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Think of Instagram posts and you’ll likely imagine endless arty pics of avocado on toast, dreamy landscapes in far-flung travel destinations, and the fluffy faces of baby animals staring lovingly out from the screen. It may not be the first social media platform to spring to mind when you think about attracting candidates, but as the fastest growing social network boasting over 400 million users, many businesses have cottoned on to Instagram being a powerful tool to help find and attract talent. If you need a bit of guidance when it comes to social, here’s some tips to help you get started:
1. Write a clear, useful bio
Tell people what you do and why you’re useful to them. Are you an award-winning business? Industry experts? Let people know! Your bio needs to be brief – there’s only 150 characters to play with, so shout about the key elements of your business and anything that will be relevant to people you want to target.
2. Have a professional profile picture
Include a high-quality image which reflects your brand – using your brand logo makes you easily recognisable to potential followers.
3. Use keywords in your name
Next to your brand name, you can include an associated keyword to make you more visible in searches. This could be a core value that summarises your company, or something that people interested in your industry might search for. For example, if you’re a company selling health products, it could look like this:
My Health Company ¦ Nutrition ¦ Fitness
4. Link to your website
The best way to drive organic traffic to your website is by including a link at the bottom of your bio. This is the only place on Instagram that you can include a clickable link; you can still include them on your posts and direct people to particular web pages, but people will have to physically type it out or copy and paste into a search engine. The link could be to your company website, career page, specific job landing page, or career microsite.
5. Include relevant hashtags
Within your bio, make any keywords into hashtags to boost your visibility. Sticking with the example of a health products company, this could be words like ‘#wellbeing’, ‘#health’ and ‘#lifestyle’. The best way to include these hashtags is within the text of your bio as part of a sentence, rather than stand-alone words tagged on to the end.
6. Share company updates
Give people an insight into your company culture and keep them updated on business news. Show what goes on behind the scenes – everything from work events, to someone bringing donuts in to the office! Update people on new starters or changes within the business, and let them see why your company is a desirable place to work – don’t tell them the perks, show them!
7. Comment on your post with additional hashtags
Including too many hashtags in your main post can look a bit spammy and clutter your message. But by commenting on your post with additional hashtags it allows more people to find you without detracting from your main message.
8. Tell people what you want them to do
At the end of your bio, include a call to action so it appears above the link to your website or specific job landing page – for a generic push to your website you could say ‘Visit our website to view all vacancies’, or for a specific role you want to advertise, something like ‘We’re hiring Designers, apply now’.
9. Share to other networks as well as Instagram
You can easily share your post to other networks from Instagram to ensure your post reaches the maximum number of people – don’t be shy about sharing!
10. Market research
Being aware of what your competitors are doing on social, and what works well for them, will help you develop your own social strategy. You can also see who’s following them, which is a good starting point for finding suitable candidates.
11. Search for candidates using hashtags
By searching for commonly used hashtags relating to your industry, you can connect with people who are already engaged and interested in what you do – people who might also be potential candidates! You can contact these people by direct message and see if they’re interested in a role at your company.
12. Post regularly
Simply posting when you have a position you need to fill isn’t going to cut the mustard. To make sure people will actually pay attention to your posts, you need to be regularly active on Instagram to build your fanbase and increase engagement.
By investing the time and energy into Instagram, you’ll help build your employer brand, boost traffic to your website, and ultimately engage with more candidates. Post regularly and give people a taster of what it’s like to work for your company, and why they would want to work there too, and you’ll give your entire recruitment strategy the boost it needs!
