Using social media for recruiting candidates is becoming a mainstream strategy among staffing and recruiting agencies. 60% of recruiting companies predict social recruiting to be the next evolution in recruiting strategies. If you are incorporating social recruiting – and have absolutely no results – you may want to look at your efforts in a new light. There could be a couple mistakes that are easy fixes.

5 Things Companies Should Never Do In Social Media Recruiting

1. Fill Your Company Twitter Feed Solely With Job Blasts

The life of a tweet is only a matter of minutes, and spamming your followers’ twitter feeds with the same formatted tweet definitely does not fit the Twitter culture. This is not only ineffective, but it can tarnish your credibility – especially for recruiting younger generations.

Certain staffing software solutions allow recruiters to personalize their automated job post tweets. Use the 140 characters to make personalized tweets and avoid sounding like a loudspeaker. In using social media recruitment, your organization must break through the clutter and stand out as an employer of choice. By providing content mixed with open job positions, you will increase your chances to attract qualified candidates.

2. Not Engage Candidates on Social Media Platforms

This ties in with the first point: Posting an abundance of job ads or a general “I’m hiring!”, “Know any one for this job?” status updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter will not effectively target high qualified candidates for the job.

Social recruiting is all about engaging with people. People do not engage with robots, spammers, etc. Use social media websites and tools to highlight the fundamentals of the job, office culture, and the employer brand. Leverage social media in a way to show a glimpse of what the company is like and how it would be to work there – you will recruit the right candidates for the job.

This leads into my next point…

3. Not Use Niche Communities in Social Media Recruiting

Understand who the perfect candidate is for the job, and then find out where they go. If you don’t know where they hang out, what their interests are, what draws them in, then you are never going to attract them.

Are you looking for Programmers? Try stackoverflow.com. Social media marketers? Interact onmashable.com. What about Nurses? Check out nurses.com. Find out the niche target market, figure out where they hangout online, and go there.  Go there, be relevant, and ENGAGE.

4. Not Target Your Online Job Posting

Job postings are advertisements. Understand what the ideal candidate looks for in a company, what values they appreciate, what type of workplace culture they look for, and highlight these attributes within the job post. Incorporate key buzzwords to attract the perfect candidate without rambling on.  Do not throw senseless corporate jargon around to make the job position sound more “fancy”– it will only lead to a batch of non-qualified candidates. Research, listen, observe.

5. Rely on the Post and Pray Metho

Five words: This is not social recruiting. This is should not even be considered a method. If you catch yourself posting randomly everywhere and hoping that a great candidate will magically appear – you need to go back to the drawing board. Reevaluate, replan, restrategize….and re-read this blog post.

Megan Curth is the Marketing Coordinator of Automated Business Designs, Inc., software developer of Ultra-Staff staffing software for the staffing and direct hire industry. Ultra-Staff is a staffing software business solution with components for front office, back office and the web. Megan’s email address is megan.curth@abd.net or for more information on Ultra-Staff go to www.abd.net