Last week we attended the Social Recruiting Strategies Conference in San Francisco, where we were among top influencers that shared their insights and techniques on building out social strategies. One of the key takeaways from this two-day event was understanding effective messaging.  Allison Kruse, Head of Social Media and Sourcing at Kforce, shared best practices on this topic in a presentation called Finding the Right Message: Effective Communication Across Social Platforms.

Effective messaging has to be strategic but also show that you’re a human on the other side of the screen. Ask yourself, would a machine ever say this? If the answer is yes, put an end to that approach. Be sincere, if you want to get a candidate’s attention, start with an actual conversation and do research. Take time to understand where the candidates are, what their interests are, who they are motivated by and where they want to go next.

When you create messages that are personal and have a human touch, you will see your response rate go up dramatically.

Social Media Tips from Allison

Sourcers on Facebook 

If you aren’t friends with the candidate but send them a message, this note will go directly in their “other” inbox which creates a less of a chance they will actually see it. Avoid this form of contact. Instead, take information from their Facebook profile and seek out communication on Linkedin.

Best Practices on LinkedIn  

Customized subject lines will grab the attention of candidates. Make sure it’s non-standard and attention grabbing. For example, it could be a joke and they have to open the message to get the punchline. Other best practices include making sure your message is focused on the candidate, not your company, and sign-off with an open-ended question - this way the conversation is still going!

Twitter #Hashtags

When it comes to Twitter don’t just make your tweets about “We are hiring!” It’s not effective. Instead, get your tweet out to an author, then if they retweet you it will go out to an even bigger audience. Take time to research your hashtags and make sure it belongs in the industry or audience you’re trying to target. Here’s another hashtag tip - when you are using a # make sure to capitalize different words  #candidateexperience vs. #CandidateExperience makes it easier to read and worthy of a retweet.

The biggest takeaway Allison focused on was to avoid talking like every other recruiter. If you want to be a pro, put a halt on the automated messaging. Avoid the “I’m hiring” or “I came across your job on LinkedIn” intro -  you’re not the only one seeking out these candidates so you have to make yourself memorable and start off with a strong impression.

You may be thinking, how will anyone have the time to customize these messages? Yes, it takes more time out of your day - but think, if you’re doing the research you already know they are qualified candidates. So in return you’ll be having a larger sum of response rates with a larger sum of candidates that are qualified. It’s a win-win!

Putting these strategies in practice will add great value to your recruiting efforts, but it’s important to start assessing where you are now in the pipeline. Begin by auditing how many messages your team is sending a week then create a personalized goal. Train every team member with this new approach and remember to tell your story too, share the data and success stories to your team, it adds to your credibility!