expanding your talent pipeline.

Brand, Don't Sell

Niche recruiting firm PediaStaff may be the biggest recruiting success story on Pinterest. With over 63,000 followers and 22,339 pins, PediaStaff's Pinterest account has become a go-to destination for pediatric therapists, particularly in school settings. As a result, it is the biggest source of traffic to PediaStaff's website, according to Heidi Kay, the firm's Partner and resident social media expert. But if you look at their pin boards, you will find very few pins about specific jobs or about PediaStaff as a firm. Instead, they have established themselves as a resource for therapists who are searching for classroom ideas to keep kids engaged and learning. About 60% of PediaStaff's pins are from web searches Kay runs to find new material. The other 40% comes from repinning content she finds on Pinterest.

"On Pinterest, and in all social media, it is important that you make most of your message about your followers and not about you," Kay said. "Once you develop a loyal following, you can get good marketing opportunities to discuss your job openings, placements, etc. It's important to strike a balance so your followers don't feel like you are advertising yourself too heavily, but on the other hand, it does need to be your ultimate mission to make them think of YOU for jobs in their field. You don't want to be the guy who ran the Super Bowl ad that was hilarious but noone could remember what they were selling."

Consider your audience

If the candidates you are seeking aren't on Pinterest, it doesn't matter how good your content is. Pinterest users in the United States are still 83% female, according to Recruiter.com So if you are courting a predominately male workforce, Pinterest may not be for you. Twenty-five percent of Pinterest users have a bachelors or graduate degree, so it may not be the best medium for executive roles. But it is a good place to source candidates for positions in education, sales, healthcare support, and management.

"Pinterest works when there is regular content to be found on the internet that would interest a candidate or hiring authority," Kay said. "Candidates that work for companies that sell mass market consumable goods, specific lifestyles or services would be a good fit. Teachers, Marketing and Sales Reps and Health Care professionals love Pinterest. Manufacturing Engineers - probably not so much."

So Pinterest may not be for everyone. But don't assume it's not for you. Look at your candidate pool. Consider what they are interested in and what tools they need to do their job. Can you help provide those tools? If you can establish yourself as a resource for candidates, guess who they will think of next time they are looking for a job?

Debbie Fledderjohann is the President of Top Echelon Contracting, Inc.

Comment by Matt Charney on October 15, 2013 at 12:36pm: Debbie: Great article, and one that's actually backed up with some great data points & tangible examples. My biggest question about recruiting on Pinterest (or Instagram, or insert shiny new tool here) is that to create the best practices you've discussed as being effective, you've got to invest a lot of time & sweat equity into creating meaningful content & presence on this site. Compared to the hundreds of other platforms and thousands of other sourcing techniques available out there, are the results of Pinterest worth this resource investment? I'd be skeptical that the results outweigh the work involved unless you've got resources to burn - in which case, you're luckier than most recruiters. Nice article, good evidence, still not convinced, but this is the most compelling post on the topic I've read. Great job.

Comment by Amy Ala Miller on October 15, 2013 at 1:37pm: I have a few friends at are nurses, and they pin all kinds of nursing related stuff on there. So I suppose there could be SOME value, in very rare / specific cases. If I were looking for nurses, I'd be checking out who pinned that snarky ecard, for example. However if you looked at my page, you'd probably never guess I was a recruiter solely from that site. If you were looking for a recruiter on Pinterest there's no way you would find me, unless it was mashed up with Facebook / LinkedIn somehow.

From an employer perspective, I like having a landing page (or several) that I can point candidates back to for a peek into our culture. Am I going to list JDs on Pinterest any time soon? Highly unlikely.

Comment by Debbie Fledderjohann on October 15, 2013 at 2:47pm: Thank you both for your comments, and thanks for reading. As far as the time investment, Heidi Kay (quoted in the article) estimated that a recruiter would need to pin regularly, but she said it could be managed in as little as 10 minutes a day. Even at that, you have to consider your own audience and whether that 10 minutes would be better spent on another social network, the phone, etc. Again, it's not for everyone, the success of PediaStaff shows it can work for some recruiters.

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on October 15, 2013 at 4:39pm: @ Everybody: When considering a new recruiting tool or technique, my question is:

Will it get me quality , affordable but sin chairs RIGHT NOW? If not, I'll leave it for someone who has time to develop relationships and build communities- I have to fill reqs.

-kh

Comment by Matt Charney on October 15, 2013 at 4:40pm: Keith: ROI means king outside of Francophone countries, too. Agreed (says the community builder/relationship guy).

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on October 15, 2013 at 8:01pm: Thanks, Matt.

Keith "Sorry for the Typos" Halperin

Comment by Ryan Leary on October 15, 2013 at 8:49pm: Agreed. Great posting and support to back it all up. I am not sold on the return here but the fact that it's built out and at least based on the article is the go to destination. shows some value. Big brands I see the value.

Comment by Rchilli Parser on October 16, 2013 at 7:52am: I am still in the initial phase of exploiting this wonderful tool @pinterest but in Recruiting sphere, quite skeptical in results and how audience approaches it, keeping target audience pool intact. Anyways enjoyed reading this.

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on October 16, 2013 at 5:29pm: I encourage all my fellow recruiters who find a competitively useful tool to use it IMMEDIATELY and tell as many of their friends as possible about it ASAP. That way it'll quickly lose its competitive value. A rule of thumb: if you're hearing about it in a place like this, the end of its competitive advantage is quite soon.

Seriously, if you find something that works for you, DON"T TELL A SOUL!

-kh

Comment by Ryan Leary on October 16, 2013 at 7:45pm: @Keith - I disagree with that statement. Tools are meant to be found and they will be found. If you found the so has many other. If you are referring to strategy and tactics being used that is different. With the size of the industry and the volume of people using the tools there is not 1 person in this network that will disadvantage anyone by sharing the tools, unless they are head to head competitors. With that, chances are sharing even at that point won't disadvantage you.

This stuff is not secret.

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