Recruitment via Social Media: 101

Recently I helped a Real Estate company recruit some top-performing candidates for it’s offices. In the past, they had used traditional methods, such as online advertising and cold calling, but it became my job to use the tools that social media offers in order to recruit real estate agents. Here are some insights to what I learned.

• • • • • Know Your Audience. Sometimes the most difficult aspect of a campaign is narrowing down an audience. Fortunately, I understood the qualities of the potential candidates that the the Real Estate company wanted to recruit. The next step was to understand how to approach and converse with the candidates. I viewed it as: “How Would I Want to be Approached If a Company Wanted to Hire Me?”. Also I applied some basic etiquette that I learned from pitching to journalists.
• Research, Research, Research. Before jumping on the social media bandwagon, it’s important to know what platforms your audience uses and for what reasons. For instance, I found that most real estate agents in the area were not actively using Twitter, but on LinkedIn instead to network with other agents. From there, I could devote my time and energy to LinkedIn and some other social media sites that they primarily used.
• Try it out. I monitored conversations circulating on LinkedIn to find key candidates then respectfully approached them about opportunities. Just like any good pitch, make sure to let them know what you can offer them, how you differ from other companies in that sector, and also why their qualities stood out to you.
• Evaluate. After a month of using social media as a part of the real estate company’s recruiting efforts, we took a step back and analyzed the results. Interestingly, there wasn’t a huge difference in the amount of real estate agent applicants. This occurred for several reasons, a few being the state of economy and the nature of a career in real estate. Also, most of the top-performing candidates were of the age demographic 40-55, so were not active online participants. However, the social media activity in the past month greatly increased the company’s SEO – especially in the area they are located, which means they can better beat their rivals on a Google search.
• Lesson learned. Even though their main audience wasn’t actively using social media, it’s important to have an online presence to gain credibility and heighten visibility. This solidified the company’s need to maintain their social media profiles. In the end, we turned the project around to helping train their current agents to use social media in order to promote their business and sell their homes. I hope by doing so, other agents will be attracted to this forward-thinking company who now has the resources to train employees on social media use.

Let me know about your experience being recruited or recruiting through social media.

 

Advertisement