How to Grow an Employer Twitter Chat

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Twitter is a unique recruiting tool that just keeps getting stronger. I mentioned in part one of this Twitter chat series that there’s something wonderfully challenging about parsing your message down to 140 characters or less, but it’s what makes Twitter a great recruiting tool and so digestible as we read dozens, if not hundreds (or for some of us, even thousands) of Tweets each day.

It’s for that reason that I began holding Twitter chats years ago, and why I still think they’re incredibly valuable in recruiting. They’re simple to host, can be low cost or free (depending on how you advertise) and give candidates a rare opportunity to connect with recruiters. What more could you want?

As great as Twitter chats are, though, success doesn’t happen over night. Most start out small and expand slowly over time as word spreads and your following grows. They require a great deal of planned guerilla marketing and consideration of the value they bring to the talent community. If you want people to spend their free time engaging in this way, your Twitter chats need to serve a purpose for candidates.

If you’re ready to reap the benefits of an active, engaging Twitter chat, here are the ingredients you need to make it happen:

A short, simple hash tag

Your Twitter chat hashtag helps participants keep up with the conversation and files all the messages in the conversation for reference later. Choose a hashtag that has staying power (don’t base it on a weekly theme – keep it the same every week), is simple to type and isn’t being used elsewhere on Twitter.

Actively involved candidates

How do you get candidates involved? Ask them! Put out a call for them to suggest questions and topics for your chat. They’re much more likely to participate or tune in if their specific question is going to be answered.

Regular hosting

People have to get in the habit of attending, so keep a regular chat schedule. I recommend weekly chats for the best results.

Broadcast your chat

Yes, it is work related, but that doesn’t mean your friends and family aren’t interested. They may even pass the info along to a potential candidate. Don’t be shy about what you’re doing; let the world know.

Seek help from allies

Invite guest hosts from within your company, particularly if you have multiple openings in that area or a lot of interest from candidates about a specific department.

Guest host other Twitter chats

Gain exposure and experience by guest hosting job search chats like #internpro, #jobhuntchat and #omchat, which already have a following.

Creative marketing wins on Twitter

Get creative in your marketing, shout it from the rooftop and focus on growing your Twitter following beyond the chat because it’ll give you an even broader audience. And don’t forget to take advantage of email signatures and LinkedIn headlines to market your Twitter chat.

Find an ally in marketing

Connect with other people or organizations for a mutually beneficial relationship that will help you grow your following.

Use social advertising

Don’t be afraid to advertise outside of Twitter. Cover all your bases and use Facebook and LinkedIn advertising to promote your chat as well.

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

3 Ways Recruiters Can Use Twitter Hash Tags in Their Hiring Strategies

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

There’s something so simple about Twitter and its 140-character messages. That simplicity lets users get to the point in sharing resources, information or connecting. If you caught part one and two of this series, you saw that one of the things I love most about the social network is that even with an enormous amount of Tweets in your feed each day, you can still hone in on what’s important because of the brevity of the messages. I also talked a lot about how employers can use Twitter chat to grow their candidate following and connect with candidates.

In those posts, one of the tools I discussed for starting or growing a Twitter chat was hashtags. However, their use goes far beyond Twitter chats. In fact, recruiters and talent acquisition leaders can use Twitter hashtags as a way to focus employment branding, employment engagement and recruiting efforts.

There are a number of companies already doing so, and there’s a lot to be learned from those who are doing it right. Here are three ways, and three companies, that are leading the way in their use of Twitter hashtags:

Employment branding

Using hashtags as a way to drive awareness of your employment brand is just smart. It reinforces the message you’re using throughout a campaign or even as the backbone of your employment brand and promotes employment brand recognition.

A perfect example of this is Amtrak’s use of #teamamtrak as a way to encourage customer, employee and job seeker engagement. Doing so allows all parties to interact, giving candidates a 360-degree view of the company. Unifying the hashtag allows the employment branding team to better quantify their efforts and counts impressions and number of tweets as part of their regular reporting on engagement and relationships established through Twitter.

Employee engagement

Companies like Adobe use a Twitter hashtag as a way to encourage employees to be involved and engaged with one another, sharing what it’s like to work for Adobe. Their #adobelife campaign started as a simple, no-cost, grassroots effort and grew organically throughout the company as a way to share employee experiences of life with Adobe. By engaging employees this way, the company is making use of their best employment brand ambassadors and offering transparency to candidates.

Recruiting efforts

From featured job listings to Instagram pictures or even an employee Q&A, HP uses their #hpcareers hashtag to drive candidate interest and awareness, and they’re doing it really well. They also use the hashtag to organize and broadcast campus events, job fairs and other recruiting events they are attending, allowing them to not only reach casual job seekers but also be tracked and found by those who are specifically interested in a position at HP.

These three companies are making use of a simple concept to grow their employment brand and attract candidates, and your organization can do the same. Be consistent with your use of a hashtag, get your employees on board and let candidates know they can find you through it as well. It’s a simple, free way to find your next employee.

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

How Can Recruiters Use a Twitter Chat?

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Since 2008, Twitter has been my favorite social network because it provides you access to millions of potential candidates, friends and resources 24 hours a day. It requires users to parse down their message to just the essentials in 140 characters, which makes it easy to take in a lot of information without drowning. However, with so many ways to use the social network, I think one of the most valuable is hashtags. Hashtags are the Dewey Decimal System of Twitter. Users post the pound sign, followed by a series of words or characters (no spaces) to catalog or file the tweet. It helps you keep track of related tweets and helps other users find all tweets under that hashtag, such as tweets related to a certain topic, event or Twitter chat.

Hashtags were developed by Twitter users themselves and have become an integral part of how we search, navigate and find topics to research and people to connect with. Twitter has remained the third most popular resource and search engine second only to Google and YouTube, so it’s no surprise that people take to Twitter to discover, learn and of course, chat.

After hashtags were born, conversations began to focus around them and people began hosting Twitter chats that users could participate in simply by meeting up on Twitter at a scheduled time and using certain hashtag.

The how to

The great thing about hosting a Twitter chat is that all it takes to do so is a following, a hashtag and a time. You don’t have to handle RSVPs, meeting space or any other aspect of a traditional event, and yet you get the benefits of one. Announce your Twitter chat a week before through your Twitter, careers page and perhaps even an email announcement. You can let participants know what topics will be covered and then encourage them to come with their own questions and responses. Of course, let them know to use the unique hashtag you’ve created for the chat. Then when the time comes, simply moderate the conversation. Start with an opening call for questions or begin by sharing. Respond to as many tweets as possible and hopefully, candidates will also connect and chat with each other.

At the end of the chat (and even throughout if you have the chance to), take the opportunity to direct participants to your talent network, careers page and other social networks. If you plan to make the Twitter chat a regular event, you can let them know when the chat is wrapping up.

Why it makes sense for recruiters and candidates

Twitter chats provide candidates the opportunity to interact and engage with your recruiting and talent acquisition team in a real time engaging way that has never been accomplished before. It helps increase your bandwidth, your messages and grow your community in a way that no other tool can.

Watch for part two of this series on using Twitter chats to find out how you can take your chats to the next level and see growth.

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

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. 

How to Reach a Niche Recruiting Audience Online

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Being tasked with the job of finding a candidate in niche market can be a daunting task. Job boards like Monster.com and Indeed.com offer a wide variety of jobs and most of the time don’t hit niche markets. As a recruiter it’s important to advertise your open positions in places that job seekers are visiting. For instance, if I were hiring for someone in pharmaceuticals that particular job seeker would rather search where all the jobs are related to pharmaceuticals instead of cycling through hundreds of non-related jobs.

If you’re having trouble reaching your audience in a very niche sector I have come up with a few places and suggestions to focus your effort. Not all of these will work across the board, but it’ll give you a basic understanding of this part of the recruiting process:

Niche Job Boards: Niche jobs boards are becoming more relevant in today’s society as high-tech industries are becoming the new trend. Not all niche job boards will be successful, but the work for many reasons. One of the biggest problems in a recruiter’s job is finding relevant people. Out of 100 applications received it’s possible that less than five of them are relevant to the actual posting. Using a job board specific to whim you’re hiring creates relevancy and will help weed out applicants who aren’t qualified.

It also helps cut down on the cost of hiring. If you’re using a job board like Monster.com you’re paying for an audience that you don’t want. Most of the time you’re hiring for 5% of these bigger job board’s audience.

Hashtags: Something that has become extremely popular in the recruiting world has been niche-recruiting hashtags. Meeting and engaging with potential applicants in the Twitterverse is the new normal in online recruiting. Instead of throwing out random hashtags like most people do, here are a few hashtags that will allow you to reach a specific audience:

Remember: There is a billion tweets sent every four days. Using appropriate hashtags is essential when posting job listings on Twitter for a niche target.

#USGuys – This hashtag caters to the marketing community. As a recruiter using this hashtag when posting a job related to marketing will greatly increase your chances of being seen by someone who is looking for a marketing job.

#socialmedia – One of the most popular jobs in today’s economy is all about social media. There are tons and tons of tweets about social media so using this hashtag coupled with one like #USGuys will help narrow down your search for someone interested in marketing and social media.

Other popular hashtags include #business #Is #in #hirefriday and #jobs. For a deeper understanding of how these hashtags work you can read Top 25 List of Twitter Hashtags for Human Resources. Niche job marketing is easy if you know where to look. Try these tips to increase the number of relevant applicants for each of your job postings.

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to hire for a very specialized industry try using these suggestions to find a candidate without wasting money and time. Not all of these will work for every job listing, but they have been proven to be very effective in recruiting trends.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

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