5 Ways Recruiters Can Improve Their Presence on Twitter

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Social media is a great way to engage job seekers but with the average tweet having a lifespan of under 20 minutes, relying on Twitter to reach your recruitment goals requires a social savvy strategy. Here are five ways recruiters can improve their presence on Twitter starting today.

Be searchable.
Did you know that Twitter is the third largest search engine? Get to know the commonly searched keywords that your candidates are seeking and insert these words and phrases in tweets as well as the recruiter bios. If you have a landing page or career page, use that URL in the bio too.

Another best practice that helps you to be searchable and can lengthen the lifespan of a tweet can be to create compilations. By creating a blog post that links to a collection of tweets published by thought leaders on specific topics is one way to build searchable links for leading search engines. You may also want to try a curation tool like Storify to collect tweets.

Get social.
Don’t just tweet job openings. There is a time and place for an RSS feed of job listings and openings on social media. Different companies make the determination on how to publish their thousands of openings on social media differently. A best practice is for organizations to tweet a specific type of job, category or featured job listing a day instead of creating a job opening Twitter stream. Your message is more likely to get lost among the mass stream.

The bottom line is to not limit Twitter as just a wire or feed, but take advantage of the conversation and engagement element of the tool too. Tweet unique, specific and creative messages instead of just focusing on pumping out your various job openings.

Answer questions.
Be human and offer value by sharing great resources and information that you come across in your day. Use scheduling tools like Hootsuite or TweetDeck to help you spread your tweets throughout the day or week to engage the largest cross section of your ideal community. Be responsive and engage in real-time. You may want to build out some lists and include some unique candidates. This is a great way to organize and filter your twitter contacts.

Use Hashtags.
Most conference, event or job fair leverages a hash tag in some way. Find out what hashtags are being tweeted and build lists with the people using those tags. Chat it up on event specific hashtags talking directly to job seekers providing resources and inviting them to join your talent network or community. On the candidate side, know that they are also using hashtags to search for job leads. Use hashtags on terms that candidates are using to improve your search results.

Lead twitter chats.
Twitter chats are an excellent way to optimize Twitter for engagement and awareness. A Twitter chat is a live event that is moderated and focused around a particular subject. There are a variety of ways that you can get involved with at Twitter chat. If you or a member of your recruitment team is comfortable with owning your own Twitter chat, start by scheduling a time, promoting the topic and moderating the chat. Another way to get involved with chats on Twitter are to find existing chats currently being moderated in established communities that you could reach out to with the option to sponsor or be a guest.

You can also just have your recruitment team sign up to participate in chats that interest them. Remember that the key here is to be social. The more engaged you are with individuals, the more visibility your organization has and the more opportunities you have to foster relationships with candidates.

It is not too late to add Twitter to your recruitment strategy. These five tips will help you get started. Let me know if you have any questions on using Twitter for recruitment needs. I’ve actually written the book on this subject and I am happy to share what I know!

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell.