Nowadays everyone is using social media to source candidates, but few of us stray beyond the safety of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
As a result, there are a large number of other social networks out there, as of yet largely untapped for recruitment. Could some of the less publicised networks have great recruitment potential?
Ever thought about using Pinterest for recruitment?
As social networks go, Pinterest doesn’t get a lot of respect. This is crazy considering it has over 100 million users and drives more referral traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit combined!
It’s a female dominated site – 42% of all online women are users, with around 80% of active users also of the fairer sex!
Pinterest is growing like crazy and, as of yet, is relatively untouched by recruiters. It presents a great opportunity to connect with candidates you might not reach through standard means.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a virtual inspiration board, a great source of ideas for a huge variety of projects and interests. Members ‘pin’ anything from pictures to recipes on their personal boards (just as you would on a physical bulletin board).
It solves a simple problem. When you find something you love while browsing, how do you record it? Pinning these things helps you organize and arrange them the way you want – far more effective than just bookmarking them.
How should you use it? Pinterest’s huge user base and visual focus lends itself to certain recruitment tactics.
1 – Employer branding
Recruiters are tasked with finding candidates who are not only high quality, but also an excellent cultural fit.
Try and make your culture and values evident by pinning with a little personality! Looking for team players? Think about adding images from a recent office team-building event.
Taco Bell do a fantastic job of this. They regularly pin pictures of their team at work or interacting within the community. They’re keen for potential applicants to picture themselves in the role and understand what a career at Taco Bell means.
2 – Sourcing candidates
Pinterest’s powerful search capabilities make it useful for sourcing candidates. Recruiters can search by tags to locate otherwise hard-to-find talent.
We are restricted a little here – search results depend on the text that people have entered alongside their images.
If you’re unsuccessful using the site’s built in search, you can always resort to specific Google queries for the positions that you’re interested in. For anyone not used to doing this on Google, SourceCon has some great advice for setting up effective queries for Pinterest.
Due to Pinterest’s user base and it’s visual nature, you’ll have more success sourcing for certain positions. Designers for example often use it as a good forum to display and share their work.
3 – Job adverts
The site’s visual nature is a little restrictive when it comes to job adverts, but there is definitely an opportunity to get a little clever with the way that you promote your opportunities to candidates.
Try pinning recruitment videos to your page – Pinterest integrates with both Youtube and Vimeo. Videos are 5.33x more effective than text in keeping visitors engaged! Alternatively, use creative job ads to encourage anyone browsing your board to visit your careers page.
If this isn’t inventive enough for you, try pinning QR codes to your company board. Not only does this help you differentiate your recruitment process, but it gives candidates very quick access to a job application (or whatever page the code designates).
Summary
The visual nature of Pinterest makes it tough to rely on the network for major results. However, when blended with other strategies it could form part of an effective recruitment process.
While it has limited sourcing value, it’s definitely something that you should explore for employer branding reasons. Follow the example of companies like Taco Bell and start engaging with your community.
[Image Credit: Shutterstock]
