Social media and recruitment

Lots of organisations utilise social media for a variety of things – whether it’s marketing its services, interacting with customers, or to advertise job vacancies in their organisation.

Social media is becoming increasingly important in job hunting, with 83% of 151 organisations surveyed by the Institute for Student Employers reporting they use social media for marketing purposes and 93% using online jobs boards for advertisement of roles. So, how can you utilise social media to boost your career opportunities?

LinkedIn alumni tool

Connecting with your peers on your university course, and with others from across the university can be valuable for increasing your network. The LinkedIn alumni tool, if you haven’t used it before, can be useful in terms of connecting with others, and seeing what organisations that alumni from your university now work at. You might find inspiration by looking at what others have done once they’ve graduated, identifying new career opportunities that you might never have realised were available to you. As stated by the ISE, 93% of roles are advertised online – the other 7% might come through referral or recommendation, which is where LinkedIn can be so valuable.

As a first step, you could connect with old coursemates to see what they have been up to since graduation for some inspiration.

LinkedIn jobs page(s)

If you go on LinkedIn, you’ll find a tab at the top called ‘jobs’. On this, you can do lots of different searches for different roles, different locations, and different organisations. This can be an excellent way to start your job search, and you can even follow up on roles of interest with hiring managers or other people in the organisation through these job postings. If you find an organisation you’re interested in through this page, you can follow their careers pages and set up alerts so that you’re notified of new jobs being posted.

Social media platforms

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) can help you to find new roles, and network with organisations and people of interest. If you can find an organisation’s careers account, even better, as you can get careers-specific content. You might use them to find recruitment events, connect with local organisations, or seek opportunities through ‘jobs’ pages. By following organisations and university careers teams on different sites, you open yourself up to a variety of content and chances to find new jobs and experiences. Utilising the search functionality of these sites to look up keywords or hashtags (#) can further increase your chances of finding something useful.

How organisations use social media

Not only do organisations use social media to advertise roles, but you can learn a lot about an organisation based on the content they produce – you can then use this knowledge to your advantage in the recruitment process (see the lesson about commercial awareness for more on this!). A lot of organisations have Facebook pages, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and primarily a LinkedIn page, where you can follow them and be notified of any updates on their posts. Depending on the size of the organisation, vacancies might be posted primarily on ‘free’ jobs boards, such as Indeed or LinkedIn, and promoted using their social media profiles.

Personal branding

So, we’ve spoken about how you can find vacancies and keep up to date with organisations using social media, but how can you boost your online presence to benefit your job search? Here’s a few of my top tips:

• Get your profile(s) up to scratch: Update your profile picture(s) to professional-looking headshots (no need to pay for anything fancy, a selfie will do!) and make sure this is consistent across your profiles. You can even add the ‘open to work’ banner on your profile picture on LinkedIn to show recruiters that you are actively seeking employment.
• Join industry groups: Follow well-known professionals and thought leaders in your industry of interest, join industry-specific online groups and local groups – use the Alumni page to find new connections and see which groups they might be in.
• Share your learning(s): Start attending events, reading articles, watching videos, and share things you’ve learnt. By demonstrating your ability to digest information and showing your interest in your field/a topic, you can catch the attention of people in your network who might be impressed with your knowledge.
• Think (carefully!) about the content you post: Trawl through the content you’ve posted before and remove anything you wouldn’t want a future employer to see – maybe even consider creating a second profile to keep your personal life and professional profile separate.
• Be consistent: Having a regular posting regime, perhaps once a week or one a fortnight, and making sure any messages you portray are consistent, can boost your personal profile, giving those connected to your network a clear insight into you as a person. Make sure you’re being true to yourself as well, highlighting things you value, and being authentic.

These things can start close – connect with people you already know, like your colleagues, university friends, and even your family! You can expand your network from there.