How do you leverage social media and SEO to attract and engage passive candidates?

1 Define your target audience

Before you start posting and promoting your content, you need to know who you are trying to reach and what they are looking for. Research your ideal candidate personas, their pain points, their goals, their motivations, and their online behavior. Use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and surveys to gather data and insights. This will help you tailor your content and messages to their needs and interests, and increase your chances of getting their attention.

2 Optimize your career site and job listings

Your career site and job listings are the main entry points for passive candidates who find you through search engines. You need to optimize them for SEO, which means using relevant keywords, clear and compelling titles and descriptions, and user-friendly design and navigation. Make sure your career site showcases your employer brand, your culture, your values, and your benefits. Include testimonials, videos, and stories from your current employees to give passive candidates a glimpse of what it's like to work for you. Make your job listings specific, engaging, and easy to apply for. Include clear expectations, responsibilities, and requirements, as well as the benefits and perks of working for you.

4 Build and nurture relationships

Social media is not a one-way channel for broadcasting your content. It is a platform for building and nurturing relationships with your potential candidates. You need to interact with your audience, respond to their comments and questions, ask for their feedback and opinions, and show your appreciation and recognition. You also need to join and participate in relevant online communities, such as groups, forums, or hashtags, where you can showcase your thought leadership, share your insights, and offer value. You can also use social media to reach out to passive candidates directly, but make sure you do it in a personalized, respectful, and authentic way. Don't spam them with generic messages or pitches. Instead, start a conversation, show interest in their profile and work, and provide value.

5 Measure and improve your results

The last step is to measure and improve your results. You need to track and analyze your social media and SEO metrics, such as traffic, impressions, clicks, conversions, engagement, reach, and followers. You also need to monitor and evaluate your candidate feedback, such as reviews, ratings, referrals, and testimonials. These data will help you understand what works and what doesn't, and how you can optimize your strategy and tactics. You can also use tools like Google Analytics, social media analytics, and applicant tracking systems to collect and visualize your data and insights.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?